Interim Senior Vice President, Operations — Value Agenda (Consumer and Retail)

An operating model drawn from evidence, not from the organisation chart

Operating models are often redesigned from the top down: boxes are moved, reporting lines redrawn, and the work is expected to follow. The Interim Senior Vice President, Operations, is asked to work the other way round. The redesign starts from two kinds of evidence, how much capacity each part of the operation genuinely has and what level of service it actually delivers, and the structure is shaped to fit what that evidence shows. Where capacity is the binding constraint, the model should protect it. Where service falls short, the model should make clear who answers for it.

The authority to see it through

The role carries executive authority, exercised under the Country Managing Director. The senior vice president sets how operating decisions are made, with the thresholds local leadership will keep, and chooses the evidence that will govern spending, capacity and control. Inherited operational commitments that do not fit the redesigned model will be paused or ended. Proposals that push cost or risk onto another team without its consent will be stopped, and investment will be declined where the case has not shown that the change will be taken up, what it rests on and what happens if it falls short. The senior vice president approves the operations leadership structure and how operational problems are raised, and resolves conflicts between the Country Managing Director and operating leaders before people or money are committed.

Twelve months from evidence to a working model

Within its first ninety days, the redesign should have an agreed basis in capacity and service evidence, a settled way of measuring that evidence, and an identified owner for each core process, all agreed between the Country Managing Director and the senior vice president. Around month nine the redesigned operating model should be approved, and inherited commitments that do not fit it should have been held or ended with the reasons recorded. At month 12 the new model should be running on capacity and service evidence, with a working route for exceptions and a regular board cadence in place.

An operations leader who has changed the model before

Your operations record should come from organisations with revenue of at least $565 million and 1,500 people, operating in four countries. Your record includes a platform pivot, professionalisation and succession. The platform pivot matters most here: you have changed how an operation works at its foundations, with the effects felt as much in the boardroom as on the shop floor. Operating cadence is required at level 4. Operating model, network footprint, and quality and safety are each required at level 3. Before letting an operational exception stand, you have established whose budget was absorbing it, and you are comfortable that one of your first achievements here may be a commitment ended rather than one begun. You can be candid with the Country Managing Director about what is still unresolved and act anyway, and you can stop an operations commitment without unanimous backing from the country heads.

Reading the evidence with four audiences

The Country Managing Director opens in week one, by video and in confidence, asking how you would read capacity and service evidence. The Audit Committee Chair spends time with you in week three. In the fifth week you meet in person with executives who run the other functions, wanting to understand how the redesign would affect their teams; the board's directors follow in week seven. We reply in writing within three working days of each stage.