Interim Chief Digital and Data Officer — Value Agenda (Regulated Services)

Neither a platform rebuild nor a reliability rescue, but both at once

Some digital appointments are about building the new; others are about keeping the old running. This one does not get to choose. It is not a transformation programme with an operations function bolted on, nor an operations role with a roadmap on the side. The interim holds executive authority for both, and is judged on both.

Changing the model while the service runs

The first task is agreeing with the Group Chief Executive Officer which digital and data decisions are taken centrally and which thresholds local leaders retain. Then comes the evidence: what the organisation will rely on when it commits funding, capacity and control, and specifically what reliability data a platform change must carry before it proceeds. Digital commitments will proceed, wait or stop on your judgement, and any plan that relocates cost or risk with no one accountable for it is turned back. Investment without a credible view of who will adopt the change, which platforms it depends on and how it could fail will be declined. You will settle who leads the digital and data teams and how problems are raised, broker disagreements with operating leaders, and decide when and how often the board checks progress and unresolved choices.

The judgement here is mostly about sequencing. Moving teams onto a product model before the platform beneath them is stable tends to export instability to customers; stabilising the platform without changing how teams work tends to rebuild old habits on new infrastructure. In regulated services, where procurement rules can shape technology choices as much as engineers do, the order of moves matters as much as the moves themselves.

A digital leader with eight markets behind them

You have carried a digital transformation whose effects reached directors and frontline staff alike. Organisations of at least $295 million in revenue and 1,700 people, spread over eight or more countries, are where you have done it. You have moved decision rights between teams on systems that had to keep serving customers throughout the handover. Digital transformation, cost transformation and turnaround experience are examined. Risk judgement is expected at level 4, with product delivery, data and AI governance, and architecture at scale at level 3. Once the board has ruled, you still own the follow-through, down to the dull work of shutting technology exceptions one by one. When the facts are incomplete you say so to the chief executive and still put forward a decision. Stopping a commitment does not wait, in your hands, on every country leader's agreement.

Eighteen months, and three weeks to get there

Three things should be agreed with the chief executive in the first ninety days, namely the target product and platform model, the reliability thresholds and the allocation of digital decisions. At month nine the platform transition should be sequenced, and any change lacking a reliability or adoption case paused. By month 18 product teams should be working in the new model, with service reliability and open decisions reported on a settled cadence.

Reaching the start line is quicker. The Group Chief Executive Officer speaks with you in confidence over video during week one; the Regional President hands you a live case to work in the second; and the investment committee meets you in person in the third. You will have our response to each within five working days.