Interim President, International Markets — Integration (Hospitality)

Decision rights that survive the people who wrote them

Across international hospitality, decision rights are often personal. They live in the relationship between a market head and the centre, and when either changes, the rights change with them. This president's job is to write them down so they survive both, and the role carries executive authority to do it.

The president writes the decision rights for every international market, marks which limits remain local, and picks the measures that steer investment, capacity and control. Every inherited commitment receives a ruling. A proposal that would leave its cost or risk unowned is stopped, and investment cases silent on uptake, on what they lean on or on the downside are declined. The president also approves how market leadership is structured and how unresolved matters travel to the centre, and works through disagreements between the Group Chief Executive Officer and the market heads before any money moves.

The subtle part is distinguishing a market exception that is genuinely needed from one that history has merely protected. Local differences in guest expectation and custom are real. So are local differences that exist only because nobody has challenged them. The president's credibility depends on telling the two apart and explaining the difference to the people affected.

Twelve months to rights that hold

Decision rights for each international market should be agreed within the first ninety days, with the limits that stay local written down and understood. Around month nine those rights should have been tested by real market and leadership changes, with every market exception owned by someone and justified on evidence. By month 12 the framework should hold without interim intervention, and successors should be ready in the markets that matter most.

A president who builds for after they leave

Your general-management record should include a business that reached $755 million in revenue, employed 5,200 people and ran across four countries, at the least. Experience of platform pivot, professionalisation and succession will count most. Strategy formation is wanted at level 4; at level 3 we want sound risk judgement, real P&L ownership and a feel for operating cadence.

Through a platform pivot you kept what the board was told anchored to what the markets were actually showing. You build successors as the model changes, so the arrangement keeps working after you have gone. An open question, in your hands, reaches the Group Chief Executive Officer with its consequences spelt out rather than parked for later.

The order of meetings

The Group Chief Executive Officer opens, in week 1, with a video call held in confidence. Week 3 is with the Board Chair, testing how decision rights should be proved under pressure. In week 5 you meet in person with executives from each function; in week 7, the directors as a whole. We will send you our feedback in writing within two working days of each one.