Interim Governance Director — Controls

Board succession as a governance discipline

In a member-owned organisation, board composition is shaped by member democracy as much as by skills, which makes succession one of the hardest governance questions to manage well. The Interim Governance Director will spend twelve months, answering to the Board Chair, aligning the board's succession with the work the organisation's portfolio actually requires, and tightening the controls around decision-making along the way. It is a hands-on governance leadership role rather than a secretariat function.

Authority over decision rights and funding

The authority is executive. You will map decision rights across the organisation, keeping clear which thresholds rest with local leaders, and specify what facts must support oversight of investment, operating capacity and controls. You will rule on whether inherited commitments go on, are held or are closed, and refuse any proposal that slides cost or exposure elsewhere with nobody accountable for it. Where a value case skips take-up, dependencies or what could go wrong, the funding is declined. You will confirm who leads what and how issues are escalated, broker disputes between the Board Chair and the people running operations, and set a regular board rhythm for progress and open decisions.

Doing this inside a member-owned organisation requires tact. The aim is not to override member representation but to make sure the board, whoever sits on it, has the skills and the information to govern what its members own.

From a skills statement to succession that runs itself

By day ninety there should be a map of decision rights and an agreed statement, made with the Board Chair, of the skills the portfolio needs around the board table. Around month nine a board succession plan built on those skills should be approved, and funding controls should be firmer wherever value cases had been reaching approval without a downside. By month 12 succession, escalation and the board's meeting rhythm should run on a fixed cycle that the Board Chair can operate without interim help.

A governance director who has redrawn a board before

Governance leadership in an organisation with revenue of at least $380 million and 1,100 or more people in six countries is the baseline. Succession sits at the centre of this brief, ideally one in which authority, funding and operating rhythm all shifted under you at once. Cost transformation and professionalisation are the other two experiences the Board Chair will look for. On capability, governance ethics is needed at level 4; risk judgement, entity governance, and stewardship of board and stakeholder relationships are needed at level 3. You should be able to describe putting a contested downside to a chair without blunting it, and ending a well-liked commitment, with the facts that justified it and what it freed up.

The Chair's call, and what follows

It begins with the Board Chair, in a discreet video conversation during week one. Then, in the third week, the Regional President spends a working session with you, testing how governance changes will be received by those running the business. In the fifth week you are questioned in person by executive leaders from each function, after which the full board of directors makes its judgement in a seventh-week discussion. Five working days after each stage, the Chair's assessment reaches you in writing.