Interim President, International Markets — Performance Renewal

Growth that the markets can actually deliver

Ambitious international plans are easy to write. Realistic ones are harder, because they must reckon with what each market can absorb: the leadership it has, the capacity of its supply and logistics, the partners it depends on, the time it takes for a new customer proposition to earn trust. The Interim President, International Markets, is appointed to set a growth plan of that kind and then to lead its delivery, with executive authority exercised under the Investment Committee.

Where the president's authority runs

The president sets how international decisions are made, writes down the limits each market's leadership may act within, and decides what proof any market must produce to justify spending, capacity or a change in controls. Inherited market commitments will be judged on evidence, and not all of them will survive. Should a proposal quietly load cost or risk onto a market team that has not agreed to it, the president will stop it. A request for capital that cannot say who the customer is, what the plan needs from the rest of the group and how far things could fall short will be declined. The president approves the international leadership structure and settles disputes between the Investment Committee and market leaders before capital or headcount is spent.

A plan in nine months, delivery by twenty-four

How international decisions are taken, a baseline for each market and the assumptions beneath the growth plan should be agreed with the Investment Committee inside the first ninety days. Getting the assumptions agreed before the plan is written is the discipline that makes it realistic. Around month nine a growth plan should have been approved, and every inherited market commitment should have been kept, paused or brought to a close on the evidence. By month 24 the plan should be delivering through market leaders who answer for their part of it, with progress put before the board at fixed intervals.

Partners, carve-outs and long horizons

The businesses you have run had at least $670 million in revenue and 2,100 people, and spanned two countries. Your experience of an ESG transition, a joint venture and a carve-out will be looked at closely, and each matters for different reasons: an ESG transition because it forces long-horizon commitments into short-horizon budgets, a joint venture because international growth often depends on partners you do not control, a carve-out because it shows you can separate what genuinely belongs to a market from what has merely accumulated there. Strategy formation must be at level 4. Level 3 is expected in operating cadence, in risk judgement and in running a P&L.

Judgement under pressure

Your record should show a market commitment you halted because nobody would own it, and a well-liked one you closed, with the evidence that justified closing it and what the freed capacity went on to do. You can tell a necessary market exception from one sustained by history, and you can put an unresolved gap in front of an investment committee without using the uncertainty as cover for delay.

Four steps to the board

In week one the Investment Committee opens the process by confidential video, asking how you would build a growth plan the markets can deliver. Week three is a working session in which the Board Chair takes on a problem alongside you. In week five an executive panel, one leader from each function, questions you in person, and the full board concludes matters in the seventh week. Our written response follows each stage within two working days.