Interim Regional Operations Director — Controls

When reliability and volume pull apart

Growth is easier to approve than reliability. A new contract, a new line or a new market brings visible revenue; a reliability programme brings fewer breakdowns that nobody notices. The Interim Regional Operations Director will have to make the less visible case, and make it stick, reporting to the Country Managing Director with executive authority for 18 months.

That will mean calls such as these. Should a growth commitment wait because the plants that would serve it cannot yet run reliably? Should automation capital be released when there is no comparable evidence of adoption elsewhere? Is a site's exception from the regional standard a matter of genuine local conditions or simply custom? You will answer them as an executive. You will set how regional calls are made, including what stays within a site head's gift, and lay down the proof needed before spending, capacity or controls change. Every commitment gets your verdict to proceed, wait or stop, and plans that leave exposure with no one answerable are halted. Investment that does not cover adoption, dependencies or the downside will be declined. The leadership structure is yours to approve, together with the lines along which concerns travel upward, and you will resolve conflicts between the Country Managing Director and operating leaders.

Reliability first, then growth

The first ninety days should establish a reliability baseline and agreed control points across regional operations, with the thresholds held locally recorded. By month nine the reliability gaps should be ranked by consequence, and growth commitments paused wherever reliability cannot yet support them. By month 18 the regional operations should be reliable enough for further growth, with that reliability evidenced to the investment committee rather than asserted.

In a cooperative or mutual, the case for patience has a natural audience. Members benefit from an enterprise that grows on solid ground, and the director should be able to explain the trade-off in those terms.

A director with integration scars

During buy-side M&A you reset who could decide, how money was released and how often performance was reviewed, and you have led through a platform pivot and a turnaround, across organisations of $465 million or more in revenue, employing at least 1,400 people in eight or more countries. The seat asks for operating cadence at level 4, and operating model, network footprint and quality and safety at level 3. You turn incomplete operating evidence into a decision you can reverse, and tighten it as facts improve. You can tell where a site's own judgement should stand and where it should give way, and you put that line in writing. You can set out an open gap for a country managing director without using uncertainty as delay. If ending a commitment would need every country head on board first, or you want influence without 18 months of accountability, this is not the right seat.

The selection conversations

The Country Managing Director meets you first, by video and in confidence, during week one. In week two the Regional President hands you a case to work through. The investment committee sees you in person in week three. Each stage is followed within five working days by our assessment in writing.