Interim Chief Business Officer — Recovery

Content, distribution and markets under one agenda

Media organisations often run on a collection of plans: one for content, one for distribution, one for commercial partnerships, one for each market. Each makes sense alone. Together they compete for the same talent, the same rights budgets and the same audience attention. The Interim Chief Business Officer, answerable to the Board Chair for 24 months, is appointed to turn those plans into one operating agenda that someone answers for.

Executive authority over the agenda

The CBO sets who decides what, with clear thresholds for what stays with local leadership, and decides what evidence underpins decisions on money, people and controls. They make the call on each inherited commitment: keep it, pause it or end it. They block proposals that drop cost or risk on someone who never accepted it, and decline investment cases that lack a view of audience uptake, what they rely on or what they risk. They approve who leads which part of the business and how problems are raised, and settle it when the Board Chair and the people running content and markets disagree.

Public purpose, commercial discipline

An organisation linked to the state answers to more than one kind of stakeholder. A good CBO keeps public-service commitments visible in the agenda rather than treating them as a cost to be squeezed, while still insisting that each commercial line shows its economics, on the same evidence the board sees. The hard part is sequencing: deciding which commitment yields when a public obligation and a commercial deadline land in the same month, and saying so to the board before the clash rather than after it.

Across the two years

By the time the first ninety days are up, the separate business plans should be consolidated into one operating agenda, each part led by someone accountable and the division of decisions agreed with the Board Chair. By around month nine, competing content and distribution commitments should have been resolved and the agenda tracked through a single operating rhythm. By month 24, one accountable agenda should be in place, with P&L ownership and the handling of escalations held by the leadership team rather than by the interim CBO.

A record built across borders

Three or more countries, revenue of $250 million or more and 700 or more people mark the minimum size of the businesses you have led, and you can separate necessary local judgement from variation protected by habit. Turnaround, professionalisation and regulatory remediation are the experiences we will examine, the last because a state-linked business lives closer to its regulators than most. Strategy formation at level 4 matters most; P&L ownership, setting the operating cadence and risk judgement are each needed at level 3. You have committed to a call you could reverse when the evidence was thin, and firmed it as the picture cleared; and you grow successors during the change, so the new model keeps working after you leave.

Four meetings, from private to full board

It starts in the first week with the Board Chair, one to one over video. In week three the Regional President tests with you how one agenda would work across content and markets. In week five, executives leading each function meet you in person as a panel, and the seventh week is your session with the full board. Our written response follows each stage within five working days.