Interim Regional Strategy Director — Renewal

Strategy as a sequence, not a list

Strategic intent is usually expressed as a set of things to be true in a few years. What it rarely says is the order in which they should become true, or how much change the business can take at once. That missing sequence is where many strategies fail: everything starts together, everything competes for the same people, and the operation that has to keep serving clients is asked to absorb more than it can. The Interim Regional Strategy Director is appointed for 24 months, reporting to the Investment Committee, to turn the region's intent into a sequence the business can actually absorb, and to adjust that sequence as evidence arrives.

Good sequencing rests on a few disciplines. It identifies the changes that unlock others and puts them first. It respects the limits of the people who carry most of the change, typically a small group of senior leaders and the teams closest to clients. It makes early steps reversible where possible, so that the later ones can be reordered without waste. And it treats a step deliberately delayed as a decision, not a failure.

The role carries executive authority to make that happen. The director decides which steps in the sequence are set regionally and which local leaders may adjust within agreed thresholds, and chooses the evidence that will show whether the business is ready for the next step. Commitments can be brought forward, held back or ended. A proposal that jumps the queue by passing its cost or risk to someone else is stopped, and investment is declined where the case does not show who will use it, what must already be in place, or what could go wrong. The director settles the leadership line-up and the escalation route, and smooths out disagreements between the Investment Committee and operating leaders. In a family-owned organisation, where strategy often reflects long horizons and closely held values, the director's task is to honour that intent while being candid about pace.

Two years from intent to delivery

The first ninety days should translate regional strategic intent into a sequenced plan, with the order of commitments and the local thresholds agreed. Around month nine the sequence should be tested against what the business can actually absorb, and later steps reordered where the evidence calls for it. By month 24 the regional strategy should have been delivered in its agreed sequence, with a successor bench ready to carry the next phase.

The strategist sought, and the way in

Your understanding of the sector was earned in your own decisions, including a commitment you brought to an end before it caused damage. Your leadership roles have included businesses of $735 million or more, with 2,700 or more people across five or more countries, and you have acted on partial operating evidence with a step you could undo, firming it up as the picture cleared. A platform pivot, succession and scale-up are the experiences under scrutiny. Sequencing is applied strategy, so strategy formation at level 4 comes first; level 3 in value case discipline, driving adoption and PMO governance then turns the order into delivery. You protect useful controls and expose the cost of each exception.

The Investment Committee meets you first, privately over video, in week 1; the Risk Committee Chair follows in the third week with a sequencing problem. In week five a panel of executives, one from each function, sees you in person, and in week seven you meet the full board. You will hear how each went within four working days.