Interim Transformation Executive — Performance Renewal

A portfolio judged by what it stops

Most transformation portfolios grow by accretion. Each initiative arrives with a sponsor, a slide and a plausible benefit, and very few ever leave. The Interim Transformation Executive holds executive authority to change that: to write the value case the whole portfolio is measured against, and to set the stop rules that decide when an initiative has had its chance. Reporting to the Board Strategy Committee, you will name the measures that decide where money, people and control effort go across the portfolio. Each inherited initiative gets a verdict from you, whether to continue, park or close it, and an investment case that names no user, no dependency and no plan for disappointment does not get funded. Where a proposal quietly slides its cost or exposure onto someone else's budget, you can stop it. You also approve the leadership structure that will run the portfolio, and you settle disputes between the committee and the people running stores and channels before money is spent rather than after.

In a consumer and retail business that authority is tested quickly. Initiatives that touch stores, digital channels and distribution rarely sit inside one budget, so a credible value case follows both the benefit and the cost through every function they pass. A stop rule is only as good as its trigger: agreed in advance, measured on data the sponsor cannot reinterpret, and applied even when the initiative is popular with the people it was built for.

Twenty-four months, read in sequence

The first ninety days should close with the committee holding a single agreed value case, the stop rules that go with it and one accountable executive for every live initiative. Nothing should be in flight that nobody answers for. Around month nine the inherited portfolio should have been sorted, each initiative confirmed, held or closed on stated evidence, and the capacity released by closures visibly redirected to the work the value case favours. By month 24 the stop rules should have been used more than once and survived the argument, the value claimed should be evidenced in numbers the finance team recognises, and the leadership structure you approved should be running the portfolio without needing you in the room.

An executive who has ended popular work

You have run or rescued transformation in a business turning over $620 million or more, with 2,000 people across five countries, ideally with consumer, retail or distribution decisions you personally owned. Somewhere in your record is a well-liked programme you shut down, along with the evidence that justified closing it and the capacity that closure released. You know the difference between a store or channel practice a market truly needs and one that survives because no one has questioned it, and you can put an open gap in front of a committee while still moving the decision forward. The committee will probe succession, integration and value creation hardest; it wants strategy formation at level 4 and, one step below at level 3, PMO governance, change adoption and the value case itself. Anyone who waits for each market to sign off before halting an initiative, or who prefers influence to owning the portfolio's outcome across all 24 months, will find the seat frustrating.

Stop rules under questioning

Week one opens confidentially, over video, with the Board Strategy Committee, centred on how you would build the value case and what would trigger a stop. Two weeks later, in week three, you spend a working morning with the Risk Committee Chair, pressure-testing those rules against the risks they create as well as the ones they remove. In the fifth week you sit face to face with the executives who lead each function, whose own initiatives your rules will judge. Week seven belongs to the directors, meeting you as one board. A written note on each stage reaches you within four working days.