Interim Transformation Executive — Integration (Energy and Utilities)

Neither a programme manager nor an auditor

Two kinds of appointment would be easy to confuse with this one. A programme manager tracks milestones and reports progress in the programme's own terms. An auditor arrives afterwards to check whether the reported numbers stand up. The Interim Transformation Executive is neither. You hold executive authority to decide what counts as a benefit, to insist that it shows up in the operating measures the business already lives by, and to act when it does not.

The distinction matters because transformation programmes naturally report in their own currency: activities completed, run-rates projected, savings committed. Operations reports in another: cost per job, availability, backlog, safety. A benefit that exists in the first currency and not in the second is, for practical purposes, not yet a benefit. Your job is to make the two currencies convertible, and to be honest when the exchange rate is poor.

Making benefits show up where the work happens

You will agree how programme decisions are taken, with clear thresholds for local leaders, and select the measures that steer spending, capacity and control across the business. You will decide whether each programme commitment continues, waits or ends, and block any plan that slides cost or risk onto a manager who never signed up for it. Value cases that assume people will simply adopt the change, or that ignore what it depends on and what it costs if it fails, will be refused. The leadership structure is yours to approve, as is the way problems are raised; you will also resolve conflicts between the Investment Committee and operating leaders, and run the board cadence on progress, exceptions and decisions still open.

Good practice here protects controls that work and exposes the cost of every exception, rather than tearing out process in the name of speed. It also leaves behind an operating bench that can keep measuring benefits honestly once the interim appointment ends.

A record built on baselines that held

During a regulatory remediation, you kept what the board heard in step with what the operating data showed. In organisations spanning two countries, with 600 or more people and revenue above $315 million, you have set benefit baselines that held up when an investment committee and the managers who run the assets both tried to knock them down. You can show the Investment Committee where the evidence is still thin and still press for a decision.

The experiences under closest examination are regulatory remediation, professionalisation and cost transformation. In capability terms, that means level 4 strategy formation, with PMO governance, change adoption and value case each at level 3. If you would hold back from stopping a commitment until every country leader agreed, or would leave local discretion alone to avoid a difficult conversation, the authority here will feel wrong. The same goes for anyone who wants a say in the outcome but not 24 months of answering for it.

Twenty-four months, and the seven weeks before them

The first ninety days should establish benefit baselines agreed with the Investment Committee, each tied to an operating measure and a person who answers for it. Around month nine, the benefits the programme claims should have been tested against day-to-day operating evidence, with workstreams that cannot show their value paused or brought to an end. By month 24, programme benefits should appear in routine operating reporting without special preparation, and the board should be reviewing exceptions and open decisions on a settled cadence.

The Investment Committee meets you first, privately over video, in the opening week. The Board Chair follows in week three with a working exercise; in week five you sit, in person, before executives who lead the separate functions; and week seven is the full board's turn. A response to each stage reaches you within two working days.