Interim Chief Executive Officer — Operating Agenda

One agenda, one chief executive, every market

A collection of local plans can each be sensible and still add up to nothing coherent. Market leaders optimise for the customers, assets and regulators in front of them, which is their job. The chief executive's job is to turn those plans into one operating agenda the board can hold to account: a short list of priorities, a clear statement of who decides what, and a rhythm in which progress and problems are seen together. This interim appointment is for a leader who will do that with full executive authority, reporting to the Board of Directors, for 24 months.

The powers are those of a chief executive. You will set the group's decision rules, including what market heads may decide unaided, and determine the basis on which investment, operating capacity and controls are judged across markets. Every inherited commitment continues or stops on your decision. You will block proposals that quietly move cost or risk away from anyone who answers for it, and decline investment cases that leave out take-up, dependencies on other projects or downside. You will approve the leadership team and the route by which issues reach the top, and settle disagreements between directors and market heads while resources are still uncommitted.

Doing this in logistics and infrastructure carries a particular discipline. Networks are interdependent: a decision in one market about a hub, a route or a service level can cost another market capacity it was counting on. A single agenda has to make those trade-offs visible and decided, not negotiated bilaterally between country heads. It also has to distinguish local variation that serves customers from variation that persists because nobody has removed it.

The board is looking for someone who has done this in a business with revenue of $515 million or more, 2,900 or more people and a presence in six countries or more. Your experience of ESG transition, joint ventures and carve-outs will be weighed; each forces a leader to redraw who decides what while the business keeps running. Strategy formation is expected at level 4, and level 3 in P&L ownership, in risk judgement and in setting an operating cadence. You have acted on partial operating data with a decision you could reverse, firmed it up as the picture cleared, and grown successors during the change so the outcome holds after you leave.

Agenda, sorting, evidence

Within ninety days, a single operating agenda should be agreed with the board, with decision rights, local thresholds and accountable owners in place. Around month nine, inherited commitments should have been sorted into those that go on, pause or stop, and the leadership team should be working to the agenda rather than around it. By month 24 the agenda should be delivering value the board can evidence, and a chief executive succession plan should be ready for the board to consider.

Before you step forward, and the steps themselves

If you would hold a stop decision until each national head consents, or want the influence of the role without answering for its 24-month result, this is not your seat. Otherwise, the Board of Directors holds the first conversation, confidentially over video, in week one. The Regional President follows in the third week with a working exercise on one market's plan. Week five is spent in person with executives who each lead a function, and in week seven you return to the board's directors. We write to you within five working days after each stage.