Interim Country Head of Finance — Performance Renewal

Cash first, then the plan

Planning cycles tend to inherit the habits of the year before. If cash ownership is vague and performance reviews run late, the next plan will be built on the same soft ground. The Interim Country Head of Finance has 12 months to change that, so that when the next planning cycle begins, the country's numbers rest on a calendar people keep, cash that someone owns and a performance baseline nobody disputes.

The seat carries executive authority, under the Group Chief Financial Officer. The appointee agrees how country finance decisions are made and the limits local leadership retains, and fixes the numbers on which every spending, capacity and control decision in the country must rest. Inherited commitments will be kept, held or ended on their merits. Where a proposal leaves a cost or a risk with nobody answerable for it, it will not proceed, and an investment case that has not thought through take-up, the things it hinges on and its worst plausible outcome will be refused. The head of finance approves the finance leadership structure and the point at which an issue must come to group finance, and brokers any dispute between the Group Chief Financial Officer and operating leaders while the money is still uncommitted. The close and forecast calendar is a quiet but central instrument here: discipline in cash and performance rarely survives a calendar that slips.

Calendar, cadence, then the next plan

Cash ownership, an agreed performance baseline and a close and forecast calendar that the Group Chief Financial Officer and country leaders have signed up to should all be in place by the time the first ninety days have run. By around month nine, cash and performance reviews should be running to that calendar without reminders, inherited commitments should have been ruled on, and every exception should have someone answerable for it. At month 12 the next planning cycle should be built on the renewed discipline rather than on last year's assumptions, and a finance successor should be ready to carry it.

A finance head with seven countries behind them, and how we will meet

The finance functions you have led covered seven countries, 800 people and revenue of $275 million or more. That breadth matters more than size in this seat: it teaches you which cash habits are national necessity and which are just habit. Your experience of an ESG transition, a platform pivot and professionalisation will each be examined; a platform pivot in particular tests whether you can keep cash and performance reporting reliable while the systems underneath change. Capital allocation is required at level 4. Below it, level 3 is the bar for controls and reporting, for FP&A forecasting and for risk judgement. Your record should include a commitment nobody would stand behind that you ended before it cost real money, and a funding request you turned down because no one could say who would use the change or what failure would look like, followed by the work of rebuilding finance capacity to do it properly. You can set out for the Group Chief Financial Officer what is still open without burying it in qualifications.

There are four stages. The first, in week one, is a video discussion, in confidence, with the Group Chief Financial Officer about the cash and performance brief. By week three you are with the Audit Committee Chair, concentrating on the close, the forecast and the controls around both. In week five an executive panel drawn from every function meets you in person, and the board's directors see you in week seven. Each stage gets a reply from us in writing within three working days.