Interim Regional Operations Director — Scale-Up

An operator who has seen practices travel badly

Somewhere in your past is a practice that thrived in one clinic or laboratory and failed when copied into the next, and you worked out why. Sometimes the original depended on one exceptional clinical leader; sometimes on a patient mix the second site did not have; sometimes it never really worked at all and simply had a persuasive champion. Your experience was gained in organisations of $775 million or more in revenue, employing at least 5,200 people across two or more countries, and you bring digital transformation, professionalisation and turnaround to the question of what deserves to spread.

The appointment calls for operating cadence at level 4, and operating model, network footprint and quality and safety at level 3. Baselines you set have stood up when a board committee questioned them and when clinicians and service staff questioned them harder. You can tell a practice that works because of its design from one that works because of the people who happen to run it, and you insist on knowing which before anything is copied. You build successors during the change, so the region keeps its new habits after you go.

Scaling calls in your hands

For 18 months the Interim Regional Operations Director holds executive authority and answers to the Board Operations Committee. You will decide how regional operating calls are taken and the limit of what a site or country head can settle unaided, and you will define the evidence bar for spending, capacity and control requests in each of the region's markets. You will choose which practices and commitments are scaled, which are paused and which end. Plans that would leave a clinic or partner carrying exposure it never accepted are rejected, and so are investment cases silent on adoption, on what the change leans on, or on its downside. Your approval is needed for who leads what and for how bad news travels, and you resolve disputes between the committee and site heads before money is spent.

You will need to make these calls without unanimous agreement from country leaders, and you will remain accountable for the outcome throughout the term.

From candidates to standards

Inside ninety days the committee should have agreed a short list of practices that are candidates for scaling, each paired with the evidence it must meet. Around month nine the chosen practices should be running as pilots in selected markets, and those that failed their evidence test should have been paused or retired without ceremony. By month 18 the proven practices should be the regional standard, owned by local leaders and reported to the Board Operations Committee as part of its normal business.

A short, direct process

The Board Operations Committee is first, in a private video conversation during week one. In week two the Board Chair puts a case in front of you. In week three the process ends with the directors, in person. Our written assessment follows each stage within two working days.