Interim Senior Vice President — Enterprise Transformation (Business Services)

Not a programme manager, and not a sponsor in name only

Transformation portfolios usually have plenty of people who track initiatives and plenty who champion them. What they often lack is someone with the authority to say which initiatives are worth their cost and the standing to end the ones that are not. The Interim Senior Vice President, Enterprise Transformation is that person. This is an executive appointment for 24 months, reporting to the Regional President, and its work is measured less by what it launches than by the discipline it brings to what continues.

Value cases that can be held to account, and stop rules agreed in advance

A value case worth the name states what will change, for whom, by when, and how anyone will know. It names who will use the result and what it depends on, and it is honest about the downside. Most cases fail the second half of that test: they describe benefits generously and adoption vaguely. The senior vice president's first contribution is to insist on cases that can actually be checked.

Stop rules are the counterpart. They are agreed before an initiative starts, while people can still be objective about it: if adoption falls below this level by that date, or a critical dependency is not met, the initiative pauses or ends. Agreeing them early turns a painful argument later into the routine application of a decision already taken.

Within that discipline the senior vice president holds real authority. They set how transformation decisions are allocated and which limits local leaders retain, and select the evidence on which funding, delivery capacity and controls are judged across markets. Which initiatives proceed, pause or end is their call; they stop any proposal that offloads its expense onto a unit that never agreed, and decline investment where the value case is thin on its adopters, its dependencies or its risks. They choose who leads the transformation and how issues escalate, and adjudicate between the Regional President and operating leaders.

The leader who can apply a stop rule to a popular initiative

Your record spans seven or more countries and organisations with revenue of $410 million or above and 1,700 or more people, and in it evidence has repeatedly redirected where people, money and senior time went. Joint ventures, succession and geographic expansion are the parts of your history the Regional President will press hardest. Value case discipline at level 3 is central, since everything in this seat rests on cases that can be checked; it sits alongside strategy formation at level 4, with level 3 also expected in driving adoption of change and in governing the PMO. Where local discretion helps, you keep it; where it does not, you remove it and record why.

The portfolio over two years, and how selection runs

In the first ninety days every initiative in the portfolio should carry an agreed value case and stop rules, each with an accountable owner. Around month nine those rules should be in use, with initiatives paused or ended where adoption or dependencies fall short of the case. By month 24 the portfolio should be governed by its value cases and stop rules as a matter of course, under an approved escalation route.

Selection begins in week one with a confidential conversation over video with the Regional President. A working session with the Audit Committee Chair on a transformation problem follows in week three. In week five a panel of executives drawn one from each function meets you in person, and in week seven the directors see you as a full board. We aim to respond within three working days of each stage.