Interim Chief Integration Officer — Value Agenda (Energy and Utilities)

A year that ends with one picture, not three

An integration squeezed into one year leaves no room for a separate plan; how the twelve months are ordered is the plan. Over the opening ninety days, you and the Investment Committee should agree the rules for integration decisions and attach every assumption in the deal thesis to a named operating leader who answers for it. That linkage is the heart of the work: a thesis assumption without an operating owner is a hope rather than a plan. Around month nine, integration commitments should have been tested against the thesis, and those that threaten the continuity of day-to-day operations paused or redesigned rather than pushed through on momentum. By month 12, the thesis, the integration plan and operating continuity should be reported as a single picture, with the Investment Committee resolving whatever exceptions remain.

The authority behind that year

The Interim Chief Integration Officer holds executive authority for the integration. You will write the rules for integration decisions, mark the limits within which site and regional managers may act alone, and set the measures by which spending, capacity and control are judged. Each integration commitment will get your verdict to continue, pause or close, and any proposal that dumps cost or risk on a team without its agreement will stop with you. Investment cases that ignore adoption, operating dependencies or downside will be turned down. You will approve who leads what beneath you and how problems are raised, and you will broker any clash between the Investment Committee and the people running operations before money leaves the account.

The particular tension of integration is that the people who wrote the thesis and the people who keep services running rarely sit in the same room, and they measure success in different units. One talks about synergies and timing; the other talks about outages, crews and regulatory obligations. Your value lies in translating between them, and in being willing to tell the committee that a thesis benefit is not worth the continuity risk it carries. In utility services, a saving that puts supply at risk is not a saving.

The integrator the committee needs

You have led a geographic expansion whose effects were felt as much in the boardroom as among the field crews. The organisations concerned operated in seven countries, employed 1,300 people or more and earned at least $620 million. In earlier strategy and transformation roles you refused to let an exception run on until someone had agreed to carry its cost, and you accept that your first win here could well be an integration commitment halted rather than a new one begun. You can defend that kind of success with evidence, and you can explain to the Investment Committee what is still unresolved without using uncertainty as a reason to delay.

The selection will put most weight on three things you have done: geographic expansion, integration and professionalisation. Strategy formation should be at level 4; PMO governance, value case and change adoption at level 3. If you would need unanimous consent from country leaders before halting a commitment, or would want the influence of the post without twelve months of accountability for the result, the role will not suit you.

From the Investment Committee to the directors

You will speak first with the Investment Committee about the mandate, by video and in confidence, during the opening week. Week three is given to the Risk Committee Chair, focusing on where integration and continuity risk meet. Week five is in person, with executives representing each function of the business, and the seventh week is your session with the full board. After every stage, allow four working days for our answer.