Interim Country Managing Director — Scale

Building the leadership a country business will need next

Leadership structures tend to be built for the organisation as it was. The Interim Country Managing Director, answerable to the Investment Committee for 24 months, is appointed to design and install the leadership structure for the organisation's next ownership chapter, and to run the country business with full executive authority while doing so. That combination matters. A structure designed by someone who is not also accountable for results tends to look elegant and fail in use.

The authority is broad. The Managing Director sets the country's thresholds for what local leaders decide, determines the evidence that decisions on funding, capacity and controls will use, and goes through commitments one by one to decide what carries on, what waits and what ends. They reject any proposal that passes cost or risk to others without a person answering for it, and decline investment that omits adoption, dependencies or the potential loss. They decide who leads which part of the country business and how problems are raised, broker agreement when the committee and operating leaders differ, and set how often the committee hears about progress, setbacks and choices still open. In a non-profit, mission and economics have to be held together in each of those calls, and the Managing Director should be comfortable explaining to a committee why a commitment that serves the mission may still need to stop.

Media economics add their own tension. Advertising yield can swing sharply while production costs stay fixed, so a structure that works in a strong year can buckle in a weak one. The leader we want has held a seat with exactly that exposure, and knows which local departures a market really demands and which persist only out of habit. Your experience should come from a business turning over at least $645 million, with 1,400 or more people, spanning eight or more countries. Restructuring, joint venture and succession experience will be examined closely, succession above all, because designing a structure is only half the job; the other half is having people ready to fill it. Strategy formation is sought at level 4; at level 3 we want P&L ownership, sound risk judgement and an operating cadence you have set yourself. You are comfortable if your first result is a programme you ended instead of one you launched, and you can back that with evidence.

From options to a settled structure

The first ninety days should set out the leadership structure options for the next ownership chapter, alongside an agreed division of decisions within the country business. Around month nine, the chosen structure should have been appointed and tested, with escalation and reporting to the committee in active use. By month 24, the country leadership structure should be settled, with successors ready to take over the seats the interim Managing Director has been holding together.

Structures that outlast their designer

We would rather hear how you have built structures that outlasted you than how you have filled a gap. The Investment Committee meets you first, one to one over video, in week one. Week three is a session with the Regional President; in week five a panel of executives covering each function meets you in person. In the seventh week the process ends before the full board. Each stage is followed by our written response within five working days.