Interim Country Managing Director — Value Agenda (Real Estate)

Development, assets and tenants on one page

In property businesses, development teams plan for what will be built, asset managers for what is held, and leasing or tenant teams for who occupies it. Each plan can be sound and the three can still contradict one another. The Interim Country Managing Director, who answers to the Board Chair for 24 months, is appointed to unite them in one operating agenda that someone is accountable for.

The powers that come with the seat

The Managing Director holds executive authority. They set the country's thresholds for what local leaders decide and choose the evidence for governing development capital, asset capacity and controls. They sort the commitments in flight into those that go on, those that wait and those that end. They stop any proposal whose cost or risk would fall on a party that never took it on, decline investment that lacks a view of tenant demand, dependencies or the downside, confirm who leads development, asset and tenant work and how problems are raised, and settle differences between operating leaders and the Board Chair.

Where the trade-offs bite

When financing costs move faster than rents, development assumptions made a year earlier can stop working while still looking fine on paper. A capable Managing Director retests those assumptions before approving the next phase, and is willing to delay a scheme that no longer pays rather than let momentum carry it. The same discipline applies in the other direction: an asset plan that promises tenants better service has to show who pays for it.

Milestones for one property agenda

Ninety days in, development, asset and tenant plans should be combined into one agenda, each part led by someone accountable and the split of decisions agreed. Around month nine, competing development and asset commitments should have been settled, with the agenda reported to the Board Chair on a single rhythm. By month 24, one property operating agenda should be owned by accountable leaders, with value evidenced across development, asset and tenant work.

A general manager who has pivoted before

You have carried a platform pivot felt by directors and by on-site teams alike, in a business of no less than $365 million in revenue and 1,400 people, spread across four or more countries. Succession and culture reset complete the experiences we will explore, the latter because development, asset and tenant teams often have very different working cultures. Strategy formation is the level 4 capability; P&L ownership, setting the operating cadence and risk judgement are wanted at level 3. A board chair and the people running development, asset and tenant work have each challenged your baselines without breaking them. You have refused funding when take-up and downside were not named, and then rebuilt the capability the business needed.

The four stages

The process starts in week one, privately and over video, with the Board Chair. The Audit Committee Chair takes the third week; executives from each function meet you in person in the fifth; and in the seventh week you sit with the full board. We respond to each stage in writing within three working days.