Interim Group Chief Executive Officer — Growth at Scale

Growth that is honest about its limits

Growth plans rarely fail because the ambition was wrong. They fail because the plan assumed capacity that was never there. The Interim Group Chief Executive Officer is appointed to set a plan that begins with its constraints rather than discovering them a year in, and to run it with full executive authority for 24 months, answering to the Investment Committee.

Where the binding constraints usually sit

In business and professional services the limit is seldom demand. It is the time of the most senior people, the depth of the delivery bench, how quickly new hires become productive, and how much change client-facing teams can absorb while still serving clients well. A credible plan names these limits, sizes them and sequences ambition around them. It also guards against the quieter error found in many firms: senior time tied up in work that earns little and that nobody has the standing to stop. Freeing that time is often the cheapest growth on offer.

Authority to stop as well as start

Within the frame the committee sets, the chief executive draws the line between group decisions and those left to local leadership, and defines the evidence on which money, people and control are governed across markets. Every inherited commitment is theirs to continue, suspend or close, and they block any growth plan that loads its expense or exposure onto a team that never took it on. They refuse investment where the value case leaves out take-up, operating dependencies or what happens if it goes wrong. The composition of the leadership team is theirs to approve, and so is the final word when the Investment Committee and the operating heads disagree.

The plan at three moments

Inside the first ninety days the group should have agreed a growth plan that states its operating constraints openly, with decision rights and local thresholds set. By about month nine every growth investment should have been through the same test of take-up, dependencies and downside, and the unsupported cases declined rather than parked. By month 24 the plan should be running under an approved leadership structure, with the routes for raising problems proven in use and every obligation met.

A record that includes ending something popular

Your leadership record includes a business of no less than $335 million in revenue, 1,200 people and four countries. Somewhere in that record is a popular commitment you ended, together with the evidence that justified it and what it freed up. Before letting an exception run on, you have found out which budget actually pays for it. Geographic expansion, platform pivots and joint ventures are the parts of your record the committee will examine most carefully: three routes to growth that each look cheaper on paper than in practice. It expects strategy formation at level 4, with level 3 expected in owning a P&L, judging risk and keeping an operating cadence. You are prepared to end a commitment while some country heads still object, and you want the whole term's accountability.

Meeting the Investment Committee, then the board

Week one belongs to the Investment Committee, in a private conversation by video. The Board Chair's working session in week three takes a growth problem apart with you. A fortnight on, in week five, you sit in person with a panel of executives drawn from each function, and the whole board meets you in the seventh week. Our verdict on each stage reaches you within two working days.