Interim Chief Transformation Officer — Value Agenda (Business Services)

Choosing, not just prioritising

Portfolio reviews often end in a ranked list with everything still on it. Ranking feels like choosing but rarely is; the initiative at number fourteen keeps its budget, its team and its claim on senior attention. The Interim Chief Transformation Officer is appointed for 18 months, reporting to the Regional President, to make choices that actually remove things: to say which initiatives will be funded, in what order, and which will not be funded at all. It is an executive appointment, and the authority is meant to be used.

The officer decides which portfolio decisions are taken centrally and which stay with local leaders below agreed limits, and defines the evidence every initiative must present to keep its funding. Commitments can be confirmed, held or ended. Initiatives that hand their cost or risk to another team without its agreement are stopped, and new money is refused to any case vague about its adopters, the work it leans on, or the consequences of failure. The officer settles the leadership and the escalation route, mediates between the Regional President and the heads of operations, and fixes when and how often the board checks progress and unresolved calls.

What makes this hard is that each initiative has a sponsor, and most sponsors are right about their initiative's merits. The officer's task is to judge them against each other and against the capacity available, then explain the result in terms the sponsors who lost out can accept, even if they do not like it. In a family-owned organisation, where long-standing relationships often shape what gets funded, that explanation has to be rigorous and humane at once.

Eighteen months from list to discipline

By day ninety the Regional President should have the portfolio choices in front of them, ranking each initiative and stating clearly what will not be funded. By about month nine the funded initiatives should be tracked against agreed evidence, with commitments that leave their costs ownerless stopped. By month 18 the executive team itself should be running a portfolio governance rhythm that tells the board what has moved, what has slipped and what is still undecided, so the choosing continues after the interim officer has gone.

The officer we need, and how we will meet

You have led a crisis response whose effects were felt by directors and front-line teams alike, and you have kept a business running while decision rights moved beneath it. The businesses you have led brought in $640 million or more, employed at least 2,500 people, and spanned four or more countries. Beyond crisis response, the Regional President will want to hear about your joint ventures and any turnaround you have led. Strategy formation at level 4 is the capability that makes choosing possible; at level 3, value case discipline, change adoption, and PMO governance make the choices stick. You stay answerable after a decision, including for closing transformation exceptions.

The process is short. The Regional President meets you first, privately over video, in week 1, then sits down with you again in the second week to work a portfolio case through together. Week three is a face-to-face meeting with the executive committee. Each meeting brings our response within three working days.