Interim Regional President — Integration (Healthcare)

Twelve months, counted backwards

The test of this appointment arrives at month 12. By then the integration and delivery programme should be closed, not extended; the regional leadership structure should be working as designed; and the board should be receiving progress, exceptions and open decisions on a rhythm that does not depend on the interim president being present.

Working back from that, month nine is the point at which every inherited integration commitment has been sorted: carried on, paused or closed, with each delivery milestone tied to a regional leader who will answer for it. If that sorting has not happened by month nine, there is not enough time left to finish well.

And the first ninety days are where the shape is set. Before day ninety, the programme's scope should be agreed across the region, each delivery owner confirmed, and a written route in use for carrying problems from service heads to the Board Chair and back with an answer.

The authority behind those dates

An Interim Regional President decides; this is not a seat for recommendations. Answering to the Board Chair, you will settle how regional decisions are made and how far site and country heads may go before a decision has to come to you. You will determine the evidence on which investment, capacity and control decisions are made across markets. Every inherited integration commitment gets your verdict to proceed, hold or close, and any plan that leaves exposure without a named holder is stopped. Investment cases that do not address adoption, dependencies and the downside will be declined. The regional leadership team is yours to approve; so is settling disagreements between the Board Chair and the heads of services, and so is the rhythm on which the board is reported to through all 12 months.

In a non-profit healthcare organisation, integration carries an extra obligation. Funders, regulators and the communities served all expect continuity of care while the organisation reorganises itself, so the programme is judged as much by what it did not disrupt as by what it changed.

A leader who makes reversible decisions well

You have led through a carve-out and an integration, and you have led the professionalisation of management in an organisation that needed it. None of the organisations concerned was smaller than $755 million in revenue or 4,800 people, and each reached across three or more countries. Strategy formation at level 4 is the lead requirement; P&L ownership, operating cadence and risk judgement follow at level 3.

Most important is a particular discipline: turning incomplete operating evidence into a decision that can be reversed, then tightening it as the facts improve. Integration rarely offers complete information, and a leader who waits for it misses the year. Your first real win here might be a programme you halted, not one you began, and you can show the evidence for it. When something is still unknown you tell the Board Chair so directly, and the unknown does not become your excuse for waiting. Someone who needs every country head to agree before a commitment is halted, or who wants influence without staying answerable for all 12 months, should not apply.

Meeting the Board Chair first

In week one the Board Chair will talk to you privately over video. By week three you are working alongside the Risk Committee Chair on how delivery and risk can be held together. In week five you meet, face to face, executives who between them lead each function; in week seven the directors conclude the process. Within four working days of each meeting you will receive our assessment in writing.