Interim Chief Operating Officer — Controls (Logistics and Infrastructure)

Not a procurement clean-up, and not a site audit

A reader skimming this brief might mistake it for a supplier renegotiation or a round of site inspections. It is neither. The Interim Chief Operating Officer, who answers to the Regional President, is there to make suppliers and sites answer for the outcome the customer actually receives, end to end, rather than for their own slice of it. A supplier can hit every contractual measure while the shipment still arrives late; a site can post excellent local numbers while pushing its problems to the next node. Changing that is an exercise of executive authority over 12 months, and it needs someone prepared to use it.

Where the authority is used

The COO fixes the limits inside which local leaders act alone, and decides what proof is required before money, site capacity or supplier controls change in any market. They decide which inherited commitments go forward and which do not. Operating proposals that push cost or risk onto another party without its agreement are blocked, and so are investment cases that cannot name the teams expected to adopt the change, what it depends on and how bad the downside could be. They decide who leads what, and settle disagreements between the Regional President and operating leaders before resources move.

Much of the practical work is contractual and procedural: rewriting outcome measures so that a supplier's success and the customer's are the same thing, building site reviews around those measures, and making exceptions visible with their cost attached. Useful controls should survive the reset; the point is to show what each exception costs, not to replace judgement with paperwork.

An operator who has made accountability contractual

The operations you have run were no smaller than $830 million in revenue and 4,100 people, and reached across four countries or more. Your record includes regulatory remediation, where authority, funding and operating rhythm had to change while the business kept trading; a platform pivot; and the professionalisation of how operations are managed. We will look for operating cadence at level 4, and for operating model, network footprint and quality and safety, each at level 3. Above all we want to hear of data you produced that moved people, money or management attention somewhere else, and of a time you told a Regional President frankly what was still unknown and still made the call on time. You should leave behind a stronger operating bench than you found.

The year's milestones, and how we meet

Within the first ninety days, the Regional President and the COO should have agreed end-to-end outcome measures, who answers for each major supplier and site, and who decides what across operations. Around month nine, supplier and site performance should be reviewed against those outcomes as routine, with exceptions climbing through a route that has already been tested. By month 12, end-to-end accountability should be written into supplier terms and site reviews, and the controls should be in a state the leadership team can run without the interim COO.

Week one is a confidential conversation over video with the Regional President. The Board Chair follows in week three for a hands-on session on how supplier and site outcomes should reach the board. In the fifth week a panel of executives, each running a different function, questions you face to face; the seventh week puts you before the full board. Our written view of each stage reaches you within two working days.