Interim Chief Growth and Partnerships Officer — Delivery

Selling only what operations can deliver

A growth officer is usually measured on what gets sold. This interim appointment is measured on whether what gets sold can be delivered. With executive authority for the full term, the interim will align commercial commitments with operating capacity and, where they cannot be aligned, withdraw the promise rather than stretch the operation.

The authority is broad. You will draw up which commercial decisions are taken centrally and how far local leaders may commit on their own, and decide the evidence a request for funding, capacity or control must bring. Every commitment will continue, wait or close on your ruling, and anything that moves cost or risk onto others without a person owning it is blocked. Investment that does not say who will adopt the offer, what it leans on in operations and what failure would cost will be declined. You will decide who leads and how issues climb, broker disputes with operating leaders, and fix how frequently the board looks at progress, exceptions and the calls still pending.

What makes this hard in any technology business is that promises outrun the product in quiet ways: a bespoke integration agreed to close a deal, a service level written into one contract and not the next, a partnership that commits engineering time nobody scheduled. A strong growth officer treats each of these as a commitment with a cost, tests it against operating capacity before signing, and is willing to make a reversible decision on incomplete evidence, then tighten it as the facts arrive. The best also rebuild commercial capacity after saying no, so that the business ends up better aimed rather than merely smaller.

Twenty-four months of promises that hold

The first ninety days are for agreeing, with the Regional President, an allocation of commercial decisions that tests every commitment against operating capacity. By month nine, any promise the operation cannot keep should be on hold or withdrawn, and each one that remains should have an accountable owner. At month 24 sales and delivery planning should run in one cadence, reported to the board alongside open decisions and exceptions.

The growth leader, and how you will be met

In technology and digital platforms you have made commercial calls where every week of hesitation had a price someone could count. The organisations were of real size: $435 million or more in revenue, 700 or more people, at least four countries. You have turned down funding for a proposal that could not say who would adopt it or what it might lose, then rebuilt the capacity the business needed. Carve-out, joint venture and turnaround experience are examined, with commercial economics at level 4 and, at level 3, revenue architecture, partner channels, and the management of a board and its stakeholders. You can walk the Regional President through an unresolved gap and still land on a decision, and you will stop a commitment even when a country head is still arguing for it.

The Regional President is your first meeting, a private video call at the start of week one. In the third week you spend time with the Audit Committee Chair. The fifth week is an in-person panel of senior executives representing the functions; the seventh week is a meeting with the full board of directors. Whatever the outcome of a stage, you will have it in writing within three working days.