Interim Chief Executive Officer — Scale-up (Technology)

Small-looking decisions that are not

A two-year delivery programme produces a steady stream of decisions that look small and are not. Whether to keep funding a workstream that is late but nearly done. Whether a deadline is worth the quality it costs. Whether a local variation reflects a genuine market need or a preference history has protected. The interim chief executive will make these calls with executive authority, throughout the 24 months.

That authority is set out clearly. You will agree who decides what across the business, including the limits left to local leadership, and set the evidence used to govern funding, capacity and control. Commitments will be kept, paused or ended on your word, and plans that slide cost or risk onto others without anyone carrying it go no further. Investment that cannot explain its uptake, its reliance on other parts of the programme or its downside will be declined. You will settle who leads the programme and how problems climb, broker disputes with operating leaders, and fix how frequently the board looks at progress and unresolved calls.

A delivery programme on a technology platform also runs while customers keep using what already ships, so each decision to accelerate, hold or cut has to be weighed against what it does to a service people rely on today. In a state-linked organisation, accountability to public stakeholders sits alongside commercial performance, and a chief executive has to be able to explain both in the same breath.

Delivery, checked three times

Within the opening ninety days you and the chief executive should agree a clear allocation of decisions and a baseline for the delivery programme. Around month nine, delivery commitments should have been sorted into those that continue, those paused and those ended, each under a single accountable executive. By month 24 the delivery programme should be complete under a settled leadership structure, with the board reviewing progress and open decisions as part of its normal oversight.

A chief executive who counts a stopped commitment as a win

You have led a business through a delivery programme where the product could not stop shipping while authority moved. Your track record runs through businesses with at least $530 million in revenue and 800 people, active in two or more countries, and you can tell a local difference that customers truly require from one that survives only because nobody questioned it. You are comfortable if your first visible win is something you switched off rather than something you started, and you can defend that with evidence. Crisis response, platform pivot and integration experience are examined, with strategy formation at level 4 and, at level 3, owning a P&L, judging risk and running an operating cadence. You can lay out for the Group Chief Executive Officer what is still unresolved without letting it hold up a decision, and a country head's objection will not stop you halting a commitment.

Meeting the people who will decide

The first week holds an introductory call by video, in confidence, with the Group Chief Executive Officer. The third week is time with the Board Chair. In the fifth week you meet executive leaders from every function in person; the seventh week brings you before the full board of directors. Expect our written view within two working days of each.