Interim Senior Vice President, Operations — Operating Renewal (Technology)

The calls that will define the seat

Most operating practices in a technology business began as somebody's good idea: a support routine invented in one market, a release checklist one team swears by, a vendor arrangement that solved a problem years ago. Deciding which should become the standard everywhere and which should quietly stop is harder than it sounds, because every practice has defenders and few have measured results.

The first judgement call concerns proof. Before ruling on any practice, you will choose what counts as evidence that it works, whether cost per outcome, reliability, customer effect or the effort it absorbs. That choice, made early and made once, decides where money and people go across all eight markets and which controls survive the rationalisation.

The second concerns the limits of local discretion. Across eight countries some variation is necessary. You will decide which thresholds remain in local hands, and you will have to say clearly when an exception protects customers and when it merely protects history.

The third concerns stopping. As an interim executive you rule on the fate of every inherited commitment. You can turn back a proposal that slides cost or risk onto another team without its agreement, and refuse money to a case that has not shown who will take the change up, which other operations it depends on and what happens if it disappoints. The hardest version is ending something popular, and you should expect to do it more than once.

The fourth concerns people: deciding how the leadership team is shaped and how problems find their way to you, and settling disagreements with operating leaders while the money is still unspent rather than after.

Twenty-four months from inventory to habit

In the first ninety days, working with the Regional President, you will build an inventory of operating practices and mark each one for scaling, a pause or retirement, with one person accountable for each verdict. By around month nine the practices marked for retirement should have stopped in fact, and those marked to scale should be running to a common standard with exceptions tracked. By month 24 the renewed operating model should simply be how work is done, with local leaders owning the criteria for scaling and retiring practices and a settled cadence reviewing them.

An operator who has ended things on purpose

Your operations leadership was exercised in technology or digital platforms, where the businesses you ran turned over $280 million or more, employed at least 600 people and traded in eight countries or more. The board weighs cost transformation, joint ventures and restructuring, each of which forces a decision about whose way of working survives. Operating cadence at level 4 matters most; operating model, network footprint, and quality and safety are each expected at level 3. Bring an example of a well-liked practice you shut down, what persuaded you, and where the freed capacity went. If retiring a practice its originators love would trouble you more than keeping one that does not work, the next 24 months will be hard going.

Twice with the Regional President, then wider

The Regional President sees you twice: first by confidential video in week one, and again in week three, when you take a set of practices and reason aloud about which to keep. Week five puts your proposals, in person, before a panel of executives who run the business's individual functions, and they will test them against operating reality. Week seven is a discussion with the board's directors, which concludes the process. A reply in writing follows every stage within 5 working days.