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Mandate overview
Key facts for this role. Fields left blank in Studio are omitted here.
- Job Title
- Chief-of-staff to regional chair (CIO calibre) — Energy · Australia
- Job Location
- Australia · Canada / Middle East
- Experience Range
- 12–18 years
- Industry
- Energy & Natural Resources
- Job Function
- CIO
Position overview
Gladwin International Leadership Advisors is representing a confidential organisation in Energy & Natural Resources on a senior CIO leadership mandate anchored in Australia. The remit explicitly spans Canada, Middle East, Singapore.
This is a strategic transformation mandate at CXO level — equal parts operating leadership, change orchestration, and investor / board narrative ownership.
The role suits an operator who treats integration, culture, and capital allocation as one system — not three separate programmes.
Context you will inherit
- Market & sector: Energy transition leadership — finding executives who can credibly lead both the traditional energy business and new clean energy build-out simultaneously
- Geographic spine: Primary hub Australia with explicit corridor responsibility across Canada, Middle East, Singapore.
- Organisation stage: Working capital, liquidity, and funding mix are under scrutiny alongside headline revenue growth.
- Stakeholders: Stakeholders span board or regional executive committee, global functional heads, JV partners, and strategic account buyers.
- Secondary lens: Utility transformation — moving state DISCOMs and private utilities from loss-making distribution operations to efficient, digital-first consumer energy service companies
The mandate (12–24 month arc)
- Service catalogue: Clear offerings, owners, and SLAs — reduce bespoke IT arrangements that don’t scale.
- Major incident command: Practised playbooks, comms templates, and executive briefing discipline.
- Technical debt register: Visible to leadership; fund pay-down in proportion to risk and customer impact.
- License optimisation: True-up discipline and shelf-ware elimination — partner with procurement.
- Regulatory projects: Ring-fence capacity for supervisor-driven change without starving business roadmap.
- Geographic IT: Harmonise standards across hubs while respecting data residency and local support needs.
Responsibilities (representative)
- Own IT service delivery, run cost, and major business system programmes.
- Partner with business on digital initiatives — clear roles vs. product/engineering where split.
- Lead infrastructure, cloud, and workplace technology strategy.
- Co-own cyber resilience with CISO; prioritise by business criticality.
- Rationalise application portfolio — retire, replace, or integrate duplicates.
Leadership profile
- Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
- Judgment: High signal-to-noise under pressure; ethical clarity; willingness to halt initiatives that break risk appetite.
- Business systems: Large programme delivery — ERP, core platforms, or digital workplace at scale.
- Education: Strong undergraduate grounding; MBA / advanced degree / professional qualification common at this level.
- Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from Australia with regular engagement across Canada, Middle East.
Team & culture
You inherit a mixed-tenure team — pockets of excellence beside roles that need upgrade. The mandate is to raise the bar without demoralising the organisation: clear standards, fair process, and visible wins that prove the new pace is achievable.
Success measures (examples)
- Financial: Revenue and margin vs. plan; cash conversion; capital efficiency.
- Strategic: Share in priority segments; customer retention in anchor accounts; milestone delivery on transformation.
- People: Engagement trends; regrettable attrition in critical roles; diversity of succession slate.
- Risk: Audit and regulatory outcomes; conduct events; operational resilience metrics.
First 90 days (orientation arc)
- Days 1–30: Shadow key customer journeys or operations — paper over slides where reality diverges.
- Days 30–60: Cut or pause low-value projects freeing capacity for strategic work.
- Days 60–90: Publish first integrated forecast or plan under your ownership — even if directional.
- Build trust with risk, legal, and audit through transparency — surprises erode licence to move fast.
- Pick one cultural signal (e.g. meeting hygiene, promotion criteria) and model it relentlessly.
Stakeholder map (illustrative)
- Internal: Matrix of global product houses and local P&L; tension is normal — your role is to broker trade-offs with data.
- External: Customers who influence reference deals; government or industry bodies in regulated sectors.
- Capital providers: Banks, sponsors, or minority investors — each needs a slightly different narrative on risk.
Travel & mobility
Role requires face-to-face presence in the primary hub with regular regional travel; remote-only not viable.
Compensation
Competitive CIO compensation for Energy & Natural Resources leadership: cash, incentive, benefits, and potential equity or carry (case-dependent). Discussed with finalists only.
Application process
Gladwin International is managing this search confidentially. Shortlisted candidates will engage in structured conversations with the firm’s partners before client introduction. Please apply through the careers portal with a concise note on why this geography, sector, and remit fit your trajectory.
We review every submission personally; unsolicited outreach to the end client is discouraged and may disqualify candidacy.
Reference: energy-natural-resources · CIO · Australia · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors