A lot of the senior roles we fill in Australia come with a second address attached.
The operation might be a processing plant in the Goldfields or a major project on the east coast. The people who approve the budget, set the strategy and sign off the appointment sit somewhere else. That could be Europe, India, North America, or another state.
The reverse is just as common. Australian contractors and engineering firms growing offshore need leaders in the Americas, Europe or Asia who report back to Brisbane or Perth.
It’s the same problem from the other end. And it’s one of the easiest senior appointments to get wrong.
Why these hires go wrong
The brief usually gets written in one place. Either head office writes it and the local reality gets lost, or the local team writes it, and head office’s expectations go unsaid. Either way, half the job is missing before the search starts.
Decision rights are rarely spelled out. Can the new GM approve a variation, change a supplier or restructure a team without a call to head office? Nobody says. The leader works it out in the first six months, often the hard way.
Assessment focuses on what’s easy to test. Technical depth, project history and safety record all matter, and they’re all fairly simple to check. Far fewer processes test whether someone can manage upward across a culture, a language and a time zone. That’s often where these appointments fall over.
The candidate isn’t told what the job really feels like. Late calls with Europe. Early ones with the Americas. Board papers that need to work in two business cultures. Strong people walk away in year one because nobody described that before they signed.
What tends to work
Write the brief with both sides in the room. We’ve found a joint briefing with head office and the local leadership team often surfaces the real disagreement about what the role is for. Better to find it in week one than month nine.
Name the decision rights early. A short list of what the role owns, what it recommends and what it escalates gives candidates something concrete to react to. It also tells you a lot about how they think.
Test for the translation part of the job. Ask candidates about a time they had to bring a decision from a distant parent to a sceptical local team, or the reverse. Speak to referees who saw them do it, not only to referees from their home market.
Look wider than the obvious pool. On a major international copper project, the underground, project services and power station leaders we appointed came from Australia, Europe and Indonesia. What they shared was experience of working inside someone else’s system, not a passport. When a US gold mine needed to rebuild community and stakeholder trust, the right person was an Australian with international experience and a strong environmental record.
Don’t overlook the person already inside. When we ran CEO succession for the Australian subsidiary of a European industrial group, we mapped candidates across Australia and Europe. The internal candidate came out on top. They already spoke both languages, literally and culturally, and later led the business through its acquisition.
The real test
A cross-border appointment works when the leader has the trust of both places. That trust comes from a clear brief, honest expectations and an assessment that tests the hard part of the job, not just the visible part.
If you’re weighing up a role like this, we’re always happy to compare notes.