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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 (CDO calibre) — Manufacturing · Singapore
- Job Location
- Singapore · Africa / China
- Experience Range
- 28+ years (senior executive)
- Industry
- Manufacturing & Industrial
- Job Function
- CDO
Position overview
Gladwin International Leadership Advisors is representing a confidential organisation in Manufacturing & Industrial on a senior CDO leadership mandate anchored in Singapore. The remit explicitly spans Africa, China, Continental Europe.
This is a strategic transformation mandate at CXO level — equal parts operating leadership, change orchestration, and investor / board narrative ownership.
Expect a mandate where credibility is earned in rooms with customers and regulators, not only in headquarters workshops.
Context you will inherit
- Market & sector: Succession planning in family-promoted industrial businesses transitioning to professional management models
- Geographic spine: Primary hub Singapore with explicit corridor responsibility across Africa, China, Continental Europe.
- Organisation stage: ESG and conduct expectations from owners and regulators are now hard constraints on how growth is pursued.
- Stakeholders: Owners may include PE operating partners, a promoter family office, or public-market investors — each with different tempo and KPIs.
- Secondary lens: Managing rapid capacity expansion under PLI schemes while maintaining quality, compliance, and workforce engagement
The mandate (12–24 month arc)
- Executive dashboards: Replace vanity metrics with a tight set of KPIs the CEO and CFO trust.
- Customer data: Unify identity and consent where fragmentation hurts personalisation or compliance.
- Operational analytics: Use data to improve unit economics in operations — yield, utilisation, leakage.
- Partnership with IT: Clarify split between CDO-owned capabilities and CIO-owned platforms.
- Regulatory reporting: Where applicable, reduce manual reconciliation through better lineage and controls.
- Talent: Hire leaders who can translate statistical insight into executive decisions — not only build models.
Responsibilities (representative)
- Reduce regulatory and audit pain on data lineage, privacy, and retention.
- Monetise or operationalise data assets where ethically and legally sound.
- Hire and retain data science and engineering talent in competitive markets.
- Align metrics definitions across finance, operations, and commercial teams.
- Lead MDM and reference data programmes where fragmentation blocks decisions.
Leadership profile
- Judgment: High signal-to-noise under pressure; ethical clarity; willingness to halt initiatives that break risk appetite.
- Trusted metrics: Examples where data changed capital or operating decisions in Manufacturing & Industrial.
- Education: Strong undergraduate grounding; MBA / advanced degree / professional qualification common at this level.
- Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
- Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from Singapore with regular engagement across Africa, China.
Team & culture
Silos are real. Your job is to design forums and incentives so product, technology, risk, and commercial leaders solve problems together instead of optimising local KPIs.
Success measures (examples)
- Value creation: EBITDA / cash trajectory vs. owner or board case — especially under stress scenarios.
- Execution: On-time delivery of named transformation milestones; reduction in repeat incidents or audit findings.
- Leadership: External hires and internal promotions that stick; reduction in key-person concentration.
- Innovation: Launched offers or capabilities that move the needle on differentiation, not pilots that stall.
First 90 days (orientation arc)
- Days 1–30: Map cash, covenant, and customer concentration risks before announcing initiatives.
- Days 30–60: Align owners and board on a 12-month value story — financial and non-financial.
- Days 60–90: Launch two quick operational fixes that build credibility with frontline managers.
- Deep-dive on talent — who is load-bearing, who is blocking, where external hire is mandatory.
- Socialise a simple KPI tree so every function sees how their metrics roll up.
Stakeholder map (illustrative)
- Internal: Executive committee, functional peers, shared services leads, and programme PMOs.
- External: Key suppliers, technology partners, and joint-venture boards where applicable.
- Board / owners: Expect deep dives on risk, liquidity, talent, and transformation — slides light, substance heavy.
Travel & mobility
Travel weighted to priority markets and quarterly global or regional forums; flexibility for crisis windows.
Compensation
Package aligned to CDO benchmarks in Manufacturing & Industrial — typically fixed, variable, benefits, and mobility where applicable. Structure detailed at shortlist.
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: manufacturing-industrial · CDO · Singapore · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors