← Back to Private Corner

First 100 Days — Private Operating Plan

The political map

• Stewart Halliday (CIO GPS) — ultimate sponsor. By Day 100 he wants one credible narrative: "I've mapped it, I've stabilised X, here's the plan."
• Marina Tong (COO) — the person who named stability. Your ally and yardstick. A visible stability win by Day 60 buys enormous credibility.
• Sriram Natarajan (Asia GPS Tech) — the boundary question. His remit overlaps yours. Clarify the HK/GZ operating model and reporting matrix with him in the first two weeks, before turf ambiguity becomes friction.
• Fiona Gibbons (Head GPS Tech UK) — likely your peer on the global side. Learn how global delivery runs through her teams.
• Nicholas Soo (Product Mgmt Asia) — the business partner who feels the pain daily. Win him early.
• Simon Cox (Payables & Receivables Tech) — understand where his book ends and yours begins.

Workstream 1 — People

0–30

• Meet every team member 1:1 (~25 across HK + GZ, in 2–3 weeks). Same four questions every time: (1) What do you own? (2) What's on fire? (3) What did we lose when the predecessor left? (4) What would you change if you were me?
• Map skills, roles, vacancies, and who holds the knowledge the departed team took with them — single points of failure.
• Find out why the predecessor and her directs left. Ask HR, peers, and the team directly. The answer dictates your retention strategy.

31–60

• Decide the target operating model: how do HK and GZ split work? Is GZ a captives model, vendor, or HSBC China entity? This determines backfill freedom.
• Identify flight risks and key-person dependencies. Retention conversations with the top 5.
• Start backfilling the most critical gaps — don't wait for full org design to plug a bleeding hole.

61–100

• Establish cadence (weekly cross-timezone team call, monthly all-hands, clear escalation path).
• Set objectives — make one explicitly about stability so the team knows it's real.

Workstream 2 — Delivery

0–30

• Inventory the entire CBCC change portfolio: in-flight, funded, promised, silently stalled.
• For each major initiative: business owner, delivery health, dependencies.
• Find the thing that's been quietly slipping since the exodus — that's your first delivery problem to own.

31–60

• Stand up governance: RAID log, reporting cadence, single portfolio view. Adopt what exists — don't rebuild to make a mark.
• Prioritise with Nicholas Soo and the business: non-negotiable vs deferrable.
• Pick 2–3 quick wins visible to the COO/business, landable within 100 days.

61–100

• Land the quick wins and tell the story.
• Publish the portfolio view + delivery metrics baseline (so future progress is provable).

Workstream 3 — Risk & Resilience (your #1 priority)

0–30

• Map the CBCC platform service chain end-to-end in the region. Find incident history, risk register, control gaps, known-but-unfixed fragility.
• This directly answers Marina Tong. Treat every instability as evidence you're collecting.
• Understand the regulatory surface: HK cross-border payments, ISO 20022/SWIFT obligations.

31–60

• Build a stability baseline: incident counts, MTTR, availability, top recurring failure modes.
• Get into the risk forums. Represent CBCC. Partner with risk stewards/champions.

61–100

• Drive 1–2 concrete stability remediations to completion and show the number move. This is the single most valuable thing you can deliver to Marina Tong.

Workstream 4 — Stakeholder

0–30

• Build the full stakeholder map. Re-meet the interview panel as a colleague now, not a candidate.
• Resolve the reporting line and the Sriram boundary in week 1–2.

31–60

• Socialise early findings. Give your boss and the COO a "here's what I've found, here's what I'm doing" checkpoint at Day 30.

61–100

• The 100-day review: "Here's the landscape, here's what I stabilised, here's my plan and what I need." Secure resourcing and mandate for 6–12 months.

Your personal operating rhythm

• Week 1–2: zero structural decisions, all listening. 8–10 meetings/day of 1:1s and intros.
• Timezone: HK is your anchor; GZ is +0; UK is your peer set. Protect mornings for HK/GZ, late afternoons for UK.
• Keep a running "surprises" log — anything contradicting the interviews goes in it.
• Don't promise delivery in week one. The only promise: "I'll map it, stabilise it, and come back with a plan."