CASE: Allied Gold
Chief Information Officer
The Situation
We were approached by Allied Gold to recruit a Chief Information Officer. The newly formed, fast-growing gold mining organisation were aiming to IPO on the LSE later that year and their goal was to become a 1Moz+ per annum gold producer within a few years. At the time, Allied Gold owned mines in Cote d’Ivoire and Mali, with a headquarters in Dubai. Their existing gold resources exceeded 20 million ounces.
Our CEO, Bryan MacDonald, chairs the board of Stratum, another executive search firm which specialises in mining. We were put in contact with Allied Gold’s CFO by Stratum’s Director and Founder, who recommended The Digital Board for this challenging search.
The IT resources that Allied Gold currently had in place were scattered and disparate, so they were looking for an IT leader to take the reins: to evaluate their current state, consolidate their existing resources and build an effective and efficient IT function.
Given the company’s unique position, they were also ideally seeking someone with prior experience of leading companies through their early stages and guiding nascent organisations to IPO.
The Opportunity
Allied Gold were looking to recruit a Chief Information Officer (SVP, IT) to join the leadership team and build an IT function with ample capability for their future planned growth. Whist driving engagement with the business, the IT Director was set to be responsible for crafting the IT strategy and building an IT capability fit for purpose.
As a new position and member of the leadership team, the role owner would need to build strong relationships with their peers and demonstrate with immediate impact & assurance that the IT function was in a ‘safe pair of hands’.
In preparation for the impending IPO, Allied Gold had engaged a specialist consultancy to perform an organisational readiness assessment, part of which encompassed any IT risks and recommendations. Several tactical recommendations had been identified already. The CIO was expected to deep dive into these findings and recommendations to ensure the organisation was in sound footing for the IPO, and beyond that to make investment recommendations for the future IT capability.
They were also looking for an IT leader with substantial industry experience. On a day-to-day basis the individual would be based at the corporate office, but they would ultimately be engaging with the technical staff and the general managers at the different mining sites. Therefore, Allied Gold needed someone who had worked in an industrial production environment, understood the culture and spoke the language.
What made this interesting?
Conducting a search in this location was interesting. Whilst we had conducted prior work in Dubai, setting up a Middle East advisory board for a tech consultancy, the landscape and market of the Middle East was relatively unfamiliar. In some ways this made the search more interesting, as it felt more unique, but on the other hand it also added to the challenge of the assignment.
What made this challenging?
We were tasked with finding a very specific profile with a unique blend of skills and experiences to fill this role. The individual ideally needed experience in an exploration industry, having worked on site in an industrial production environment comparable to Allied Gold’s mines in West Africa. On top of this, we were really looking for a leader with experience of setting up an IT function as opposed to simply entering into an organisation with an existing structure and improving its performance. The candidate needed the technical and business acumen to align Allied Gold’s IT resources, develop a strategy, build an IT function capable of achieving the stakeholders’ growth ambitions and ready the organisation to IPO in the near future.
Additionally, the search was disrupted by major internal changes which occurred in the latter stages of the process. These developments kept our key contacts in the organisation extremely busy, whilst they also impacted the remit of the role. In this challenging situation, we had to maintain a strong line of communication between the client and the shortlisted candidates to ensure that both parties were kept in the loop and happy to proceed with the process in its altered form.
The Digital Board Process
As always, our initial aim was to set up stakeholder briefing calls to help us develop a rounded understanding of the organisation and the role itself. In this case, we predominantly spoke with the CFO, who was our main point of contact throughout the search. Following these initial conversations, we briefed our research team. Their process starts with defining our target list. In doing this, they needed to address a number of key elements:
Proven experience of surveying and consolidating IT resources and the ability to build a fit to purpose IT function capable of facilitating Allied Gold’s growth ambitions.
Relevant industry experience to enable effective communication and collaboration with the general managers based at the mine sites.
The executive presence and communication skills required to influence stakeholders and earn the trust of fellow executives outside of the IT practice.
We developed an exhaustive initial list of potential candidates, reaching out to a selection of them to set up initial calls to assess (1) reasons for interest, (2) fit to brief, (3) key achievements, (4) culture alignment and beyond.
We then began the first stage of Digital Board qualifications, with our HR business partner holding 45-minute calls with a selection of candidates to further evaluate their suitability for the role.
A number of candidates then progressed to formal interviews with Bryan, and four of them were eventually shortlisted to the client.
As always, throughout the whole process, our research team continued to work on generating new candidates just in case anything went wrong with our shortlist.
Success Story
The successful candidate had ticked all of the boxes, with substantial exploration experience in oil & gas and proven experience of setting up IT practices and building teams. Moreover, they had extensive experience of working in Africa, commenting ‘Africa is what I do’ in one of their exchanges with us.
The candidate was also a strong cultural fit, with a similar attitude and energy to those on the executive team. They had a particular enthusiasm for the role on offer, opting to pursue this opportunity over other potential roles that they had been exploring. This passion for the role came through and convinced the interviewing stakeholders that they were the right candidate for the job.