Interim Chief Executive Officer — Integration

A chief executive who builds the bench

Some interim chief executives are appointed to steady a business. This one is appointed to shape the executive team that will lead the next phase of ownership, and to leave it in place within 12 months. The measure of success is what remains after the interim has gone.

Structure before names

The temptation in a leadership reset is to start with people. The better sequence starts with the work: which roles the business needs, what each decides, how they connect, and where the board's oversight attaches. Only then can you judge whether the current team fits, who needs support and where a change is required. Getting the order right makes the people decisions fairer and easier to defend.

The authority the board has given

Reporting to the Board Chair, you hold full interim executive authority. You will draw the organisation's decision rights and the limits local leaders keep, and name the evidence the new executive team will use when spending money, allocating capacity or loosening a control. You decide which inherited commitments proceed, which pause and which end. You can stop a plan that sends its cost or risk somewhere it has not been accepted, and decline investment where adoption, dependencies or the downside are missing from the case. You sign off the executive design and how issues escalate, and settle disagreements between the board and the heads of operations before any budget is set.

What the chair should see, and when

By ninety days the Board Chair should have agreed an executive leadership structure for the next phase of ownership, with decision rights set for each role. Around month nine the executive team should be in place against that structure, and integration commitments should have been taken forward, held or closed on evidence. By month 12 the organisation should be led by a settled executive team, with succession cover for critical roles and a board reporting rhythm that runs without the interim.

Proof of a culture reset done honestly

You have led through a culture reset without letting the account given to the board drift away from operating evidence, in a business with revenue of $410 million or more, 800 people and four countries. You can tell a local exception the business genuinely needs from one that survives only out of habit. Culture reset, integration and professionalisation will draw the Board Chair's closest questions. Strategy formation at level 4 is the headline capability; beneath it, level 3 is wanted in risk judgement, in operating cadence and in P&L ownership. You grow successors alongside the new executive structure, so it keeps working without you. A commitment can be stopped without every country consenting, and all 12 months are yours to answer for.

Meeting some of your future team

The Board Chair opens, in confidence and over video in the first week, with the leadership structure you would design. The Audit Committee Chair spends a working session with you in week three. Week five sets you, in person, before senior people from every executive function, some of whom may sit in the structure you propose, and the board's directors finish the process together in week seven. Three working days is the longest you will wait for our written response after each stage.