Interim Chief Executive Officer — Business Renewal

Five calls that will define the year

Interim chief executives tend to be remembered for a handful of decisions. When the seat is built around the leadership structure for an organisation's next ownership chapter, most of those decisions concern people and authority rather than strategy documents.

The first is where authority sits. The interim chief executive sets which decisions belong to the group and which limits local leaders keep, and that line, once drawn, shapes every argument that follows. Drawn too tightly, it teaches capable local managers to stop thinking; drawn too loosely, it starts the next chapter with accountability nobody can locate.

The second is what to stop. Any incoming leader inherits commitments made by others, for reasons that may no longer apply. This one may decide which of them survive, and may halt any proposal that quietly passes an expense or a hazard to a colleague who never took it on. Often the most valuable early result is a commitment ended, with the evidence to defend the decision, rather than something new announced.

The third is what to fund. Investment cases that never say who will use the result, what it depends on, or how it could disappoint are turned down, however attractive the headline. The fourth is who sits on the next leadership team, together with how disagreements between the Investment Committee and operating leaders are settled before money is committed. The fifth is rhythm: a board cadence in which progress and undecided questions are in full view, so that directors are never surprised.

Twelve months to a team that stands on its own

By day ninety a proposed leadership structure for the next chapter should be on the table, with group decision rights and local thresholds settled with the Investment Committee. Around month nine every inherited commitment should have been reviewed against the evidence agreed at the outset, and any commitment without a clear accountable owner either stopped or given one. By month 12 the new leadership team should be appointed and a board rhythm established that keeps progress and open questions visible, so that what the interim chief executive has built does not depend on their continued presence.

A leader who develops successors while changing the model

Your knowledge of professional services comes from calls that were yours to make, one of them a commitment you ended because the case behind it would not hold. The organisations you have led reached $455 million in revenue or more, 1,800 people or more, and five countries or more, and you have put a disputed downside in front of an investment committee without softening its consequence.

Three experiences matter most. Professionalisation, because moving an organisation from custom to explicit management is close kin to this work. Cost transformation, carried out without stripping away the capability a new chapter will need. And succession, because the real measure of this appointment is the team left behind. Expect the committee to probe strategy formation at level 4, and three level-3 capabilities beneath it: judging risk, owning a P&L, and keeping an operating rhythm. You will want to carry the full twelve months of accountability rather than influence a part of them.

Meeting the people you would answer to

In week one the Investment Committee speaks with you confidentially over video. The Risk Committee Chair takes the third week, and is likely to test how you treat inherited commitments. In week five you meet, face to face, a panel of executives whose remits span every function; the directors settle matters together in week seven. Each stage ends with our response inside four working days.