Boards reach for an interim when something has broken: a resignation, a transaction, a programme that will not land. The mistake is to treat the seat as a warm body. The opportunity is to buy ninety days of operating truth.
A good interim arrives with a mandate that can be explained in a paragraph, a licence to reset two or three things, and a date on which they will help choose their successor. A poor interim arrives to “keep the lights on” and discovers that nobody can say which lights matter.
We keep a short bench of operators who have done this before — not career interims collecting day rates, but people who will leave a house in better order than they found it.