Change Agent

I don’t consider myself an ‘interim kind of guy.’ But I’ve completed numerous turn-arounds in the last decade, usually as interim CEO / COO / GM. Earlier posts discussed the benefits of interim executive management from a company’s point of view, as well as from an executive’s. Another post described the process I use my first week to determine the real problems and to begin to come up with solutions.

Though each company’s situation has been different – different products, different markets, different problems, and different teams – each situation has been the same in that, somewhere around day ten, the ‘powers to be’ ask to switch the role from interim to permanent. Why do they ask? And why do I say, “No?”

They ask because – for the first time in a long time – they like what they see happening. They like the transparency of knowing what’s really going on. They like seeing that bad apples in the management team have been shown the door. And, most importantly, they like seeing key players revitalized and charged up about the company’s future. (It’s these ‘revitalized key players’ who are the foundation of any turnaround.)

So why do I say, “No?” Because, though things have changed for the better at each company, what’s not changed is the reason why the assignment was made interim in the first place. Did they want to keep open the option to sell the company? Did they want to clean the place up to attract an industry-specific, name brand CEO? Did they want to have more time before committing to significant further capital investment? At each company, the reasons for making the assignment interim in the first place have still been valid, hence my response.