Interim
The programme seat, filled until the handover is safe.
Full accountability for a digital, AI or transformation programme — stalled or newly formed — until handover is safe.
- 3–4 days per week · 3–12 months
- Full seat · handover built in
What prompts the call
- The programme lead has left, or is leaving, and the internal successor is six months from ready.
- The programme exists on paper and nobody has picked it up, so it is accruing delay before it has started.
- The seat is occupied but the authority is gone — the programme has stalled far enough that its lead can no longer recover credibility with the steering group.
- A recovery has been agreed and needs somebody accountable for it, rather than another set of recommendations.
How it runs
Steering group, budget, vendors and delivery — the full seat. Handover is planned from the first week.
Week 1–2
The actual state
Not the reported state. Plan, budget, dependencies, vendor obligations, and the list of decisions that have been deferred rather than made. Most stalled programmes are carrying a backlog of deferred decisions, and clearing it is the first change anyone outside the programme notices.
Week 1
Handover, designed
Planned at the start, not at the end. That means naming a successor early where one exists and shaping the role so it can be filled by somebody who is actually available — not by another interim. Consultants who make themselves necessary have failed at the job.
Ongoing
The full seat
Steering group, budget, vendor relationships, delivery cadence, escalation. Reporting goes out in whatever format the organisation already uses — a programme in trouble does not also need a new reporting language. I work alongside the team rather than above it, and something moves every week.
Final 6 weeks
Stepping out
Documentation, relationship mapping, and the decision record that makes the seat handoverable at all. Where the successor is a permanent hire, I help define the role, sit on the panel, and onboard whoever takes it.
What you get
On the table.
- A programme under active leadership, with a current plan and an honest status.
- The deferred-decision backlog cleared, and a record of what was decided and why.
- Steering group and executive reporting, at the cadence already in place.
- Vendor relationships held, including the conversations nobody wants to have.
- A named successor where one can be found, and a handover pack where one cannot.
- A closing note to the sponsor on what will break if the seat is left empty again.
What I need from you.
- A mandate the steering group has actually agreed — that this seat holds these decisions.
- Three to four days a week. Below that the seat is nominal and the programme routes around it.
- Budget authority at the level the programme was scoped for, or an explicit named alternative.
- On-site presence for the opening weeks, which is the only way to read how decisions really get made.
When this is the wrong call
- You want an assessment rather than an operator. That is a programme review, at a fraction of the cost.
- Fewer than three days a week is available. Fractional technology leadership is the honest shape for that cadence.
- The mandate is contested. If the steering group has not settled who decides, nobody in this seat will succeed.
- The real problem is a vendor contract. Resolve that first; leadership cannot substitute for it.
Questions
- How is this different from fractional leadership?
- Cadence and accountability. Interim is three to four days a week with the programme on my name — steering group, budget, escalation. Fractional is one to two days of direction for a function, without owning a single programme’s delivery.
- Can you work with the existing team?
- That is the usual case. I am not arriving to replace people; I am arriving to lead them. Where the team is the problem, that is a finding to put to the sponsor, not a decision to take quietly in the first fortnight.
- What if a permanent hire is found mid-engagement?
- Good — that is the intended ending. The engagement shortens to a handover. Notice terms are set up to make that easy rather than expensive, because the alternative is an incentive I do not want.