On the org chart, accountable for the outcome. The closest I get to the work, and the only one of the four where the result is genuinely mine to carry.
When you need this
The seat is empty and the business can’t wait
Someone left and the search will take nine months. The founder needs to step back from operations but there’s nobody to step into. You’ve grown to the point of needing a general manager but not to the point of affording a permanent one. Or something has gone wrong and you need an experienced pair of hands in the building this month, not next quarter.
It’s also the honest answer when a consulting project keeps stalling because nobody internally has the authority to decide.
Seats I take
General manager and operations leadership
General Manager, Chief Operating Officer, VP Operations, or the equivalent title in your business. Retail, manufacturing, and the kind of owner-led company where the job description ends with “and whatever else needs doing”.
I’ve held these roles for real, not adjacent to them. General Manager of a $50 million retailer with more than 400 direct and indirect reports. Then owner and operator of a manufacturer I acquired out of a restructuring, where I built the turnaround plan in the first thirty days and took more than $3 million to the bottom line inside a year.
I’ve also sat at the labour table, as lead negotiator for management through an organizing drive. If your business is heading somewhere near that, I’ve been in the room before.
Commitment
Three months minimum, two to three days a week
Less than two days a week isn’t leadership, it’s advice with a title on it. Less than three months and I’d spend the whole engagement learning your business on your money.
In the building for a meaningful part of that time. Fractional leadership done entirely over video doesn’t work, because the job is largely about what you notice walking through a place.
Monthly retainer against agreed days. Contract, not employment, and I carry my own insurance.
This is the one arm where I don’t work value-first, and it’s worth saying why. Everywhere else you pay a small amount up front and decide afterwards what it was worth. A seat you hold two or three days a week is a commitment of time as much as outcome, so a retainer is the honest structure. Still never hourly.
The first ninety days
Listen, decide, then move
Weeks one to three. I meet everyone who matters and quite a few who don’t. I look at the numbers you look at and the ones you don’t. I mostly don’t change anything, because a new person changing things in week one teaches your team to wait me out.
Week four. A written plan. What I’ve found, what I’m going to do, in what order, and what I need from you. You get to disagree with it before it starts.
The rest. Do the work. Report properly, in whatever rhythm you and your board need.
Leaving
The handover is the deliverable
Interim work has a failure mode where the interim becomes load-bearing and can never leave. That’s good business for me and bad business for you, so I’d rather name it now.
From the start we agree who I’m building towards: a permanent hire you’re recruiting, or someone already inside who’s ready sooner than you think. I’ll help you assess and interview for the role I’m sitting in, and I’ll overlap with whoever takes it.
I’ve just done this with a business I own outright, moving it to a passive ownership structure. It’s the handover I’d have told anyone else to plan for, and it’s the standard I hold myself to in someone else’s company.