What an interim CEO actually does on a Tuesday morning

by Nicolas Henckes, Founder & CEO of Kitsune Advisory

There's a version of interim management that lives in the imagination of many business owners. A senior executive parachutes in, runs a few steering committees, produces a strategic roadmap, and hands back the keys three months later with a firm handshake and a slide deck under their arm.

That version makes for a good story. It's just not what actually happens - or at least not the version that leaves a company in better shape than it found it.

The reality is less cinematic, and considerably more useful.

The unglamorous reality

Here's what a Tuesday morning can actually look like in an interim mandate.

A conversation with the HR lead about how to set up time tracking for the team - because that is mandatory under Luxembourg law. A review of the invoicing flow to make sure billable work is being captured correctly, that nothing is falling through the cracks between delivery and billing. A note written clearly enough that the right person has everything they need to move forward independently, without waiting for the next meeting or the next mandate.

None of this appears in a job description. None of it would make it into a case study. But all of it matters - because the gap between a company that runs well and one that doesn't is rarely strategic. It's operational. It's the small things that nobody currently owns, the processes that were held together informally by someone who is no longer there, the decisions that keep getting deferred because it's not clear who should be making them.

An interim CEO's job is to find those gaps and close them, while simultaneously keeping the strategic direction clear and the organisation moving forward. The two are not in competition. They are inseparable.

Why this matters for SMEs specifically

Large companies have layers. When a CEO leaves or a leadership transition happens, there are directors, heads of function, and management teams who keep the machine running while the vacancy gets filled. Processes are documented. Systems are in place. The institutional memory doesn't walk out the door with one person.

In an SME, that's rarely true.

The departing leader often held things together through personal presence, direct relationships, and informal knowledge that was never written down. They knew which client needed a call on Friday. They knew why a particular process worked the way it did, even if it looked odd from the outside. They were the connective tissue between functions that didn't have formal interfaces.

When they leave - whether planned or not - the gap is felt immediately. Not just at the top, but all the way through the organisation. Teams lose direction. Decisions stall. Small operational problems that would have been resolved in a corridor conversation start to compound.

This is precisely where interim management earns its place. Not by arriving with a pre-packaged transformation agenda, but by quickly understanding what is and isn't working, stabilising what needs stabilising, and building the foundations that will make the next permanent leader's job possible rather than overwhelming.

That means being present at the strategic level, yes. Keeping the board informed, maintaining key client relationships, making the calls that need to be made. But it also means being willing to go where the problems actually are - which is often somewhere much more operational than anyone expected.

The two hesitations we hear most often

When we talk to SME owners and boards considering interim management for the first time, the hesitation usually takes one of two forms.

The first is cost. An interim CEO feels expensive, especially for a company already under pressure. The daily rate is visible. What's harder to see is the cost of the alternative.

A leadership vacuum doesn't stay neutral. It compounds. Decisions that don't get made create downstream problems. Teams that lose direction lose productivity - and sometimes lose people. Clients who sense instability start to hedge. By the time the cost of inaction becomes visible on the P&L, it has often been accumulating for months.

An interim mandate has a defined cost and a defined end date. The alternative rarely does.

The second hesitation is relevance. "We're not big enough for that." Or: "Our situation isn't dramatic enough to justify it."

But the companies that benefit most from interim management are rarely the ones facing an existential crisis. They're often solid businesses going through a transition - a founder stepping back after years of leading the company, a key departure that has left a function without direction, a growth phase that has outrun the current organisational structure. Businesses where the fundamentals are sound but something important isn't being owned right now.

The trigger doesn't have to be a crisis. It just has to be a moment where the cost of not having the right leadership in place is higher than the cost of bringing it in.

What good interim management actually leaves behind

The measure of a successful interim mandate isn't what happened while the interim was there. It's what the company looks like after they leave.

Did the team gain clarity and confidence during the transition, or did they simply wait it out? Are the processes cleaner and better documented than they were before? Does the incoming permanent leader have a functioning, stable organisation to step into - one where the foundations are solid and the priorities are clear - rather than a situation to diagnose from scratch?

That's the real deliverable. Not the slide deck. Not the steering committee minutes. Not the strategic framework that gets filed and forgotten. The operational reality of a business that runs better, and the people inside it who have the tools and the clarity to keep it that way.

Building that takes work at every level. Some of it happens in boardrooms and strategy sessions. Some of it happens in conversations with the finance lead about closing procedures, or with the operations team about why a particular handoff keeps breaking down.

And some of it happens on a Tuesday morning, in a conversation about time tracking with the HR lead.

Both matter. The second one just doesn't get talked about enough.

Is this relevant for your company?

If your organisation is going through a leadership transition - or if you can see one coming - the most useful question to ask is not "do we need an interim CEO?" It's: what isn't being owned right now, and what is that costing us? The answer is often more concrete than people expect. And so is the solution.

Kitsune Advisory provides interim CEO services and strategic advisory to SMEs and mid-market companies in transition. Based in Luxembourg, we work across the Greater Region and beyond. If you'd like to discuss your situation, get in touch.