We built this service because the same problems arise on every interim assignment: an operational picture needs to be understood, people need to be recruited, structures need to be reshaped, costs need to be brought back into proportion. The interim has the experience to handle all four but rarely the time, and the host business often does not have the right resource sitting alongside them. We provide that resource, configured to assignment pace, and step out cleanly when the engagement ends.

Most engagements concern one of four areas: operational review, recruitment of senior or specialist roles, restructuring, or operational right-sizing. Restructuring and right-sizing are commissioned together where the situation calls for both, or separately where one piece of work is already in hand.

Operational review

When the interim needs an independent operational view of the business they have landed in, we provide one. The review is operationally led, not financially led: we look at how the business runs from sales through to productivity and headcount, and we identify the operational lead indicators that tell the interim where performance is actually heading.

The output is an operational view the interim can use to set direction with the senior team and to inform the conversations they need to have with the board or the portfolio manager. The work is fast and focused: assignments rarely have the luxury of a long diagnostic phase, and we work to the same pace.

Recruitment support

Every interim assignment involves recruitment. Every hire made has the interim’s name on it, and we work accordingly.

We are researchers, not recruiters. We define the search properly, build a credible long list from real research and direct outreach, screen it down to people who genuinely fit, and hand over a shortlist that can go straight into interview. No volume, no keyword matching, no CVs that have clearly missed the brief.

The service is fast to deploy. We are operational within days of a conversation.

Confidential recruitment

Some searches cannot be conducted in the open. A C-suite member is being replaced while still in seat. The interim is recruiting their own successor before the assignment ends. A role is being filled before the structure it sits inside has been announced. The brief is sensitive enough that even raising it inside the business would be a problem.

For this work, the routes available to most interims narrow to none. Internal HR cannot run a search where the incumbent must not know. External agencies leak by design: their commercial model rewards visibility and inbound candidates, neither of which is compatible with a search that does not officially exist.

We are configured for it. The work is researcher-led, conducted one-to-one with the interim, and run without footprint inside the host business until the placement is far enough along to control. No public posting. No internal brief. No candidate sees a document naming the role they would be stepping into until the conversation has reached the point where the situation can be managed.

Restructuring support

When a business needs to be restructured, the operational evidence behind the plan matters as much as the financial case. The decisions that hold up under board scrutiny are the ones supported by independent analysis: what is genuinely surplus, what is load-bearing, and what looks like cost but is actually the connective tissue holding delivery together.

We work alongside the interim or the portfolio team to provide that analysis. The output is a restructuring plan with operational evidence behind every decision, written in a register that stands up to the board, the finance function, and the wider team without becoming an internal political document. The interim takes it forward as their own work, with the operational weight it needs to land.

Operational right-sizing

Right-sizing is the work of moving a business from its current operational shape to a target shape without breaking the operation in the process. We assess where capacity can come out cleanly, where it cannot without consequence, and how to sequence the change so delivery continues through it. The output is a plan that is honest about what is removable and what is not, and a process that protects the business from cuts that look defensible on paper but cause problems in delivery.

How an engagement works

The first conversation is short. We are from the same world as the people we work with, and we read shorthand that other firms need explaining. A senior interim does not have to write us a brief: a quick conversation about the assignment and what is needed is enough to get going. The same is true for portfolio managers and boards.

The work begins quickly. Once the brief is clear we are operational within days, not weeks. Reporting lines, decision rights, and the relationship with the existing executive team are agreed upfront so the work carries proper authority from day one. The work is designed to reinforce the interim’s standing in the business, not to compete with it.

We work as operators, not as advisers. On restructuring particularly, we are there to help the interim or the portfolio team make hard decisions stick, not to explain why those decisions might be uncomfortable. The interim is running the assignment. The decisions are theirs. We bring evidence, judgement, and execution capacity to the work they have already decided needs doing.

The engagement ends when the assignment ends, or when the specific piece of work is complete. There is no nudge to extend. We would rather a clean handover than a relationship that drifts.

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A confidential conversation, or a professional profile on request.