November 6, 2018

How an Outsourced CMO Enables Business Growth and Builds Brand Power

How an Outsourced CMO Enables Business Growth and Builds Brand Power

More than ever, a consistent brand that customers trust is critical to business growth. Whether product or service-based, B2B or B2C, local or global-focused, a strong brand with a great reputation is what enables a company to expand successfully.

Behind every powerful brand, stands an innovative Chief Marketing Officer. An experienced CMO can strategically plan and scale marketing plans during periods of business growth.

But not all companies can afford to hire a full-time CMO on a permanent basis. Many startups and midmarket companies reach a tipping point where they either expand or stagnate. All too often, the rate of business expansion they want to achieve outpaces their available operational resources and time.

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July 23, 2018
Olivia Wagner

Signs Your Struggling Business Needs Help

Olivia Wagner | President, InterimExecs
Signs Your Struggling Business Needs Help

We were having a conversation with an executive recently who shared about their experience parachuting into a business that was struggling with operational inefficiencies.

This executive, like many interims, kicked off the assignment by meeting face-to-face with the management team and employees to learn how the business functions, what’s working, and what isn’t. Their findings would turn into an operational roadmap of the business, where they would set out and implement a go-forward plan. When meeting with one team member and learning about what they did, the executive pointed to a process they had in place asking “why do you do that?”

 The answer: “Because we’ve always done it that way”

 (Alarm bells begin to loudly ring)

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June 28, 2018
Robert Jordan

Latin Got Interim Right 2,000 Years Ago

Robert Jordan | CEO, InterimExecs
Latin Got Interim Right 2,000 Years Ago

My daughter eagerly accepted an internship at the morgue. Wait – how does she put it? The medical examiner’s office. Regardless, all I hear is morgue. Anyway, let’s move past the whole your-daughter-is-around-dead-people issue because here’s the interesting thing. They ask their interns to sign a statement agreeing to work pro re nata.

This was a new phrase for me: pro re nata. It is latin for “in the circumstances” or “as needed” or “as the situation arises.”

I believe the phrase is really a guiding light for the best interim execs around the world, because the best leaders operate as needs demand – pro re nata.

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June 27, 2018

What is the Role of an Interim CIO? 5 Common Use Cases

What is the Role of an Interim CIO? 5 Common Use Cases

Let’s face it: an Interim Chief Information Officer has to be of instant value to an organization. A top interim CIO can take on any technically-challenging project that would be assigned to the permanent CIO, though they usually have a focus on bringing change and transformation to an organization.

While some Interim CIOs may be brought in to perform initial work such as a technology audit — a fast way to assess if an organization is optimally set up from an infrastructure perspective — in many other cases the need for an Interim CIO is driven by a specific project or initiative:

Business and ERP System Implementation >

When a company wants to automate process or functions from finance to accounting to supply chain and customer relationships,

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June 25, 2018

Top Questions Companies Should Ask an Interim Executive in an Interview

Top Questions Companies Should Ask an Interim Executive in an Interview

We have spent years developing a methodology for matching companies and executives, but ultimately at the top of the list is chemistry between the executive, private equity fund, company owner, or management team. So once we suggest an executive or team to fit a company’s needs, the question usually arises: what questions should I be asking in an interview to see if it’s a good fit?

Here are a few recommendations so you will be armed with targeted questions for the interview process:

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May 29, 2018

How an Interim Chief Information Officer Transforms Good Companies to Great


All companies use information technology to some degree.

Great companies have CIO leadership on the management team to purposefully leverage information technologies in creative and sometimes disruptive ways – to grow business, produce faster than competition, enrich customer experiences, and make business transformation happen.

Many full-time CIOs dedicate their careers to one specific industry, and so their experience is vertically deep. Interim CIOs on the other hand, provide a unique perspective blending innovation and technology transformation across a variety of organizations and industries. They specialize in change, bringing an attractive depth-of-experience from a career of change management, while leveraging ever-evolving technologies. It is this change-leadership experience that is highly valuable to a proactive board or management team facing the challenge of business transformation, especially where information technologies are an enabling and differentiating factor.

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May 3, 2018

How to Evaluate Executive Candidates

How to Evaluate Executive Candidates

“A man’s got to know his limitations.” Clint Eastwood’s immortal line as San Francisco detective Harry Callahan in the movie Dirty Harry stands true today when board of directors and management teams think about how to evaluate executive candidates. If you have been in management, ownership or board leadership long enough, sooner or later you’ve learned that no one has a perfect track record when it’s come to hiring.

So how do you increase your chances of success?

You’ve already taken the first step – by thinking of interim executives in order to mitigate your risk. You are making sure you have a clear roadmap and understanding of the leadership skillsets needed to get you where you want to go before committing to anything permanent too soon. That’s good.

Whether interim or permanent, there are questions to ask and ways to evaluate your organization’s fit with an executive leader.

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March 20, 2018

Growth Story: $4B Company Engages Transformational CEO to Spinoff Software Startup

Growth Story: $4B Company Engages Transformational CEO to Spinoff Software Startup

Corporations know that innovation is key to their continued growth, but what happens when serious product or service reengineering is not within the organization’s DNA? What if the company is just too successful or set in their traditional world?

That is exactly what happened when a multi-billion dollar construction company came to us with a software division they had launched internally. While the company was superb at architecting, planning, engineering and building major construction projects, developing software was a new ball game.

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February 9, 2018
Robert Jordan

How The Best Company Builders Grow Their Teams

Robert Jordan | CEO, InterimExecs
How The Best Company Builders Grow Their Teams

When I started my first company at age 26, I’ll admit, it was lonely. Even though we were only a team of six, there was a clear dividing line between me as founder and CEO, and my staff.

I learned how to pull in expert help, but I had a lingering feeling over the years that I took the business more seriously than anyone else on the team. Especially cash flow. And making payroll. Eventually I built a successful company, but not until hitting every pothole I could find. Hindsight is 20-20, but an executive-level leader alongside me would have spared so much pain.

This was my driving force to becoming an interim executive myself. Helping owners and founders to get over hurdles that, left to their own devices, would take years to master, and in many cases skills they didn’t otherwise need or enjoy. I focused on high growth tech companies, getting them to market and eventually for M&A events that would bring extraordinary returns to investors.

This is still what drives us today at InterimExecs: to empower companies to reach their full potential by building world-class leadership. Whatever it takes to accomplish projects, goals, growth initiatives, or in some cases fixing what’s broken.

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January 26, 2018

Private Equity Fund In Hot Water Deploys Interim Team

Private Equity Fund In Hot Water Deploys Interim Team

What do you do when your fund does a great job buying 5 divisions of a big publishing company spinning off assets, only to find one of the divisions starts going sideways?

First, you give the division some time to right the ship on their own.

Unfortunately, for one multi-billion dollar private equity fund, this strategy didn’t work… and the fund gave the CEO four years to get it right.

That’s a lot of patience.

Eventually, it came time to make a change, which the managing partner was dreading.

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