Why More Companies Should Embrace Interim Leaders

The "Try Before You Buy" Approach

In the world of business, finding the right person for that critical [insert any department here] role can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack—except the barn is on fire, you don’t know what type of needle you need (or maybe you need a safety pin?), you needed this needle, like, yesterday, and there are a lot of sticks that say they are perfect needles. 

Enter the hero of this story: the interim leader. Just like those 30-day free trials that somehow turn into lifelong subscriptions, interim leaders are here to save the day with a no-commitment, full-commitment kind of deal. 

What is an interim leadership? I’ve held interim head of marketing or growth roles at Miro, Netlify, Amplitude, and Dropbox, and my take is that Interim is defined as a full-time leadership role on a short-term, contractual basis (not to be confused with Fractional, which is a part-time, long-term contract). Details are as follows:

• The contract is usually <12 months with a flexible two-way termination cla…