Interim operations leadership
A senior operator in the seat, near full-time, for a defined period, to land one thing and hand the operation back running. For owner-led and family-owned businesses in Dubai, the UAE and the GCC with a gap in the senior team, a transition under way, or a stretch the current structure cannot absorb.
Who it is for
Owners and boards of multi-site service businesses, hotels, retail groups, food and beverage groups and home-services companies, who need the operating seat held properly for a fixed period and cannot wait the months a permanent search takes. The business has managers. What it lacks, for now, is the senior operator who sets the rhythm, makes the calls that are stuck, and carries the result.
What triggers it
Usually one of four things. An operations director or general manager has left, or is about to, and the seat cannot stay empty while the search runs. A new site, a new market or a new property is opening and the people who run the existing business cannot run the opening as well. A family business is handing over between generations and needs the operation held steady while the next leaders take their seats. Or an investor wants the operation steadied and the numbers made reliable before a sale, a refinancing or a merger.
How it runs
Near full-time, in the business, for a period agreed at the start: usually six to fifteen months. Jeff takes the seat, with the authority that goes with it, reporting to the owner or the board. He carries the result while he is in it. He takes no other client of that kind for the duration, so one operation has his whole attention. Fees are a flat monthly rate agreed in advance, with travel separate where it applies.
The existing managers do the work. Jeff sets the operating rhythm, decides what has been left undecided, holds the line on standards, and deals with the owner, the investors, the franchisees or the partners where that is part of the seat.
The first two weeks
Jeff reads the operation before changing anything. He sits with every manager, visits every site, watches the work as it is done and reads the numbers the business already produces. At the end of the two weeks the owner has a short written account of what must change, what can stay, and in which order, and the first moves are agreed with him before they are made.
How it ends
With a defined hand-back on a date agreed at the start. The seat goes to a permanent hire, whom Jeff may have helped select and prepared, or back to the owner's own team, with a successor identified inside the business where one exists. The operating rhythm, the reporting and the decisions stay with the people who will run them. The business does not come to depend on Jeff; that is the point of the mandate.
Interim, a permanent hire, or a consultancy
A permanent hire is the right answer when the seat is permanent. Interim is the right answer when the need has a date on it: a gap, an opening, a handover, a sale. Jeff is in the seat within weeks, for the period agreed, at a cost that ends when the work does, and the owner keeps the freedom to make the permanent decision with the operation already running.
A consultancy produces a plan and reports on it. Interim produces the result: Jeff is accountable for the operation while he holds the seat, and the change is landed through the managers already in the business, so it is still there after he leaves.
If the need is ongoing and part-time, the Fractional page describes that seat. If you are unsure which you need, the Operating Review answers that question in three weeks.
Proof
A gap in the senior team. At a Dubai hotel under an international brand, the food and beverage seat had been empty for close to two years and the owner had doubted it was worth filling. Jeff took it with a senior team that had itself been in place for under six months. The stabilisation came faster than expected, because the team already knew what needed doing and had lacked someone to back them. By the time he left, the owner's view of the department had gone from dissatisfaction to confidence, and Jeff had been put forward for the company's Six Sigma programme on the strength of it.
An opening. At The St. Regis Bali Resort, the first St. Regis resort in Southeast Asia, Jeff built the operating core from pre-opening through the first fifteen months: around 400 staff recruited in a ten-day interview block, the resort standards written with the brand team, and the butler service designed from nothing. Those standards became the template for the St. Regis resorts that opened after it.
A defined mandate with a hand-back. At a Swiss home-services group of around 2,000 staff, Jeff held the general manager seat of the acquired division for fifteen months after an investor bought the founder-led family business. Client churn through the transition was zero against a forecast loss of 10 to 15 percent, and no agency head left. He chose his own exit date, selected his successor from inside the business and handed over; that successor became the group's chief operating officer.
The work has been done in hotels and resorts, multi-site retail, home services and service businesses, in the Gulf, Southeast Asia and Europe, for owners, family groups, investors and international operators.