The Interim Paradox

Why Temporary Leaders Often Outperform

Yesterday, Lululemon announced Heidi O'Neill as its next CEO.

The appointment ends a four-month interim period during which CFO Meghan Frank and Chief Commercial Officer André Maestrini shared the top job, a co-interim arrangement that raised eyebrows when Calvin McDonald stepped down in January.

Lululemon is the latest in a string of major companies to navigate leadership transitions through interim appointments. 

Earlier this year, Kroger concluded its own interim period when Greg Foran took the permanent CEO role in February, following nearly a year under interim chief Ron Sargent. 

Diageo brought in Dave Lewis at the start of the year after CFO Nik Jhangiani held the fort through the second half of 2025.

Three major consumer businesses. 

Three interim periods. 

Three successful transitions.

Something shifted in 2025.

Boards that once viewed interim appointments as a last resort began reaching for them deliberately. 

And now, as we watch these transitions conclude, the results are telling us something important.

The counterintuitive advantage

The conventional wisdom is clear. 

Interim leaders are caretakers. 

They keep the lights on while the real search happens elsewhere.

The conventional wisdom is wrong.

What I have observed over 25 years of placing retail executives is that interim leaders often outperform their permanent counterparts, particularly in the first 12 months. The very thing that should limit them, their temporary status, becomes their superpower.

They arrive without the burden of a five-year mandate. 

They have no political debts to service, no promises made during a lengthy courtship process. 

They can see what others have stopped noticing and say what others have learned not to say.

The numbers behind the shift

Last year marked a turning point in how boards approach leadership transitions.

According to recent data nearly one in five incoming CEOs during the first half of 2025 were named on an interim basis.

The same period in 2024? Fewer than one in ten.

A near-doubling in 12 months.

These are not marginal shifts.

This represents a fundamental change in how boards think about the gap between one leader and the next.

Harvard Business Review's analysis put it plainly: interim leaders are now involved in roughly one out of three CEO transitions. What was once emergency cover has become a deliberate strategy.

Further research adds context. CEO turnover rose even among top-performing companies last year, jumping from 7% to 12% among S&P 500 top-quartile performers. 

Boards are no longer waiting for crisis. 

They are making proactive moves, and interim appointments have become a key instrument in their toolkit.

Now, in 2026, we can see the results.

The interim periods are concluding. The permanent leaders are in place. And the evidence suggests these transitions worked.

The shock absorber effect

I think of interim executives as shock absorbers.

They absorb the institutional friction that would damage a permanent leader's mandate. They can make the unpopular call, restructure the team that should have been restructured years ago, have the conversation about underperformance that everyone has been avoiding.

And then, if necessary, they can leave.

The permanent CEO who follows inherits a cleaner slate. 

The hard decisions have been made by someone who did not need to live with their consequences for the next decade.

There is a freedom in the temporary.

Permanent leaders often spend their first year building coalitions, managing upward, protecting their runway. They are playing a long game, and that long game sometimes requires short-term compromises that dilute their impact.

Interim leaders have no runway to protect.

They have six months, maybe nine.

And so they act.

What I have seen

I placed an interim CFO at a mid-sized fashion retailer three years ago.

The brief was simple. 

Steady the ship while we find the right permanent hire. 

Six months, maximum.

She arrived on a Monday.

By Friday, she was asking questions nobody had asked in years.

Within eight weeks, she had identified £2.3 million in working capital locked in slow-moving inventory that nobody had thought to question. 

The previous CFO had accepted the stock profile as a given. 

She saw it with fresh eyes and asked why.

Within twelve weeks, she had renegotiated terms with three major suppliers that her predecessor had accepted as fixed. Payment terms that had stood for a decade were revised in a single quarter.

She had no history with those suppliers. 

No relationships to protect. 

No awkward conversations about why she was revisiting deals her predecessor had signed.

She was temporary.

She could see clearly.

The board asked her to stay. 

She declined, as the best interim executives often do. She had other turnarounds waiting, other finance functions that needed the same treatment.

But the permanent CFO who followed her inherited a finance function that had been stress-tested, questioned, and significantly improved. He started from a position of strength that would have taken him two years to build on his own.

That is the interim paradox. 

The leader who knows they are leaving often delivers more than the leader who plans to stay.

The conversion question

Of course, not every interim executive leaves.

Apparently 20% of interim CEOs were eventually named to the role permanently in 2025.

What is interesting is the parity. 

Internal candidates and external hires converted at exactly the same rate.

The interim period, it seems, is the great equaliser. 

Prior relationships and institutional knowledge matter less than what you demonstrate when the spotlight is actually on you.

Boards are watching. And interim executives who mistake temporary for inconsequential rarely get the opportunity to become permanent.

Five questions before you appoint

If your board is considering an interim appointment, whether at CEO level or elsewhere in the C-suite, these are the questions worth asking:

1. What do we need in the next 90 days that a permanent search would delay? If the answer is urgent action, an interim may be the faster path to value.

   
   

2. Are there difficult decisions we have been avoiding? An interim leader can absorb the political cost of changes that would consume a permanent CEO's capital.

   
   

3. Is our succession pipeline genuinely ready, or are we hoping it is? An interim buys time to develop internal candidates without promoting before they are prepared.

   
   

4. What mandate are we giving them? Interim leaders fail when boards treat them as caretakers. They succeed when given real authority to act.

   
   

5. Are we being transparent with the organisation? Teams can rally behind temporary leadership when they understand the plan. Ambiguity breeds anxiety.

The lesson boards are learning

The surge in interim appointments is not a sign of dysfunction.

It is a sign of sophistication.

Boards are recognising that the gap between one leader and the next is not dead time to be endured. It is an opportunity to reset, to question assumptions, to prepare the ground for what comes after.

The interim leader, done well, is not a placeholder.

They are a catalyst.

And in an era where retail boards face more uncertainty than ever, the leader who arrives without a decade-long mandate may be precisely the leader who can act with the speed the moment requires.

Sometimes the temporary appointment is the permanent solution.

The paradox is the point.

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Maarten Jonckers is the Managing Director of Nicholas Alexander Executive Search, a boutique firm specialising in senior leadership appointments across retail and consumer. He also facilitates peer-advisory boards for business owners through The Alternative Board.