What to decide, prepare and expect before they start.
An interim product leader can have a lot of impact in a few months. Much of it depends on the person you bring in, and a good part on how you set things up together. This post is about that second part: a few decisions and preparations before the first day that make it easier for an interim to get going, and for you to get the most out of them. It draws on my own interim work, my consulting with product organisations and conversations with other interim leaders.
When to hire an interim product leader
Typically, interim product leaders are brought in to support in a situation of change: A gap to cover before replacing an internal product leader who’s leaving, a parental leave of the internal product leader or a general change in a product organisation that does not have internal people with the necessary experience yet.
In such situations, bringing in an experienced interim product leader can not only help to cover temporary gaps, but will ideally also help to raise the bar and work with the senior management to get clarity on the next steps for re-hiring, for re-structuring or for the product direction.
The scope: Decide what the interim covers, and what they don't
No interim can cover everything a permanent product leader would, especially with a limited number of days a week and a limited time to build context. A mandate that says "covers the role" leaves open what gets attention and what quietly does not. It is better to decide this on purpose, and early.
Start by choosing the two or three areas where an interim adds the most. Typical ones are how to sharpen the product direction, how the product organisation decides and plans, how its leaders work together and develop, how it connects to sales and engineering, or one specific change such as a restructuring or the adoption of new tools. Then say what waits: which topics stay with permanent leaders, or are postponed until a permanent leader is in place.
The time available should shape this directly. Interim roles are often limited to a few days a week, for budget reasons or because of the interim's availability. With only part of the time a permanent product leader would have, not everything can get the attention it needs.
The split is not always clean. If the focus for the interim product leader is to work with and develop the product organisation and their ways of working, it will also be necessary for them to get involved close enough with the detailed product discussion & decisions - even if those are areas that are not part of the primary focus for the interim and are covered by permanent leaders such as the CEO. And even though an interim leader will typically not have enough context to make the final call on detailed product decisions, they can still help the organisation and its senior leaders to get to those decisions in a structured way.
As a general rule of thumb, my experience is that interims are generally a better fit to work on the product organisation and raise the bar regarding ways of working, collaboration and stakeholder management - and, because of their limited context, a less ideal choice if the main objective for you is to optimise the product itself in detail. At least unless you find an interim with thorough experience in your immediate domain.
The brief: Why a sharp mandate matters
A brief that only names the role to be filled is rarely enough. It invites everyone to assume the interim will work like the person before them, with the same remit and the same habits around involvement. The real work usually turns out to be different from the list of goals in the brief: trust with the leadership team, people decisions, how departments work together, a change in how the company works. A sharp mandate is, above all, clarity: for the interim, for the sponsor and for everyone who works with them.
A better brief answers three questions:
What should be true in 6 months that is not true today?
What will the interim own, and what will they explicitly not take on?
What signals will you, as sponsor, look for to see that things are going in the right direction?
The third question matters more than it seems. A leader who cannot say what signals they need to feel confident will often fill the gap with detailed control. Naming those signals early lets the interim design a way to provide them without becoming a bottleneck. One approach that has worked well for me was to introduce skip-level communication and have important representatives of the product org (such as team leads or group PMs) give regular written updates, in their own framing, to the interim AND their sponsor.
Speaking about the sponsor, one important part of the brief is also to clarify who the main sponsor for the interim product leader is: For an interim CPO or head-of-product role, the best sponsor is the CEO or an equivalent: someone who sees what the interim sees and can back change when it is needed.
Decision rights: Who decides what
Clear decision rights make the mandate more powerful and give everyone involved clarity. The interim can act with confidence, the sponsor knows where they will be involved, and the permanent leaders know who decides what. It takes a short conversation at the start, and it pays off in faster decisions and in the visible authority of everyone in the leadership team.
There are two ways to get there:
Agree on categories early. What the interim decides alone, what is decided together, and what stays with the sponsor. It does not need to be formal, but it does need to be said.
Limit the scope on purpose. If the sponsor wants to stay close to product decisions, narrow the interim's assignment: fewer days, a shorter period, a more specific mandate (such as “hiring the right permanent product leader”), and an explicit statement that the sponsor is the product decision maker for that time.
Either way, in their daily work, the interim product leader needs to act confidently in their playing field and know how to get to decisions in areas where they explicitly don't have the mandate.
Matching the interim’s goals with availability of contributors
A goal in the brief only moves if the people whose input it needs have time for it. Direction and strategy work is the clearest case: An interim product leader can structure the process and prepare options, but the permanent leaders have to contribute and make the final call. When the calendar fills up with other important things, such as shareholder meetings, a big industry event or a company-wide change in ways of working, the direction work stalls. That is not a sign the topic does not matter. It means the capacity or the attention is not there.
The difference matters, because the fix is different. A leadership team that is simply busy needs to plan protected time and name a sponsor for the topic, or explicitly decide that this goal comes second. A leadership team that is uninterested needs a different conversation.
Start with context, not only documents
A typical onboarding for an interim is a list of people to meet and a pile of documents to read. Both help. Neither replaces time spent talking through the material with someone who holds the context and can connect the dots: why things are the way they are, what has been tried, what is politically sensitive.
If there is no predecessor to hand over, for whatever reason, the sponsor has to cover that role. Without those conversations, an interim moves into operational mode too quickly and spends the early weeks working with an incomplete picture. Pushing for enough attention on context work will feel uncomfortable for the interim product leader in such a fresh relationship, so if you are the sponsor, please plan enough of your time for this important onboarding.
In the same spirit, a good interim holds back on drastic or lasting changes until they understand the context, and talks them through with their sponsor first. It’s rather common that as soon as the interim leader is there, they will be confronted with various pending decisions. If the interim manager has people management responsibilities, it can even be the case that their new reports actively try to use their freshness to push for their interests. Giving the interim enough context is the best way to equip them for this.
Plan the end from the start
An interim assignment ends, and most of its value is decided in how it ends.
Timing. If the interim is expected to prepare a structural change, the end date should leave room for the rollout. A structural change that comes late in an assignment leaves the hardest part, making it work in practice, to the successors. Ideally, the interim also guides the first phase of implementation. If that is not possible, the next best thing is to name the limit openly and judge whether the people who will carry it are strong enough. Holding back a sensible change only because the interim will not be there to implement it makes the company dependent on the interim, which is the opposite of the point.
Handover. A written account of what changed compared to before is a start. More useful is talking it through: with the permanent leader taking over, with the team leads about the challenges you can already see coming, and with everyone affected by new responsibilities. Agreeing on who owns what in the new setup saves people from having to negotiate it from a blank page.
What you want to leave behind. A good interim leaves the organisation more capable of acting without them: leaders who have taken on more responsibility, a clearer way of working between departments, and a team that can carry on. In my experience, people stepping up and a process the whole company accepts say more about success than a list of deliverables.
Questions to answer before you hire an interim product leader
If you plan to hire an interim product leader, here are some questions to help you prepare and set the interim leader up for success:
Sharpen what you want
☐ What is the situation we are trying to change, and what do we see that tells us it needs changing?
☐ Which of our frustrations are about the product itself, and which are about how we decide, plan and work together?
☐ If an interim were already working with us, what would be different in an ordinary week?
☐ What have we already tried, and what happened?
☐ What do we want to keep exactly as it is?
☐ Where do we expect resistance, and from whom?
☐ Do we want someone who confirms our direction or someone who challenges it?
☐ How much time can each of us realistically give the interim in a normal week?
Set it up
☐ What should the interim cover, and what should wait or stay with us?
☐ Is there someone internal who is ready, trusted and can be promoted without a difficult way back?
☐ What should be true in 6 months that is not true today?
☐ What will the interim own, and what will they explicitly not take on?
☐ Who is the sponsor, and do they have the standing to back change?
☐ What signals will tell the sponsor that things are going in the right direction?
☐ Which decisions does the interim make alone, which together, and which stay with us?
☐ Do the permanent leaders have time for the direction work, and is it planned?
☐ Who will spend time with the interim in the first weeks to build shared context?
Yes, I occasionally do interim product leadership roles
With Hey Clarity, we help product organisations find clarity about their product direction, their organisational setup and their operating model, typically with a mix of consulting and coaching. When it fits the context, I also act as an product leader.