Rebuilding board trust in a leadership vacuum.

The situation

Three seats empty, and a board that had stopped trusting the numbers.

I was brought in by the private equity owner during a leadership vacuum — leading the finance team in the absence of a CEO and a Director of Finance, and shortly after the CFO's unexpected resignation.

The harder inheritance was not the org chart. It was the relationship with the board and the PE backer. Previous leadership had failed to answer the board's questions, and that failure had compounded into a high level of anxiety on both sides. When a board stops believing it will get a straight answer, every subsequent request arrives with more edge than the last, and the finance team starts operating defensively. That cycle was already well underway.

What I did

Answer the open questions first, then remove the reason they existed.

Trust is rebuilt by demonstration, not explanation. The sequence mattered more than any single action.

• Audited the finance and accounting function immediately, and came back with a clear set of recommendations and a roadmap of immediate wins — so the owner could see both the diagnosis and the path within weeks, not quarters.
• Made every monthly reporting deadline, and went further: anticipating most of the board's questions and answering them inside the reporting package before they had to be asked.
• Built action plans with the operational leaders and followed up on execution personally, so that finance commitments and operational reality stopped drifting apart.
• Re-allocated existing resources — no new headcount — to improve internal reporting, get significantly more out of the NetSuite investment already in place, and re-establish the communication channels between finance/accounting and the operational leaders that had quietly broken down.

What changed

Trust inside two months, and the conditions for a permanent CEO.

Within two months the board's trust was regained — every pending question addressed, and new ones tackled proactively rather than waited for.

The second-order effect mattered more than the first. Swift action alleviated the pressure on the teams, which created the right conditions for a new CEO to join a few months later and launch a strategic review on a stable base rather than a burning one. The finance team was subsequently rebuilt on the East Coast, co-located with the incoming CEO.

An interim seat is not judged by what happens during it. It is judged by what the permanent leader inherits.