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 — first

Earn the right to be believed, then fix the reason you had to.

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.

What I did — then

Rebuild reporting, and stop being the only route to a number.

Answering questions faster is a holding pattern. The durable fix was changing who could get an answer without asking finance at all.

• Rebuilt internal reporting from the ground up — no new headcount, existing resources re-allocated — so that what the business saw about itself was accurate, timely, and consistent between functions.
• Made financial information self-serve across the organization by getting significantly more out of the NetSuite investment already in place. The company had bought the capability years earlier and never used it. Operational leaders could finally pull their own numbers instead of queueing behind a finance analyst.
• Re-established cross-functional collaboration between finance, accounting and the operational leaders — channels that had quietly broken down while everyone was busy defending themselves. Action plans were built jointly and followed up on personally, so finance commitments and operational reality stopped drifting apart.
• Built the three-year business plan with the incoming CEO, giving the new leadership a financial spine for the strategic review rather than a blank page.

What changed

Trust inside two months, and a company that could see itself.

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

The more lasting change was structural. Reporting went from something finance produced to something the organization could consult, and the cross-functional channels that had closed were open again. Swift action alleviated the pressure on the teams, which created the right conditions for a new CEO to join a few months later — and I built the three-year plan alongside them. 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.