Royal Navy support
Challenged a c.£1bn internal provision using thirty years of actual fleet-cost evidence; the analysis supported a c.£500m requirement and a c.£410m fully burdened negotiation basis.
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Interim CEO · Interim COO · Operating Partner
Direct executive authority where value, control or confidence is at risk.
Interim appointments rarely begin with a complete operating picture. Reporting, cash, delivery and stakeholder accounts may diverge. The first responsibility is to take clear authority, establish what is actually happening and move the enterprise while options remain.
Executive and operating experience spans a US-quoted company, food manufacturing, financial services, mineral exploration, AI and cyber acquisition activity, and defence.
Executive authority to act.
An illustrative first day
The Arrival
Day one. You walk into the office and the picture is already fractured.
Finance says the cash position is worse than the board was told. Operations says Finance does not understand what production really requires. Leadership has departed, been suspended or remains in place without the confidence it once enjoyed. Customers have gone unusually quiet. Teams are protecting their own ground.
Three people offer three different accounts. Each account hangs together internally. None tells you what the organisation as a whole is actually doing. When you ask for evidence, you receive narratives.
The temptation is to arrive with the answer: cut overhead, change management, restructure sales. Those interventions may eventually be necessary. Applied before the problem is understood, they may simply create more damage.
The first responsibility is to establish what is real.
Separate evidence from narrative
Not merely what the board was told; not what a confident manager believes; not the most convenient explanation. Examine cash movements against the forecast, orders against the order book, customer concerns against actual commitments, and what the people closest to the work can demonstrate.
Cash figures, customer conversations and operational data are not infallible. They must be reconciled. That is the point: distinguish what is known, what is inferred and what is merely assumed.
Ask Finance which figures are reconciled and which are estimates. Ask Operations to show the constraint rather than describe the frustration. Ask Sales which customers are genuinely at risk, why, and what evidence supports the assessment.
Then make the first decision the evidence supports. Not the perfect decision: the one that can protect liquidity, customers or delivery while the picture improves. Preserve the ability to correct course as new facts emerge.
The character required to take command
Taking executive authority requires more than technical competence. Intellect and critical assessment help establish what is happening; judgement and courage determine what must change. Openness, honesty, tact, listening, relationship-building, trust and strength of character allow an interim leader to act through people rather than simply impose decisions upon them.
Authority must be clear even when evidence is incomplete. The interim must be able to act without waiting for universal agreement, explain the risks candidly, and create the conditions for course correction if an assumption proves wrong.
That requires listening to people who know the territory better than an incoming executive does. It also requires telling the board what is happening, not merely what it wishes to hear, and accepting responsibility for the actions taken under the mandate.
Steven’s core characteristics: observations in the record
References and formal officer assessments provide independent observations of specific behaviours, rather than proving an entire list of personal attributes by assertion. One senior referee described a “highly effective and conscientious manager” who was “very good at inspiring people to deliver”; other assessments record “High quality performance” and “Management of strategic vision”. Read the original recommendations and assessment extracts →
The commercial evidence is separate: one regulated insurer returned to positive EBITDA within 100 days; in food manufacturing, a forecast loss moved towards projected EBITDA over approximately 90 days. The latter was a forecast position at handover, not a realised full-year result. Examine the role, outcomes and evidence boundaries →
The aim is not a heroic rescue or a report. It is a business that can operate successfully after the interim has left.
Recover control. Restore performance. Reopen the route to value.
Steven rapidly earns the confidence of inherited teams, aligns them around the mission and converts urgency into disciplined action across regulated, owner-led and sponsor-backed settings.
“highly focused executor”
Selected from 19 public professional recommendations on LinkedIn. Review selected supporting evidence →
- Stabilise fast Protect cash, customers and critical operations.
- Recover momentum Remove constraints and align authority with action.
- Unlock value Convert control into measurable operating progress.
Demonstrated: one regulated intervention restored positive EBITDA within 100 days; a separate owner-led intervention moved a c.£4m forecast loss towards c.£2m projected EBITDA in approximately 90 days. A documented embedded appointment within a Dunedin-backed portfolio company combined commercial execution with separate sponsor reporting.
Board and committee experience includes two years chairing an Audit Board and wider audit, assurance and risk responsibilities, with principal functional focus on risk, major real-estate portfolios, and HR and workforce change including TUPE and trade-union engagement and negotiation. This supports simultaneous control of financial, people, property and institutional risk.
Location and working model: UK or international; on-site, hybrid and remote arrangements are considered according to the mandate. Opening-stage and control-recovery interventions will ordinarily require substantial on-site presence.
Operating framework
The First 180 Days: from mandate and authority to value recovery.
A structured intervention framework for the pre-arrival phase, first 72 hours, 30 days, 100 days and 180 days of an executive mandate.
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Additional operating proof
DTR team reset
Ended a non-producing consultancy cohort, removing an estimated c.£5m annualised external cost; rebuilt targeted capability and converted 1,200 plans into one operating picture.
Review the complete record →Cross-government delivery
Secretary, delivery coordinator and evaluation lead for implementation of a Cabinet-level Command Paper; integrated evidence from ministers and senior officials across Whitehall into the framework supporting the First Annual Report.
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Best fit
A sponsor, owner or board faces a material, cross-functional problem that business-as-usual management can no longer recover alone.
- Deteriorating earnings, cash or operational performance
- Private-equity portfolio-company underperformance
- Post-acquisition under-delivery
- Leadership or governance discontinuity
- Loss of operating control
- Refinancing, covenant or liquidity pressure
- Exit or institutional-readiness preparation
- Stalled integration or transformation
- Divergence between investment thesis and operational reality
Operating sequence
Evidence
Regulated insurance
Food manufacturing
PE-backed portfolio company
Fixed-term operating appointment
Listed company
Positive EBITDA within 100 days
Operating control changed while the incumbent CEO’s necessary regulated authorities were retained.
Approximately 90 days
A c.£4m forecast loss moved towards c.£2m projected EBITDA. The c.£2m was a projected position, not a realised full-year result.
Embedded post-MBO assurance
A contemporaneous WFEL email documents Steven as Marketing Director; the additional Dunedin reporting remit remains his first-hand account, supported by the surrounding transaction and relationship record.
Five-year enterprise integration
An initial three-month fixed-term appointment was repeatedly extended for five years. Chief Operating Officer was the accepted working title for the integrated responsibility; the Record reconciles it with the formal Colonel-level (OF5) appointment.
Former public-company CEO
Public-company reporting: As CEO of Brookmount Explorations Inc. (OTC: BMXI), a US public company historically listed in Berlin and Frankfurt, Steven records direct responsibility for producing three quarterly reports during his tenure—his first experience of recurring public-market reporting, disclosure discipline and investor scrutiny.