Why Mid-Sized Organisations Modernising Can Need More Than a Single Interim Executive 

Why Mid-Sized Organisations Modernising at Pace Need More Than a Single Interim Executive

Every mid-sized organisation eventually hits the same wall. The strategy is clear, the board wants pace, and the internal leadership bench doesn’t stretch far enough to deliver it. A core system needs replacing. Finance must scale. AI needs to move from slideware to daily staff use. And the person who can lead all of that isn’t in the business today.

The instinctive response is to hire an interim executive. It’s a safe, well-worn move, and often the right one. But market data suggests that for a growing number of mid-sized organisations, a single interim hire on a fixed-term contract solves only part of the problem. Understanding the difference between interim, fractional and multi-skill team models can help you choose the right one.

We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly. When one of Australia’s most prominent brands needed to inject capability into its 300+ strong B2B commercial leadership team, Emmet Consulting developed a transformation and succession plan, supported on an interim basis by marketing expertise. Over 12 months, it achieved 20% sales growth in a flat market.

The Market Has Matured, and Demand Has Changed Shape

According to Watermark Search International’s FY26/27 Interim Executive Survey, the 16th edition and the largest cohort in its history, organisations are increasingly turning to interim leadership, and not only to cover sudden vacancies. This year’s report examines three business scenarios that trigger demand for interim leaders: transformation, interim transition and functional capability plugging.  It also shows how quickly these leaders deliver. 92% made a meaningful impact within the first month, and 54% within the first week. Three in four (74%) operate at CEO or C-suite level.

These problems are rarely single-function. A digital transformation touches finance, operations, HR and technology all at once. A turnaround requires commercial discipline, people leadership and delivery capability across sales, marketing and commercial modelling in parallel. A single interim executive often can’t fill that gap, particularly in mid-sized businesses without layers of people to support the change.

Why Breadth and Flexibility Matter as Much as Depth

A single interim executive excels at depth, such as an interim CFO steering a capital raise or a CIO leading a system migration. But when a challenge spans multiple functions, one hire often falls short.

Consider a business with declining revenue. The commercial transformation requires a new CRM, sales structures need a channel review, and marketing needs a full reset. You may need 40% of a Chief Revenue Officer, 30% of a senior marketing lead and a commercial analyst. This is where Emmet’s multi-skill teams deliver by:

• Running connected initiatives concurrently and aligning their outcomes.
• Providing specialised expertise on a modest budget.
• Offering continuity of judgement across a program, avoiding disconnected specialists working in silos.

What this looks like in practice

After a major acquisition, one of Australia’s leading B2B organisations had to integrate a large, disparate sales organisation: over 200 people managing well over $500m in annual revenue, across Business, Enterprise and Government brands. The problem spanned sales, finance, data, product, and HR.

We consolidated data from two CRM platforms, Finance, Product and HR into a single source of truth, then used it to reshape the team within three months. The result was multi-million-dollar efficiencies, released for reinvestment in priority growth areas in under twelve weeks, while maintaining double-digit year-on-year growth through the change. The model was handed over to the client, followed by a new reporting suite and cadence for executive-level performance management.

It’s the kind of multi-function problem a single interim hire would struggle to cover.

Duration matters 

Traditional interims have a defined start and end date. Ongoing fractional support flexes up during peak periods, board deadlines or crises, then scales back down without a new search every time priorities shift.

Interim: a defined mission with a clear handover

One of Australia’s leading online retailers engaged Emmet for an Interim CMO to lead a team of over 45 through the launch of a new online learning proposition during its busiest trading period. The engagement delivered its sales revenue goals, a new sales reporting infrastructure, a new brand proposition and a successful go-to-market for the new product line. The final workstream supported recruitment of a permanent CMO, so the handover was seamless.

Fractional: ongoing leadership that flexes with the business

A leading Australian language services provider needed a commercial strategy to maintain market share as AI reshaped its industry. Working as extended members of the executive team over 12 months, Emmet partners prioritised securing key government contracts, strengthened business development, aligned product investment to market opportunities, helped recruit a chief product and technology officer, and repositioned the brand. The business secured some of Australia’s largest Federal Government tenders, giving it the commercial stability to invest in its future.

The Broader Landscape: AI and the Skills Shortfall

Fractional and interim leadership is becoming mainstream. Gartner projects that over 30% of midsize enterprises will have at least one fractional executive on retainer by 2027. Sci-Tech Today’s 2026 round-up of fractional hiring data reports that LinkedIn profiles of fractional executives grew from about 2,000 to 110,000 between 2022 and 2024.

The pressure behind that shift is clear. KPMG Australia reports that new technologies, AI and digital transformation are the top challenges facing businesses today. Meanwhile, the Future Skills Organisation highlights that Australia is heading toward a shortfall of more than 370,000 digitally skilled workers.

When rising pressure to modernise meets a shrinking internal talent pool, the engagement model matters just as much as the individual.

Fractional, Interim or a Team: Which Suits?

Not every engagement requires a team, and not every need has a neat end date. Choose your model based on the shape of the problem.

Choose ongoing fractional support when:

• The brief sits squarely within one function (for example, financial oversight or technology), but the need for senior judgement has no natural end date.
• Permanent leadership in adjacent functions can absorb the coordination.
• The need ebbs and flows rather than switching off after a single project.
• You want institutional knowledge and continuity without the cost of a full-time hire.

Choose a multi-skill team when:

• The initiative spans multiple functions or requires several types of expertise at once.
• Your permanent bench cannot absorb the coordination load while the work is underway.
• Speed is critical, and you can’t afford the lag of hiring specialists one after another.
• You want the organisation to end up with embedded capability, not just a departing expert.

The Real Question

The debate between interim and permanent leadership is settled. Modern interims see it as a deliberate career path, and businesses treat it as a strategic lever. The question mid-sized organisations now need to ask is: does this need one leader engaged flexibly, or a small team working to the same brief at the same time?

How Emmet Can Help

Emmet’s model is built to get that call right. Whether through ongoing fractional support or a multi-skill team, you get the speed and objectivity of interim leadership matched to the actual shape of your work, without waiting on a single hero hire to coordinate specialists you don’t have.

We’ve held interim and fractional CMO and CRO roles and built commercial modelling, market entry strategies, and brand repositioning across telecommunications, language services, health and wellbeing, education, SaaS, and cyber security. Our team has led marketing, sales and commercial strategy programs across global enterprises, private equity-backed businesses and brands scaled to the ASX.

We back clients in three ways:

• Projects: discrete pieces of work such as a strategic plan, market entry strategy, commercial model or brand repositioning.
• Interim and fractional leadership: hands-on leaders who take responsibility for commercial improvement, KPIs and OKRs.
• Outsourced marketing: a dedicated team embedded in your organisation, owning your KPIs and working as your team.

See more of our work

Facing a challenge that spans more than one function? Talk to us about whether you need one leader, flexibly engaged, or a small team working to the same brief. Get in touch

Drafted by Lisa Edmonds, Founding Partner, Emmet Consulting. To supplement our hands-on experience, we drew on: Watermark Search International, The Interim Executive Survey FY26/27 | Gartner, Reshaping How You Think About Fractional Executives in 2026 (2026) | Sci-Tech Today, Fractional Executive Hiring Statistics (2026) | KPMG Australia, Keeping Us Up at Night survey, 8th edition (2026) | Future Skills Organisation (2026)