Interim Operations
Operational responsibility for a fixed period – with the authority to decide, inside a running business.
An operational role has to be bridged at short notice, but the business cannot wait for the permanent appointment.
The substance is the same as in the rest of my work: understand how the work runs, improve it, and get it implemented – without stopping the business.
What is different here is the role itself – carrying the responsibility for as long as nobody in the business is carrying it.
An established business has to keep running, but an operational leadership or decision-making role is vacant, overloaded, or temporarily unfilled.
Take responsibility inside the running business, make the decisions, steady the processes, bridge the operational leadership.
Typical situations
- A production, service or logistics lead is unfilled or out – and the orders keep coming.
- The role is filled, but so overloaded that decisions pile up and handovers stay unresolved.
- A replacement is being recruited and will take months. Until then, nobody decides and nobody owns it.
- The business is project-driven and needs operational responsibility for a fixed stretch – a ramp-up, a season, a peak in orders.
Who this page is for
- Managing directors
- COO
- Head of production
- Head of service
- Head of logistics
I was building processes before AI existed – operationally, inside the business, with the authority to decide. Not from a textbook and not as a spectator.
Operational responsibility, with the authority to decide
At a medical technology company in Hamburg I took operational responsibility for production, service and logistics – with decision-making authority and working directly on the floor. I worked alongside the team first; the recommendations came afterwards.
My own business keeps running
My own company keeps running day to day without me being there in person. That is the proof that the processes I talk about work without me.
- in event technology and project management since 2007
- self-employed since 2010
- Managing Director of Lifeline-Eventservice GmbH
- Business Transformation Expert (IHK), 200 teaching hours
- Process Management Specialist (IHK)
- Digitalisation Specialist (IHK)
- Change Management Specialist (IHK)
- Agile Leadership Specialist (IHK)
- Agile Project Management Specialist (IHK)
Six IHK qualifications, 450 teaching hours in total. IHK is the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The certificates back up the practical experience. They do not replace a reference.
How I work
Understand where things actually stand
I work alongside the team first and watch how the processes really run, before I judge them.
Settle responsibilities and handovers
Who decides what, who supplies whom, where processes depend on each other – written down and binding.
Implement the measures
Make the decisions, steady the processes, see changes through while the business runs – not just recommend them.
Document so it can be handed over
Documented so that the business, and whoever takes the role permanently, can carry on without me.
Pure analysis, pure documentation, or a purely executing specialist role without decision-making authority are not what this is about. I do not take on secretarial, back-office or minute-taking roles.
If this is a defined piece of work rather than a role, the process and transformation project is the better fit. If a new operation is to be built from scratch, that is setting up operations end to end.
Let us talk about the mandate.
In the first conversation we clarify the starting position, the area of responsibility and the time frame. Available from November 2026, preliminary talks any time.