Last weekend Elon Musk sent emails to US government workers with the subject line “What did you do last week?”. People were asked to send back five bullet points summarising their accomplishments by midnight on the Monday. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk posted. When leading change, there are many ways to engage with your colleagues, but this isn’t one of them.

A mix of formal and informal exchanges such as the renowned Management by Walking (or Wandering) Around (MWBA)¹ was a key tenet to innovation and change at HP. In fact, the ‘HP Way’ meant lots of incremental communication about progress, ideas and ways to do things better. CEO of Nvidia, a large semiconductor maker, Jensen Huang has for years encouraged his staff to note down what they are working on or noticing. These regular communications are known as Top Five Things². In reading these notes regularly Huang gets a real-time feed on what is happening in the business. This enables faster, more agile and more responsive decision-making. Interim executives, who work on an assignment basis in businesses to deliver change also offer a vital real-time communication channel.

Interim executives are forever walking around as they work, engaging with permanent employees, learning about the business they are there to help energise and change. Tony Martin, a veteran interim executive, told me recently that one of his first actions on assignment is to find the rich seam of informal networks and influence. Through this networking, he spreads and shares learning quickly across the whole organisation. That’s not the best part about hiring interims when you need change delivered.

Interim executives usually start with a five or six-point plan to implement. Each month they’re summarising what they’ve done, what they’ve learned and discovered, and what they are going to do next. Interims provide businesses with insightful, real-time, agile, and proactive change expertise. There is no waiting for an email from Elon Musk asking, “What did you do last week?”. It’s already being done.

¹Peters, T. and Waterman, R. (1995). In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. London: HarperCollins.

²Clark, P. (2025). The one thing you needed to do last week. [online] @FinancialTimes. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/0f56c799-d1fa-49fa-9a23-b87b9b88cd9f [Accessed 11 Mar. 2025].