Nvidia’s board has named CFO Colette Kress interim CEO following Jensen Huang’s resignation, effective immediately. She keeps the CFO job too. The board is searching for a permanent CEO, inside and outside the company.
Let’s assume Kress is holding the fort until they find the right person, which absolutely will not be her. What should she do?
The CFO’s instinct is to protect the numbers. Resist it. Nvidia’s numbers are the output. What she needs to protect is the input. Her order of priority: first, the brand and reputation. Second, the culture, strategy and operating approach. Third, short-term tactics. Finances come last.
Brand first
In 2014, Target replaced its long-time CEO with CFO John Mulligan on an interim basis after a damaging data breach. I wrote then that a brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships behind a customer’s choice, and that if culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage, the brand is the value that culture creates. Mulligan’s job was to stop the bleeding and hold the fort.
Kress has the same job. Nvidia’s brand is the trust of its customers, partners, governments, employees and investors. Every one of them is asking the same question this week: is anything about this company changing?
She should call the most important ones personally, before they hear it somewhere else. She should tell the people most affected first, one on one, then small groups, then everyone. And she should say one thing everywhere: same strategy, same roadmap, same commitments. Her first public test is the earnings call on November 17. Treat it as a brand moment first and a financial one second. No surprises. Nothing speculative about the board’s investigation.
Shore up the culture
As Drucker told us, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Nvidia’s culture has been organized around one person for 33 years, and by most accounts decision-making was concentrated in his hands. That is a recipe for a decision vacuum and quiet fear.
Expect people to be scared. Not knowing is scary. They will look to her for direction, even as an interim. Her job is to calm everyone down and keep their momentum going.
Two moves matter most. First, support the culture as it is as much as possible and leave changing it to whomever comes next. Second, make decision rights explicit. Who decides what, now that the founder is gone? Reinforce the leadership team and put them out front.
And eschew the perks. When Tim Cook ran Apple during Steve Jobs’ medical leave, he kept the COO title, not an interim CEO title. The most effective interim leaders don’t take the fancier office or the leather jacket. They do the least prestigious, highest-impact work and leave the glory to others.
Reaffirm the strategy and operating approach
This is the easiest part of the job if she resists the urge to prove something. Tell everyone to follow the strategies in place and keep doing what they are doing. Keep the technical leaders visibly in charge of the roadmap. Keep the same operating rhythm and the same discipline on customer commitments.
Cook did well at Apple by doing things the way Jobs wanted them done, not necessarily the way Jobs would have done them himself. Kress should do the same. No irreversible bets. No pet projects. Anything unpopular can wait for the permanent CEO.
Manage the short-term tactics
The tactical list is short. Earnings week. Delivery promises to customers. Relationships with governments. Keeping the key people who make the roadmap real. Ask the question we ask in any crisis: where do we focus our efforts first? Then work in that order.
She also has two hats on. She is the CEO and the CFO. The same person can’t be the company’s calm leader and the daily voice of finance. She should name someone to run finance day to day and free herself for the harder job.
Then, finally, the finances
Kress knows this part better than anyone. Steady guidance, no surprises, capital allocation unchanged. If the brand and culture hold, the numbers follow. If they crack, no guidance will fix it.
Keep the interim in interim
Every interim role needs an exit plan. If the board does decide to make her permanent, make it a non-event: no big announcement, no switching offices or titles. The people deciding will be basing their choice on how she has already fit in and delivered. Either way, she’ll have set up her successor well.
The board has its own work. The board didn’t have a succession plan that had been telegraphed to the market, as one governance expert put it. An interim CEO is what you get when you aren’t ready. The board should set a timeline, run a real search, and not leave Kress in limbo.
Implications for you
Who is your named interim for each critical seat? If one of your leaders left tomorrow, who would step in, and what would they do first? Answer that now, while it’s a planning exercise and not a crisis.
