A reader question that recurs constantly: "I've been covering the Head of role for eight months since my boss left. I'm doing the whole job. Every time I ask about making it permanent, I get 'soon'. What am I missing?"
Here's the mechanism, and it stings: the arrangement is perfect for them, and every month of excellent unpriced coverage proves it needs no change. The company currently has the senior role delivered at the junior salary, by someone too invested to drop it. "Soon" is not a delay. From the company's side, it's the plan working.
I sat in the meetings where interim arrangements got discussed. The sentence that kills confirmation is always a version of "why change anything? It's working." Understand that sentence and you understand the job: excellence alone cannot resolve an interim role, because excellence is what funds the delay. What resolves it is changing the cost of the status quo. Three steps.
Step one: present the role as already occupied
Build the case from the evidence file (day 2): "In eight months I've delivered [three outcomes with numbers] in the role." Outcomes, not effort, and at the level of the role, not your old one. The purpose is to shift the question in the approver's head from "is she ready?" (a risk assessment, easily deferred) to "why is this not formalised?" (an anomaly, which bureaucracies itch to close). You are not applying for the job. You are pointing out that the job is filled and the paperwork is behind.
Step two: ask for a date, not a decision
"I'd like us to agree the path to making this permanent, with a date. And if the company doesn't see me in the role long-term, I need to know that, so I can plan."
The second sentence is the whole move. Calm, professional, and it introduces the cost that has been missing from their side of the ledger: you are a flight risk they haven't priced. No threat is made, which is why it works; threats trigger defence, while facts trigger planning. Any competent manager hears that sentence and starts calculating what your departure costs mid-arrangement, which is the calculation you need them running.
Step three: set the private deadline
Decide now what happens if the date passes: the number of months, and the action. Then update your CV before the meeting, not because you're leaving, but because negotiators with live alternatives sit differently in chairs, and the difference is audible. Note also what you're accumulating regardless of outcome: months of Head-of-role delivery is Head-of-role evidence, and every other employer will happily award the title your current one is renting. That fact is not a threat to deploy. It's a floor under your negotiation, and floors are what produce calm.
The general rule
This protocol generalises past interim roles. Any temporary arrangement past month three (covering scope, day 13; "acting" anything; the stretch assignment that quietly became permanent) follows the same physics: the status quo persists until it has a cost. Diarise a review date the moment anything "temporary" begins, and you'll never need the retroactive version.
Your assignment
If you're carrying anything temporary past month three, book the date conversation this month. If you're not, set the calendar rule for when you are.
Talk soon, Yasar
P.S. Pressure-testing this exact conversation before having it is a good use of fifteen free minutes: https://ovdlab.com/book/team/strategy-discovery-call/15min
