Some CEOs just can't seem to settle into retirement. Perhaps the most prominent restless exec is former General Electric CEO Jack Welch. Now, at 71, he's hinting at coming back to Corporate America as the new owner of the Boston Globe.

Mark Rittmanic may not know Jack, but he understands Welch's itch to get back in the game. Rittmanic runs ForteCEO, which pairs retired and semi-retired C-level executives with ambitious small- and medium-sized companies who need a temporary CEO that can take them to the next level. Think of it as pinch hitting for the corporate world.

Working with ForteCEO was a great arrangement for George Lampros, 49, formerly vice president of worldwide marketing at Nalco, an international provider of water treatment services. Nalco was sold in 2003 and all its senior level executives were laid off. Lampros said he received a very fair package and could have stayed out of the rat race. But he wanted somewhere to put his managerial knowledge. "The boredom was making me crazy," he says.

There was no time for boredom at his first assignment. His task: To build a Midwest consumer products company that made health and beauty care products to the point where it could be sold. Before the buyer's bank would loan the money, it wanted to see better-kept financials and guidance about how well the company would perform in the future. Lampros, who is chairman of the audit committee at a Chicago bank, was well suited for the job. When he arrived in 2005, he spent several days analyzing the company and produced a report listing about 100 ideas to grow the business. "You have to love problem-solving," says Lampros.

ForteCEO's concept isn't entirely new. There are large management turnaround firms such as Grisanti, Galef & Goldress and Alvarez and Marsal, but they largely work with publicly held companies that are in serious financial trouble. They're also different because they tend to send in teams of consultants who then work with a committee, and it can be much harder to achieve change that way. That's not usually the case with the companies that call Rittmanic. His executives work one-on-one with a company's founder and actually help them run the company. ForteCEO works exclusively with privately held companies, many of which are already doing well and looking to get better. Other firms are going through transitions and need help either getting to another level, or to fill in a vacancy left by an outgoing CEO or other C-level exec.

There are 240 CEOs-for-hire in Rittmanic's database, and each has experience as an executive for a privately held company. Some have backgrounds in banks; others in marketing or Internet start-ups. Companies in need of help contact Northbrook, Ill.-based ForteCEO, and Rittmanic and his team search for the best-suited executive. "It's like Match.com for business owners with issues," he says. Executives generally spend six months to a year at their assignment, then switch to another one or take time off.

Marshall Waksmundzki called Forte in 2003 because his company, Cabworks, which performs elevator installations, had become too big for him to control. "We had all the right components: a lot of talent, energy and a strong work ethic," says Waksmundzki, Cabworks' president. "What we were missing was financial savvy and leadership training." A banker recommended Forte, but Waksmundzki was skeptical. "Having dealt with consultants, there was hesitation on my part," he says. "They have a lot of wisdom, but they don't do any actual work."

Waksmundzki was quickly impressed. The CEO they brought in had experience with expansion. He taught Waksmundzki how to better delegate and helped reorganize the company's chain of command. Positive change came quickly. "We went from struggling internally with our own leadership issues to being reorganized and redisciplined within the first three months," he says.

These CEOs are not consultants. Take it from John Kopek--he's been one. At 54, he wanted to keep a hand in the business world but was tired of the crazy hours and frequent flier miles he logged as a consultant. Plus, it was hard to implement change at the companies he was assigned to. Any suggestions were run past committees that each had their own agendas. In his new role, he works directly with business owners to figure out where to take a company. "The idea is, we have a scarred, seasoned soldier talking to a new lieutenant," says Kopek, who was formerly president of North American operations for Compass, a European-based IT performance improvement consulting firm. "We don't bring in six young consultants who put up a bunch of charts and graphs."

The most common assignments are with company founders who have spent much of their lives building their businesses from scratch. They get to a point where they need to sell or take the company to the next level. That in itself means the owner needs to learn a new set of leadership skills. "You run a company very differently when it's a $6 million revenue company versus a $30 million revenue company," says Kopek. Much of the advice Kopek imparts has to do with teaching owners how to delegate responsibility. "You don't get trained in school on how to do that," says Kopek. "It comes with experience."

John McGinnis has plenty of it. At 64, he's inching toward retirement and splits his time between his homes in Wisconsin and Florida. "I'm in that 'getting toward retirement' stage," he says, "but I'm looking for something to do when I'm not in Florida. This way, I can hook into assignments but don't have to worry about finding assignments myself."

He recently worked with an Illinois-based company that makes window displays for stores like Kohl's and Target. The owners bought the business and were qualified salespeople, but they had no idea how to run the books. They were growing rapidly and brought McGinnis in to teach them how to report financial statements, offer guidance to the bank and correctly manage the cash flow. He identified someone within the company suited to do the job and then worked with him for three months.

Forte's CEOs come from a wide range of backgrounds. McGinnis has been CEO of five companies, both nationally and abroad. Despite all their differences, Kopek verbalizes one element that they all have: "I have an extremely low tolerance for boredom." When an interim executive steps in to run the company, you won’t be left out in the cold. You and the executive will work together to plan and execute change that makes sense for your company. Depending on the situation, the change being executed may also open up new business opportunities for you and the management team to capitalize on.

by Tara Weiss
Forbes.com