Interim Management Can Relieve Stress During a Period of Organizational Change

An article in Gulf News titled Stress of Interim Management, discusses how hiring an interim executive can help a company during a period of organizational change.

The practice of hiring temporary managers (or head-renting) is aimed at relieving the potential problems inherent in major organisational change. It provides professional leadership management through a transitional phase by experts carefully selected for compatibility with a particular corporate environment. In exchange for the admittedly high cost, you are meant to enjoy a win-win situation. Interim managers are not only exceptionally well-qualified in their speciality, but also in the interim role itself, being able to steer you confidently towards a given objective within the necessary timescale.

One of the advantages of hiring an interim executives is that they can fill a vital role at a crucial time for the organization. A company can not afford to be leaderless for an extended period of time, while they seek a permanent replacement. In industries with a tremendous level of competition, the cost of inaction is too high, and can result in the competition closing the gap or stealing valuable market share. Interim management is one solution to making sure that a company thrives during a period of executive transition or organizational change. The interim executive can step in immediately to lead important initiatives or develop a winning strategy for growing sales. Having an interim executive provide leadership, while HR seeks a permanent replacement for a vacant executive position, can prevent a drop in revenue or market share during the transition between leaders. Like the article says, interim executives often possess a rare expertise in their specialty which can be a tremendous asset to a company with a specific problem, such as improving customer communications, implementing internet technologies and social media, or developing a positioning strategy. For experts in these areas and more, check out interim management company OneAccord.

Interim Marketing Executive to the Rescue

What if your company had millions dollars at risk due to a lack of marketing leadership in a key executive role? Whether a marketing executive just left the company or a shift in the business environment presents new opportunities or threats, an interim marketing executive can provide the needed leadership for positive revenue growth. The book Leadership on Demand describes some of the risks of not having a key executive position filled.

The more precisely you pin a cost to the problem, the easier it will be to justify the investment in an interim engagement. Is $2MM in revenue at risk? Is 1% of market share, valued at $15MM, at risk because the test marketing schedule of a new product is in jeopardy? Are you experiencing delays in acquiring $20MM additional financing because you’re spending half your time in the VP Marketing role, rather than 100% of your time in the CEO role? Loss of opportunity and loss of business momentum can have huge ramifications for your organization.

In a competitive environment, companies can not afford to wait months until a key executive position is filled by a permanent hire before taking action. In this time of rapid change in the business environment, companies can not afford to let the competition to pass by due to a lack of bandwidth at the executive level. These are some of the scenarios in which quickly hiring an experienced interim marketing executive can save the day.

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Interim Executive Doesn’t Have to Mean “Crisis”

by Chuck Besondy

I heard it again yesterday. A person mentioned that companies who are in a “crisis” or in a “turnaround” situation should consider interim management in operations, finance, sales, or marketing. That is a true statement, but the majority of interim engagements are not in troubled companies.

Just because a company brings in an interim manager it isn’t a sign the company is in trouble.

Most interim marketing and sales executives, for instance, are engaged by a company to address one or more of these situations:

• Revenue growth has flat-lined, or is in decline. What worked in the past isn’t working now and the management team needs objective insight, new energy and different skill sets for a season to help them point the growth curve in the right direction again.

• There’s a temporary gap in leadership, gap in skill set, or gap in bandwidth that has an unacceptably high opportunity cost associated with the gap.

There should be no scarlet letter associated with the hiring of an on-demand leader. It simply means the company is very smart about how it allocates its resources.

Chuck Besondy is a principal at One Accord Partners and is co-author of Leadership on Demand: How Smart CEO’s Tap Interim Management to Drive Revenue. You can read more about Interim Sales and Marketing Management by Chuck Besondy at his blog One Riot-One Ranger.

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Interim Management : Getting A Project Back On Track

by George Purdy

Your business project may be thrown into disarray if it loses a project manager. This may lead to wasted money, lost time, and an increased number of employees leaving the firm. One way to avoid this is to hire a consultant in the field of interim management. While most companies don’t do this, an interim manager can help your company in several ways.

The interim management consultants are the ones with a great amount of experience, in-depth knowledge of project management and who have scaled the heights in their fields. This assures you that the best person is being hired for your business change projects. Hiring an interim management consultant certified by the Institute for Change Management (ICM), is a great way to ensure you are hiring the best fit for the job.

Secondly, interim management consultants, unlike most traditional management consultants, have specialized training in the management of business change. Traditional project managers are skilled in guiding a project from start to finish, whereas interim management consultants have additional skills and talent in taking an incomplete, floundering project and putting it back on track.

Hiring an interim manager is a proven strategy for success. Interim managers tend to complete projects 25 percent faster than traditional managers and this is supported by a study by the Institute of Project Strategy in Business (IPSB). They were more efficient too and their projects tend to be more likely to meet deadlines: 72 percent completed on time compared to 60 percent of projects that were led by traditional managers.

Interim management can also lead to less employee turnover, which directly correlates with increased profits and happy shareholders. When an interim manager takes over a project, employees will know that it is in good hands and that they will receive the advice and leadership that they require, making them more likely to stay with the firm.

There are many reasons that companies may choose to hire interim managers. High-value projects may be in disarray after the previous manager’s departure, or a manager with a poor track record may have just been terminated. It makes good business sense to hire an interim manager to help complete projects, leading to improved profits and reduced employee turnover.

Businesses often suffer upheaval after losing a project manager. One way to limit the problems is to hire a consultant to serve as an interim manager. Interim management consultants have experience in project management, and they have specialized training in business change projects. They know exactly how to take on a floundering project and put it back on track. An interim manager can also improve the morale of employees working on an abandoned project. Employees working under an interim manager know that they will receive the advice and leadership they require. If you want to raise profits and lower turnover, hiring an interim manager makes good business sense.

George Purdy is a well-known public speaker on interim management and has written several articles and essays on it. For great tips and tricks to boost your knowledge on interim management at site: executive coaches.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 license. Photo by flgr.

Who Should Hire an Interim Marketing Executive?

First there is the issue of who and then there is the issue of who not.

Presidents, CEO’s, COO’s, and even CFO’s of companies should consider an interim executive if they have:

• Stalled or unacceptable levels of revenue

• An “empty chair” in the CMO, VP Sales, or VP Business Development roles

• Competitors growing and/or taking market share

• Tectonic shifts in the market without a strategic response.

Leaders should not hire an interim executive if the organizational culture has demonstrated a propensity to worship a high-end consulting firm who will write a beautiful report to adorn your desk – because an interim is going to roll up his/her sleeves and make things happen.

Another time leaders should not hire interims is when the culture suggests there is so much defensiveness that failure is unavoidable. One COO we interviewed for our book, “Leadership on Demand”, put it this way, “If you’re an interim, your staff looks at you just like the child looks at the stepfather: ‘You’re not my daddy’.“

Seasoned interims, who have been on these battlefields before, are boldly direct with their questions – in order to sniff out organizational resistance in advance. It can save a lot of energy all around if the horse isn’t ready for a jockey.

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.

Filling the Marketing Performance Gap: The Role of Interim Marketers

The decreasing average tenure of marketing executives or CMOs is a trend that partly reflects how difficult it is to market in the present environment.

According to the recent article “The new permanent crisis of marketing” from CNet:

From the late 1990s to 2004, Starbucks appointed a new marketing head five times in seven years, and Coca-Cola changed its CMO four times in six years. This trend is mirrored globally: In a recent CMO survey by the Economist, 63 percent of survey respondents said that the global marketing head at their companies had served for less than three years. The average tenure of CMOs at US companies has shrunk to just 16 months.

One result of constant turnover at the top of marketing is that there is often a decrease in marketing effectiveness when one CMO leaves or is fired. It may be months before a new head of marketing is found or a new CMO hits their full stride in the new position. This results is a roller coaster in marketing effectiveness that peaks when a CMO has executed a new strategy but then dips when the CMO leaves or gets fired.

However hiring an interim marketing executive can fill the performance vacuum while HR seeks out a new “permanent” CMO and while the new hire gets acclimated to the company. This could prevent companies from losing millions in sales when marketing performance falls during the transition of a CMO.The interim marketing executive can maintain the previous marketing strategy, or if a change is required, to start execution of a new strategy until they can pass on the baton to the new hire.

To learn more about the benefits of interim marketing management, visit OneAccord’s website.

What is an Interim Executive? Interview with Interim Management Expert Chuck Besondy

Chuck Besondy is a principal at One Accord Partners and is co-author of Leadership on Demand: How Smart CEO’s Tap Interim Management to Drive Revenue. You can read more about Interim Sales and Marketing Management by Chuck Besondy at his blog One Riot-One Ranger.

Can you give a brief explanation of what an interim executive is and how they can help an organization?

To answer this question properly would require writing a book, which has been done. Visit www.leadership-on-demand.com.

I’ve seen many definitions of interim management. The one I like best is:

“Interim management is the temporary provision of additional management resources and skills. Interim management can be seen as the short-term assignment of a proven heavyweight interim executive manager to manage a period of transition, crisis or change within a company. In this situation, a permanent role may be unnecessary or impossible to find at short notice. Additionally, there may be nobody internally who is suitable for, or available to take up the position in question.”

The way this alternative staffing solution helps organizations is often profound and significant. If we look at the functions of Sales and Marketing, interim executives fill gaps in leadership, fill gaps in skill sets and best practices, fill gaps in bandwidth, and fill gaps in expertise—all for a season—so that higher levels of revenue performance and growth can be achieved. Sometimes the business is in a crisis or turnaround situation, most often however the company simply needs to quickly fill a critical short-term gap in order to maintain momentum and growth.

When should a company consider hiring an interim executive?

One way to look at this question is to realize that most executives and senior managers are in reality employed for an interim period. They just don’t know in advance when their contract ends. The fact is, a company uses a senior manager only for as long as that manager provides value to the organization. That may mean 6 months. That may mean 3 years or more. Consider that the average tenure for a CMO in a large corporation is 27 months and you begin to see the truth in this.

A company should consider hiring an interim executive (in marketing or sales) when any of the following situations exist:

Revenue has flat-lined or is in a state of decline and the existing revenue team is unable to turn the situation around.
Inject interim managers with objective insight, fresh energy and proven best practices into the organization to work side-by-side the existing team for a season.

A leadership gap exists.
If there is going to be a vacancy at a director, VP, or C-level in the marketing and sales organization for more than 2 months the organization will experience a loss of momentum. Put an interim executive in place to provide skilled leadership while a search for a FTE progresses.

A bandwidth gap.
Most companies face this situation at least once a year. Typically, the gap in resource bandwidth is associated with the go-to-market activities for a new product, or a market expansion. In these situation there simply isn’t enough experienced managers to effectively handle the temporary surge in work load. Bring in interims to either drive the new initiative, or to maintain the primary business activities.

A skill-set gap.
Small companies trying to become mid-tier companies; mid-tier companies trying to break through to be large companies frequently face the same problem. The management team lacks some of the experience and skills necessary to take the company to the next level. An interim executive can provide that needed level of expertise for a season, taking the company to that new level, and coaching the existing management team along the way.

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Scott Powell Discusses the Client Value of Interim Marketing Executives

Interim marketing executives can help companies achieve and sustain revenue growth. Scott Powell discusses the value of finding an experienced interim executive for a company looking to grow.

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