What is Interim Management?
Interim Management is an extremely powerful solution for the resolution of strategic management problems in a company, based on the hiring of an interim and temporary management service of a given key function.
For a better understanding, let’s break down the definition into 3 parts:
- “Solving strategic management problems”
When we talk about “strategic management problems” it means that there is an important gap between the results achieved, in any of its angles of analysis, by an executive and those that were expected of him, either at the company level or in a specific function of the organization.
- “Interim and temporary management service”
In this case, we are talking about the possibility of incorporating a “high value-added service”, even when itis carried out on a one-person basis, instead of an “employee”. This service will be developed for a limited period and with the corresponding powers, having an absolute focus on a management that achieves the expected results
- “Determined key function”
Here we mean that you will develop your efforts in relation to a key function of the organization, whether as a general manager, as a finance, human resources, technology, production executive or any function that is defined as key and strategic for the company.
Why in some cases is it better to opt for an interim manager than to hire a replacement?
Obviously, the most used alternative is to search for a new resource in the market and proceed to the corresponding replacement. But in many cases, it is more convenient to lean towards this interim management solution than that of a permanent replacement of the current executive. Let’s look at the following analysis:
On the one hand, when it is imperative to solve a strategic management problem, we are talking about the need to have a very high-level professional profile, with an important background of experience and a great baggage of knowledge and skills, but simultaneously, which can achieve the goals in the short and medium term.
Let’s think that a process of search or hunting of a profile of this nature, involves between 4 and 6 months, plus the time of induction and adaptation of the executive to the organization, would be another 2 to 3 months, that is to say that we speak of a range of real availability time of between 6 to 9 months, and many times it’s more time.
“An Interim Manager has a different mental setup than a permanent and long-term profile in an organization. The professional who develops these services has an imprint and a slogan based on services, and his focus is the resolution of complex problems in short terms, feeling comfortable for the achievement of this type of objectives.”
In the case of an Interim Management, the availability of the service is between 1 to 4 weeks, with a professional who is trained to understand the situation of the company in approximately 15 days and be able to manage changes from the 30th day of your start of tasks. Additionally, this professional knows that he has a very limited time to achieve results and his margin of error is practically zero.
This solution allows the company to have a plan that quickly reverses the situation and take strategic measures immediately, while having the possibility of validating whether that professional could become a permanent alternative or that he is the person who seeks his successor, before the end of his term, make the transfer to his permanent successor.
In general, an Interim Manager has a different mental setup than a permanent and long-term profile in an organization. The professional who develops these services has an imprint and a slogan based on services, and his focus is the resolution of complex problems in short terms, feeling comfortable for the achievement of this type of objectives.In the case of permanent executives, they prefer to have longer management terms whose security is based on the permanence over time in an organization and the generation of root ties in that same period of time. This does not mean that one profile is better or worse than the other, simply that they are profiles with different characteristics for very different circumstances, organizations, conjunctures, and situations.
“There is the possibility for shareholders to keep that Interim Manager, once his term in the function ends, but now adding him in a different function, in the board of the organization, generating added value for his experience and greater spectrum of vision.”
On the other hand, there is the possibility for shareholders to keep that Interim Manager, once his term in the function ends, but now adding him in a different function, in the board of the organization, generating added value for his experience and greater spectrum of vision.
This occurs on many occasions since, by knowing the organization, by its management period and having achieved or exceeded the objectives that had been defined, it can support in the making of future strategic decisions in the medium and long term.
We can also visualize Interim Management in different facets of application, in which it turns out to be a solution fully adapted to the specific need, such as temporary coverage of positions, operational and performance improvement, crisis management, restructuring, merger & acquisition processes and support in Start-ups or companies at an inflection point.
We are in a new era in which many business paradigms have been changed due to the pandemic caused by Covid, further enhanced by the war between Russia and Ukraine. To this we must add a factor that in Latin America we had been seeing that was developing very slowly, but that, in developed economies, had been growing in a vertiginous way, which is innovation as a continuous process of growth using information technology as a driver based on competitiveness.
For which business, human capital continues to be the key piece for its evolution, but with all this new reality, it is imperative to manage resources intelligently, with maximum efficiency to be able to return to the sustained growth of organizations and Interim Management is a powerful solution and of very high added value for the needs of current organizations.
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