What is the best way to approach a new interim assignment?

Everyone has their own approach to a new role but here are a few tips how to ensure you get off to a flying start.

10 Useful Tips and Suggestions

Ensure you receive clear, concise, tangible objectives

Ensure you fully understand the scope of the role and your responsibilities

Take time out to chat with your peers and subordinates alike to get an understanding of the main issues and who the movers and shapers are within the organisation

Use the Management by Wandering Round principle espoused by US business guru Tom Peters - go and see for yourself ‘where the action is’, don’t just rely and what you have been told, make your own judgements

Ensure you work the hours appropriate to the task in hand. Interim Management is rarely a 9-5 occupation

Formalise some useful KPIs and decide how they will be measured, keep them simple

Generate a plan of the activities that need to be carried out, formalise this and make it visible to the stakeholders

Ensure you write a one page weekly report summarising your activities, performance against KPIs and future tasks and actions. Your client needs to know they are getting value for money and you are making a difference

Ensure you get regular and critical feedback from the Stakeholders on their ‘perceptions’ of how the assignment is going

Finally, do not stretch out the assignment beyond the scope of the project boundaries unless requested to do so by the stakeholders

When assignments come to an end….

It is quite normal to feel a slight pang of dissapointment when an interim management assigment comes to an end. Learning to deal with this emotion and using it to spur you on to greater heights is critical to being succesul in the interim management arena.

I guess it is a bit like being a marathon runner preparing for a race several months ahead. The build up is hard work and fun but the actual run is over relatively quickly leaving a slight feeling of emptiness or anti-climax once the objective has been achieved.

However it is vitally important that the career interim manager learns to deal with these feelings and starts to prepare for the departure day weeks in advance when the end of the assignment is in sight. Here is some simple advice in preparing how to exit an assignment in a professional manner even if you do not have an assignment to follow on.

• During the assigment clarify the likely end date
• Work to this target with focus and attention to detail
• Market your interim management skills to other potential clients
• Ensure the organisation/process you leave behind is a testament to your skills
• Do not try and elongate the assigment beyond its natural course – your client will thank you for this in the long term. They may even ask you back at a later date to carry out a further assigment. Remember it is over 30 times easier to get more work from an existing client than it is to find new clients.
• You will know when the assigment is over often before your client – when all set objectives have been acheived
• Ask for a reference or case study which can be used to promote your skills to other clients
• Always leave on a high note.
• Be professional and courteous throughout the exit period
• Keep in regular contact once you have left the client organisation eg. courtesy telephone calls, christmas cards, dinners etc.