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

Green Shoots to Recovery

When is a green shoot a green shoot? When it has an interim assignment at the end of it?

Not a day goes by without someone telling me the economic recession is affecting their organisation in some way. However, perhaps more surprisingly I have had views expressed to me from opposite ends of the spectrum. There are those amongst the ‘life essentials’ sectors (e.g. food, utilities, public sectors) where demand is strong and those amongst the ‘lifestyle’ sectors (e.g. automotive, leisure) where business is relatively poor based on diminishing disposable incomes and the inability of potential clients to obtain credit finance.

However what is more interesting is that we are still seeing the same level of enquiries for interim managers as we saw this time last year. The only difference is that the types of assignments have changed. Gone are the extra ‘pair of hands’ type assignments typified many HR and IT projects and in their place have come assignments looking at business excellence and continuous improvement. Indeed many organisations would appear to be tightening their belts by using specialist interim managers to help them make business processes more efficient and transparent. We have had a number of enquiries for lean, six sigma and business process re-engineering specialist interim managers over the past few weeks from dramatically different organisations and sectors. I think it may even be boom time for those interim managers with these types of skill set.

In our experience the duration of some of these assignments is shorter than the average (typically 3-6 months) and day rates are under constant pressure but perhaps the interim sector may allow client organisations to improve efficiencies such that when the economic upturn finally arrives those green shoots can blossom into sustainable growth.