What You Need to Know About Interim Management
It’s one of the fastest growing employment sectors; more and more businesses are transforming their processes with the help of Interim Management; Interim Managers can benefit businesses of all sizes, at all levels yet, and yet somehow it’s a field that’s widely misunderstood. While many businesses are happy to bring in Interim Skills when they need them, just as many don’t see the benefits and are reluctant to discuss Interim Management Solutions.
Today, we’re bringing you some of the most important facts about Interim Management, so you can make an informed decision about whether this is the right solution for you.
What is Interim Management
Let’s begin by defining terms: an interim manager is high level or executive specialist who enters your business for a fixed period to solve a specific problem or work on a specific project.
This could be helping to turn around a failing business, getting a project in hand that’s overrunning its budget and deadline, or helping with a big hiring push. The key thing is that they will have set metrics for success and failure and a clear time scale to work in, and bring with them a career’s worth of experience of solving similar problems elsewhere.
Isn’t ‘Interim Management’ Just Another Name for Consultant?
It’s an easy mistake to make, but there are actually big differences between consultants and interim staff and it’s a useful distinction to use.
Consultants will analyse the situation you put before them and make recommendations to get you the outcome you want. Interim Managers will come into your business and take ownership of the problems you need solving to ensure they are actually solved.
Take the example of the overrunning project above: A consultant would recommend processes you could implement to bring it back under control, but the responsibility for implementing them would rest with your existing staff. An Interim Manager would come into your business and take over management of the project, making them personally responsible for implementing the measures to complete it successfully.
Lasting Influence
One of the most important things about Interim Managers is that they bring a career’s worth of experience into your business with them and leave you with benefits that persist long after they’ve left. In our example above, as well as completing one problem project, your Interim Project Manager would leave your department with a lot of processes they can use to keep future projects under control and under budget. Interim Managers therefore represent an investment in the long term future of your business, even if as a staffing solution they are strictly temporary.