How do you perceive interim managers and directors? There’s still a large body of myth to be dispelled according to Norman Broadbent’s Bruno Pace
By John O’Hanlon
One thing should be made clear. Interim managers are not just high level temps to be called in to fill the gap when someone is ill or on a sabbatical. According to Bruno Pace, Managing Director of Interim Practice at Norman Broadbent, the leading executive search specialist, it is much more common these days for boardrooms and senior management to contain a mix of permanent executives, non-executives and high-calibre interims. “It might surprise you to know that the average length of time a CEO is in post is just two years; for FDs and HR directors the average comes down to two and a half years – many interim appointments go on for just as long or longer.”
Pace works with career interims only, committed and experienced individuals who are at least one tier level above the assignment breif they are hired to do, whether it is to fill a gap (though only half of his placements are gap-fills), to bring specialist skills to an MBO team, to grow a business or to prepare it for an IPO. “These are men and women with maybe 30 years’ experience at board level who can add value from the moment they arrive,” he says. The fact is that when it comes to project management, M&A activity, implementing new systems or launching new product, not all companies can easily put together the dream team in a very short space of time. In these situations interim management often makes inescapable sense. We are often asked to put teams together or individual interims into organisations with 48 hours.
The concept of adding value is important here. There is a myth that an interim is a net cost to the business. Managing risk and expectations through an ISO 9001 accredited process, Bruno Pace works very closely with his clients and makes a point of quantifying the value the interim brings to the business: his estimate and target are five times overall cost. Seen this way, hiring an interim is at worst a no cost solution to the client company, and, he points out, it is a tidy solution too, avoiding the tax, severance, benefits and share option issues that accompany a permanent appointment. Being able to assure quality in this way should weigh heavily with clients, he points out, as appointments at this level are invariably business critical.
Talking to Bruno Pace it becomes increasingly clear how important is his personal knowledge of the market, his clients and above all the people he puts forward for interim posts. It’s matching known individuals, not a paper operation. That it works is proven by the quite remarkable fact that 90 percent of his practice’s placements are extended beyond the original term. For reason such as further deliverables to be carried out or additional projects the client wants the interim manager to carry out. He himself has over 20 years’ experience at the senior level of recruitment and knows the business intimately.
At the end of the project Bruno Pace and his team do not just walk away. The outcome of the performance management process is an exit report that summarises the added value and matches outcomes against the original brief, and this is an opportunity to examine the client’s continuing needs. I was surprised to learn that very few interims ‘convert’ to a permanent post. “Normally that would only happen at a very senior level. I’d repeat that our interim managers do this because they want to: not because they can’t get a ‘proper’ job! If the exit report throws up the need for a permanent appointment then our executive search branch can be brought in."