On this episode of business today, Pam and Kristen talk about why interim management is every CEOs secret weapon.

Full Transcript below:

SEAKER: Kristen

And as you scale a company you really can’t do it without people and talent which is why everyone is such in a rush to get the right talent in the right places with large scale companies to grow them. We’ve got everyone in place including our leadership team and then John walks in the door on Friday morning, my number two, my right hand and says.

SPEAKER: Pamela

I’m leaving. Everyone has experience that at one time or another.

SPEAKER: Kristen

My heart sinks if it’s not going into heart attack mode.

SPEAKER: Pamela

It happens.

SPEAKER: Kristen

And this happens everything from John decides he’s leaving as of Monday, he may offer me two weeks’ notice. I have two weeks to get someone else in place. I cannot go without my right. Without a right hand what do I do?

SPEAKER: Pamela

You know it’s interesting. We all need to not be blindsided by this because think about the talent market right now. It is so tight. Talent is in such demand that no matter how well you know your employees. Somebody can come in and steal one right out from under you. So yes you want to take very good care of your employees that they don’t do that but sometimes money talks and they’re going to leave no matter what you’re doing for them. So you have to be ready, you have to have a solution that you can quickly implement to be able to fill that position, should something like that happen.

SPEAKER: Kristen

Personally I think that every CEO and their succession plan, it should be kind of like a trust or a will if anything happens call my attorney. They’ve got everything, you ever see on needs to have in case of anything. You’re Cerius. Call their number. I’ve talked to Cerius. I know exactly what they know my company. They know my leadership team, they know everything I need. Call them in case of emergency and fortunately that doesn’t happen. We get the phone call at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon that says my CFO or my CEO just gave notice, they gave me two weeks’ notice. How quick can you get someone in your training, we’ve had them in there by Tuesday Wednesday. We can absolutely interim management can be used for those cases but there’s a number of other scenarios.

SPEAKER: Pamela

Absolutely. Absolutely. So another one is you want to promote someone, they’ve been really good in their job but there’s no one to succeed them. They have no one they can step up to take the roles of a sudden, you leave them in that position. That’s true. That can happen and what can happen from that scenario is that person will leave because they’re not getting promoted so you don’t want that to happen. So you have to make sure you have some kind of succession plan in place to be able to move people around or you have a scenario where that person really needs to go back, like they really meant to go they were meant to go a year ago but you didn’t do a thing about it. Well you need to do something about those people because all they’re doing is hurting the growth of your company.

SPEAKER: Kristen

And that’s a tough one because we all have their sacred cows or otherwise. We all have someone, we look at our leadership team, you know either the company and most the time we here. My company has outgrown them. And that’s a really tough move because there’s two decision points there. One, how do I replace them with someone who is the right person and what I do with this individual? Sometimes you can upscale them. We’ve done shadow programs where we’ve brought in let’s say an interim CEO to work with the operations manager or director of operations coach then gave them the till the toolkits worked with them for six to 12 months and they were actually able to step into that role and be saved. Actually I love that story as I manufacturer about 15 million and that individual is still on board and that CEO comes in every year as their strategic planning works with the team. In other cases they’re not the right person, they’re in over their head and they can help you work through how to face them out, place them somewhere else but really it’s how to replace them? how to get that right person and profiling that right person? they carry it on and interims can be used from shadowing helping through transition situations like this. They can come in and assume the role on an interim or fractional basis and they really don’t need much onboarding, the typical onboarding. It’s not weeks, it’s not days.

SPEAKER: Pamela

literally. Yeah it’s not quite ours but literally we have gotten an engagement on Monday. They’ve called in the clients wanting. In fact this particular case it was the CFO was for public company by the way. And in five days we had all the contracts signed. The interim had been selected and on Monday they started. I mean it’s easy, it’s quick and the thing is it’s a very experienced person that can hit the ground running. You don’t have to wait to train them and they typically are like chameleons that where they go into a situation and they automatically fit into your culture, your leadership team. So they work well with it so you barely know that there’s somebody new that’s working with your team. I mean it’s really does work well.

SPEAKER: Kristen

We’ve had situations where we’ve had an interim step in and a CEO brought us in an interim stepped in and it was an interim CEO that had hired us, brought the interim CFO in and after a couple of weeks the interim CFO was talking with some of the team and the team didn’t realize that it was an interim CEO or interim CFO. They had no idea since everything was so smoothly and they were integrated quite a bit with the team. So we’ve talked about interim management can be used from sudden departures to like someone to depart the company and that’s it’s a tough thing to do. Sometimes you really do need someone there to help you kind of help you through it and make sure because there’s a lot of fear in that. Absolutely fear is probably one of a number of things that keeps us from making tough decisions that we need to make as business owners. You mentioned you want to promote someone and maybe they don’t have all the skills or there’s no one to replace them interim is great with that. Pamela I know you’ve talked a lot about project work.

SPEAKER: Pamela

Yeah, there’s a lot of times when you’re missing a particular expertise and I’ll never forget this one of the corporate companies I used to work with that I was in sales and marketing and my boss came to me one day and say’s I think we want to I think we want to go into the international market. What did you get us there? And I’m like What? I had never done any international business before. So again instead of taking me, this is the advice I would have given my boss I didn’t give it to him back then because I was excited I got to do something new but I will tell you I probably hurt the growth of the company because I didn’t do it as quickly as somebody who’s had that experience. So I see companies today where they’re missing, they’re doing acquisitions for the first time and they don’t really have that person that knows how to do it, knows what to look for, knows the due diligence, knows even how to integrate the two companies once the acquisition is finished and you get somebody with that experience because so smoothly as opposed to using your existing team to try to do something that they’re just not used to. Could they step up? Sure. Well they make mistakes? yes lots of them. Will they be the best you know doing the job? No. So why risk that and risk the time get an interim where they can very quickly get up to speed and get it done for you.

SPEAKER: Kristen

I know that story a couple of times now and I’ve never asked why did your boss choose you? You had the most international, not experience but the most time your passport Hey you travel internationally you should know the international market? Why do he pick you?

SPEAKER: Pamela

I have no idea. I had a good relationship with my boss. I was producing, I did well in the company and I think he just, like we all do. Somebody doing something really well in the company there, they’ve been promoted a couple times, they look good and they’re like if anyone can do it, it’s Pamela or whoever your person is in your company and we just assume they’re going to be able to take it run with it. Again, sure. That’s exactly what I did but we lost time, we probably would have grown faster I mean there’s all sorts of things that they could have done besides put me in that position.

SPEAKER: Kristen

And looking at interim management or fractional and with what we do it’s how quickly we can assess the situation, work with the CEO to figure out what they really need? how quickly they need it and the results? Where do you want to be three and six months from now? Set this job description aside, we appreciate that a whole lot of time and age are spent on that and they pulled it out and they freshened it up but it’s not about failing a sea, it’s about that catalyst to help that company scale. So as we’re looking at different leadership gaps that we may have as we’re looking to Skyler company whether it is a sudden departure, someone who you’d like to depart the company, what you’re promoting too quickly, you want to promote someone, you don’t have anyone to backfill, you need that help with succession planning, there’s any number of areas that really makes interim management that CEO secret weapon to come in. What do you want to call paratroopers, parachute hers in any number of ways an interim can step into an organization assimilate quickly and be that secret weapon to help you scale.

SPEAKER: Pamela

And the main reason really is to get you results quicker without the risk of making mistakes because you really want person to step in, takeover, get whatever it’s done, whatever it is, whether it’s a project, whether it’s filling a role on a more permanent basis, whatever the reason is that you’re bringing in in the interim you know the cool thing about it is you’re going to get results. You’re going to get goals met the end of the day because again they come in very quickly and they hit the ground.

SPEAKER: Kristen

I love that, no wrong hires. An interim [not understandable] you’re not hiring them, we’re knocking the wrong person and hey if it works out and they’re great. There’s always the opportunity to comfort them and get them on board in the company but it really helps mitigate the risk of all of those wrong hires. Most of it because we didn’t know exactly what we needed to begin with and so we got the wrong person, we’ll say that for a future episode one of our favorite topics. Thank you for joining us today. Cerious business today. Do you have any questions or comments? you can send email and [email protected]. or visit our Web site. Have a great day.

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