Interim life: not for everyone but rewarding for some
5th July 2011
By Archer Mathieson’s Ben Davies and BIE’s Nick Diprose
What it takes
The most successful finance interims tend to be very well-rounded individuals: they have highly attuned diagnostic, analytic and people skills; they are confident enough to lead, coach and challenge, but sensitive enough to know when to keep quiet; they are often very commercially minded.
Those operating at senior levels will have general management experience and may have done stints overseas and in other functional areas, giving them the holistic viewpoint so often required for success as an interim.
Their finance experience may include audit and consulting, business partnering, turnaround, shared services and special project management. It is this wide-ranging experience that allows them, at the onset of an interim assignment, to quickly diagnose what needs to be done, why and how best to go about it. They are astute enough to know that the original brief given to them by the client will likely morph into a wider context or feature underlying, undetected issues that need attention.
Pros and cons
Let’s start with the ‘cons’. It’s all down to you and you alone; if you’re someone who likes to be surrounded by familiar faces, interim life can be lonely at times. You will need a sizeable financial ‘buffer’ to tide you over periods between projects. There are no company benefits package, gym membership, sick/holiday pay or other fringe benefits associated with permanent employment.
You may have to spend extended periods away from home at very short notice. You will have to arrange and pay for professional indemnity insurance, hire an accountant and look after your own IT support.
On the plus side, the fact that it’s all down to you can be a bonus; there’s no-one else getting in your way or scuppering your plans and no tedious company politics to navigate. No-one else can take credit for the work you do. You are in control of your life, so if you want to play golf or visit the gym on a Monday when it’s quiet, you can. With prudent advice, you will probably keep hold of more of your earnings than you would as an employee. On top of this, you have considerably more say in the work you do and can take as many holidays as finances permit, without being restricted to the usual four-to-six weeks. Interims frequently tell us it’s this general sense of freedom and control they enjoy most compared to being employed.
Finding assignments
The majority of work interims do comes from their immediate and extended professional networks. It’s not unknown for interims to glide neatly from one assignment to another [see case study below] but for most interims, gaps will arise and that means existing relationships need to be nurtured and new ones established and built. Let’s say you manage to work for two-thirds of the average 225 working days a year. That leaves 75 ‘working’ days for you to fill as you wish.
Let’s now assume that you grant yourself an extra 28 days holiday – you’re an interim so you can! Now subtract another 24 days to deal with your general business administration and IT systems. You’re now down to just 23 days, or about two days a month that can be used for sales, marketing and personal development.
This is probably fewer than in reality as we’ve not allowed for illness or other reasons that could prevent you working. How this remaining time is used is critical. The interim will need to go to events and network with people who might have work or offer referrals. They should meet other interims, who can often be a good source of leads and advice. And, of course, they should form a small number (six to eight) of relationships with good quality interim management service providers (ISP). As well as being a source of work, a good ISP acts as a valued intermediary between interim and client during the assignment.
Work range
Interim roles generally fall into three categories: turnaround, gap management and special projects.
1. Turnaround and transformation: these jobs are usually the province of specialist ‘heavy hitters’. Speed is vital, as are cash management, insolvency knowledge, clear communication and relationship management with shareholders, banks and other stakeholders. There will be little time for reflection as immediate action must be taken to save or transform the business. The interim will review, plan and implement while at the same time achieving ‘quick wins’ wherever possible. The approach will be essentially pragmatic, focused on the short-term cash flow and day-to-day survival while building a medium-term plan. A hands-on approach is required.
2. Gap management or critical vacancy: sudden departure of an executive or senior manager through illness, dismissal or other unexpected event is another trigger for the interim’s arrival. Another is to fill the gap left from the leaving date following an ordinary resignation and the arrival of a new permanent replacement employee. The gap might be three-to-six months or longer. As well as ‘holding the fort’, the interim might also help ‘sense-check’ the profile for the replacement, and assist with hiring and ‘on-boarding’ the new employee. The primary requirement in this instance is continuity of day-to-day management to ensure business momentum is maintained. The interim may be asked to defer any significant changes until the full-time recruit arrives to allow them to stamp their own mark on the organisation. However, the interim may find their client uses this window of opportunity to hear their outsider’s view of the business and to achieve some rapid deliverables. As the interim has no career aspirations with the client, they can think and act quite objectively and take unpopular decisions if necessary.
3. Special projects: these include planned change situations – such as acquisitions, disposals, mergers or restructurings – and ‘one-offs’, such as a major financial information systems implementation, a compliance project or outsourcing/shared services initiative.
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