Boyden global executive search

Autumn 2008

 

Welcome to the Boyden Interim Management Autumn Newsletter

Developing an understanding of our clients’ business needs: the challenges and opportunities faced in today’s ever changing economic landscape is paramount in our attempt to position ourselves as your Interim Management providers of choice.

 

In this edition we would like to:

• Explain a little bit more about who we are and how we can help you

• Provide feedback on a rising trend in the Interim Management marketplace: the use of Interim Managers to help shape your organisations leadership teams

• Ask for your help in participating in our annual Boyden Interim Management Survey

 

Who we are and how we can help you

Boyden is a global Executive Resourcing business, founded in 1946. Today we have over 70 offices worldwide in more than 40 countries, giving us a truly global footprint from which to support our clients’ needs.

 

The aim of Boyden UK is to offer you, our clients, a “right, first time” solution for all your senior executive resourcing needs: be they short term interim or permanent leadership roles.

 

Our Interim Management team is one of the most experienced in the industry, led by Patrique Habboo and Tim Blackstone, both veterans of this niche market. With over 20 years in the Interim management marketplace, they have both an extensive knowledge and understanding of their Clients’ business needs and immediate access to the very best Interim Management talent available within the UK.

 

Boyden Interim Management work in partnership with a selected portfolio of career Interim Managers, whom we believe to be the “cream of the crop”, carefully selected to match our clients’ requirements.

With an average turnaround time of 5-10 working days from Brief to Placement, we are ideally positioned to deliver rapid, effective solutions.

 

If you wish to speak to either Patrique or Tim about an immediate requirement, please call 0207 389 9771.

 

Succession Planning

 

How Interim Managers can help shape an organisation’s

leadership structure

Interim Managers are typically used to help introduce new business initiatives, to run programmes and projects and often to fill an unplanned gap during the permanent recruitment process, which can take months. It may seem less likely that an Interim Manager could be relevant where a company has a clear succession plan. However the best laid plans can sometimes go awry and a senior Interim Manager can be exactly the right solution to a critical issue.

 

Whether it is a private, public or not for profit organisation, a major concern is, or should be, that there will be no successor to drive it once the leader or key person leaves – by choice or circumstance. It is always the right people that make companies successful and if they leave suddenly then uncertainty and confusion can swiftly follow. Figureheads such as Richard Branson for example will be very difficult to replace: we must assume that he has a carefully considered succession plan.

 

Succession planning can be described as the process whereby one or more individuals within a business are identified as potential candidates for key posts (usually MD / CEO or at senior director level). Personal development/ training /mentoring is carefully planned for them alongside the right career moves which will ensure they have the necessary experience as they get nearer to the ‘top job’.

 

It is a board’s responsibility to be actively concerned with succession at every level but particularly with regards to MDs or the CEO. Of course there are cases where weaker MDs / CEOs may be temped to surround him/herself with lesser qualified successors, to preserve his or her own security and sense of worth, but a strong CEO would desire to build the best possible team to support him/her now and to take over the reins when he/she moves on or retires. These ‘excellent’ CEOs / MDs take succession planning very seriously.

 

Traditionally succession planning has focussed on jobs at the highest level. However, the UK seems to be facing a talent shortage and an uncertain economic climate; as a result succession planning is being broadened out to include middle management. Employee performance is now seen as critical to the success of a business and one way to increase performance and retain the best employees is to enable them to develop and progress within their company: keeping expertise in-house and reducing recruitment costs.

 

In fact less than a third of UK companies have carefully worked out plans for who will replace whom if a tragedy happens or a key person leaves. Organisations often do not plan for the unpredictable, preferring to hope that something or someone will turn up! This means that most businesses are unprepared and companies without a succession plan or that do not rapidly respond to senior management gaps can destroy value for their shareholders: leadership uncertainty can destroy confidence.

 

What happens where there is no successor in place?

If hiring from the market there is no guarantee that an external appointment will be successful. If promoting from within there is no guarantee that the right candidate has been promoted or that those who feel passed over will then stay with the company.

 

In the face of an unexpected senior vacancy, emergency recruitment from outside the company is often the first approach. Since this may be done with a sense of urgency, rather than careful reflection, this can lead to the wrong appointment, made in a hurry, coupled with frustration and resentment among those senior managers who were working their way up to that position.

 

If there were someone who was being groomed for the role they might be as yet unprepared for the responsibility, lacking the ability or experience to pick up the reins immediately. In the event of an unexpected senior vacancy an Interim Manager can be the way to give the company the breathing space it needs to make a more considered decision both on whether to hire externally or promote from within in order to ensure that the process is not rushed.

 

Where in larger organisations there is a strategy to ‘build rather than buy’ an Interim MD or CEO can provide ‘shelter’ for an internal candidate who may not be quite ready for the role. The Interim Manager can work alongside the successor transferring skills and acting as a catalyst for change, allowing the successor to be exposed to the role and then assessed in terms of their readiness by the board. This has the benefits of reducing risk and increasing employee retention since an interim appointment is very much less threatening than an external appointment which can effectively block career progression for some years.

 

A couple of big organisations recently experienced exactly this situation.

 

The first company needed to move the Head of Shared Services into the Managing Director role in another division. This left the Head of Shared Services position open and whilst there was a logical successor, with the post becoming vacant some years early, they decided to introduce a very experienced Interim Manager with relevant experience to mentor, coach and guide the incumbent in his new role. The experienced Interim Manager was selected for his experience of having run large shared service operations before, along with his gravitas, authority and his coaching and mentoring skills.

 

 

The internal moves were made very quickly by the organisation, such that they needed to have an Interim mentor in place within 10 working days. Boyden Interim Management were able to offer them a short list of three candidates from which they selected one of our Interims.

 

In this way a senior and very experienced Interim Manager with a similar background can act as an ‘insurance policy’ or safe pair of hands whilst the home grown successor develops into the job: eliminating risk for the organisation.

 

With an unexpected ‘gap’ the use of an Interim Manager may also give the company an opportunity to reassess the job and manage its evolution. One role may be split into two for example; the remit may also change and the type of person required therefore may also be reviewed rather than retaining the status quo. External candidates are more likely to challenge the current business model, which can be a good thing in a turn around situation or a period facing dramatic change, but may also be disruptive where the business has just gone through a transition or is undergoing steady growth.

 

Internal contenders can be set in their ways and ill equipped to tackle changing environments and external influences and it can be very difficult to change your own business processes from within. An Interim Manager can help here without having to discard the knowledge and experience of the internal candidate. By acting as the change agent, new skills and approaches can be transferred to existing staff by an Interim Manager if they are willing to make changes: again avoiding the need for major new recruits.

 

Where a successor embraces an experienced Interim who is there to mentor him or her they have an unparalleled opportunity to work full time, on the job, with their own personal coach whose objective is to make sure that they are ready to take up the reins. They pose no threat and can become valued advisors going forward.

 

Another Interim Manager was placed by Boyden Interim Management in a major UK company with the remit to help them ensure the right successor for a senior and business critical role. She was asked to fulfil three roles: to understand the organisation’s culture and business systems; to ensure that she knew what type of person would be the best fit in the role; to reshape the existing team; and ensure there were basic controls in place and to coach and develop the successor from among three internal candidates. In this example an Interim Manager with the skills and experience of a critical business function, lacking among the board, has been asked to help the organization promote from within rather than making what might have been an easier and quicker decision to recruit from outside.

 

If having worked with an Interim mentor, an internal successor cannot step into the role, the Interim Manager may be in a position to fill the gap themselves whilst a permanent external recruit is found and then to mentor and coach the recruit until they are embedded in their new role. They may even be valuable as an external consultant going forward, helping to implement new initiatives etc. In that way an Interim Manager can offer a complete ‘insurance policy’ for an organisation with succession issues.

 

For smaller organisations there may be a need to ‘buy’ new talent following an unexpected senior vacancy because there is not a big enough pool of potential successors. Making a temporary Interim Manager appointment, rather than a rapid permanent appointment, gives the board an opportunity to test the type of person / skill sets /experience that they are looking for in a crucial role rather than just trying to replace what they had.

 

Succession planning is not only important for senior roles: it could involve relatively junior but highly specialist staff in IT or R&D for example, where an employee is providing unique skills or holds a great deal of knowledge that helps to create competitive advantage for the company. In reality it can be harder to replace one of these members of a team than a finance director for example. Again Interim Managers can be a great way to plug a ‘hard to fill’ gap.

 

There are about 3,000 senior and specialist Interim Managers registered in the UK covering a huge range of skills and experience. It is rare that even the most challenging assignments cannot be filled.

 

Flexibility is crucial in succession planning: senior people may not move on as predicted or may leave or a tragedy intervenes. Rigid leadership or succession plans rarely turn out as expected either. People make their own career decisions and those being groomed for a role may decide it is not for them or they are head hunted. Interim Managers can be invaluable in filling the gap whilst new succession plans are formulated.

 

Boyden Interim Management is very experienced in finding senior Interim Managers for FTSE 500 organisations who have an urgent need to fill a senior gap created unexpectedly.

 

Annual Boyden Interim Management Survey

At Boyden we are always striving to gain a closer understanding of our market, trying to gain insight on trends and demand patterns, gather information on day rates, sector and function utilisation etc. so that we can continuously improve our service offering both to our Clients and our Candidates.

 

Each year we conduct what, historically, has been the largest survey on Interim Management within the UK, and once again we would very much like to ask for your input.

 

We will be emailing out the survey questionnaires in November, they are designed to be user friendly, and should not take long to complete. We aim to publish results in early 2009.

 

Once again, thank you for all your support!

Patrique Habboo