August 25, 2022

Executive-as-a-Service Can Solve Your Leadership Problems Like SaaS Solved Your Outdated Software Problems

Executive-as-a-Service Can Solve Your Leadership Problems Like SaaS Solved Your Outdated Software Problems

For years, companies have used SaaS – Software-as-a-Service – to solve their technology problems. No more buying expensive software. No more hiring experienced managers to oversee its installation. No more worrying about updates. It’s all handled by the pros and the service lives in the cloud, ready for your people to access the minute the need arises.

Now, companies are discovering that EaaS – Executives-as-a-Service – can just as easily solve their c-level executive challenges.

What is Executive-as-a-Service?

Like SaaS, which is subscription-based on-demand access to digitals tools, EaaS is on-demand access to executive leadership, whether you need the skills of a chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, chief operating officer, chief technology officer, or any other type of “chief.”

EaaS allows you to pay only for the c-level expertise you need and only for as long as you need it. No pricey executive search fees. No hiring bonuses No long-term contracts. No human resources expenses. As a cost-effective alternative to onboarding any type of full-time chief executive, the EaaS model means that even small businesses can afford experienced, effective leadership.

Executive-as-a-Service leaders are interim or fractional executives with a wealth of experience managing companies through big challenges such as rapid growth or decline, mergers or acquisitions, new market demands, and dried up funding.

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April 29, 2022

The Case for Hiring Part-Time or Fractional Executives

The Case for Hiring Part-Time or Fractional Executives

It seems like every business owner dreams of achieving major traction in the marketplace. That fast track growth, however, often comes at a cost. Things get taped together. There’s no process to speak of. Systems? Ha. Things go missing, including clients and team members. Lack of resources means that even the crown jewel, the company’s ability to out-innovate, may be put on hold just to keep up.

When a company grows faster than the capabilities of the leadership team, the end result is often a splat: the company hits the wall.

Smart fast-growing companies have started looking to part-time or fractional executives to provide c-suite leadership, mentorship, and the operational upgrades needed to help a company break through the ceiling to growth.

Fractional executives bring the fresh perspective of experienced c-level executives quickly and affordably. With a focus on getting results, companies find that renting the rock star exec outweighs getting 100 percent of the time of a lesser light.

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January 18, 2022
Robert Jordan

Executive Matchmaking and the Sacred Trust of Ownership

Robert Jordan | CEO, InterimExecs
Executive Matchmaking and the Sacred Trust of Ownership

When you own the company, it’s nothing like being an employee. You might as well compare lifting up a hundred pound weight versus a feather.

Through the years I’ve owned or been a shareholder in a number of companies. So when I initially started a career taking on interim assignments – in my case helping companies prep for sale and ultimately exiting to a financial buyer or strategic investor – I approached every company as if it was my own.

Only in running and owning a company can you know firsthand the sleepless nights.

Pondering everything. Like cash flow.

Hiring and retaining your best people.

Making payroll.

The questions are endless: how do we compete better? How do we win ridiculously large contracts? What do we do if the market goes down? How do we make our marketing viral?

Ownership is not for everyone and it is easy to feel….well, alone.

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July 23, 2021

Top Signs You Need an Interim Executive

Top Signs You Need an Interim Executive

InterimExecs RED Team of top interim and part-time executives around the globe range in specialties from CEO to COO, CIO, CFO, CMO, and CSO. But, title is not the main focus. Interim executives are often project-based resources that can be pulled in alongside the current management team to carry out big projects, mentor someone internally, or assess how your business is doing and create a roadmap for the future.

If you meet the following criteria, we can probably help:

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May 7, 2021
Greg Voutsos

Great Interim Executives Are Partners

Greg Voutsos | Head of Operations & Client Engagement
Great Interim Executives Are Partners

When smart owners hire managers with the intent of working together for a long time, it’s easy to call their relationship – if it works – a partnership. It’s not a partnership in the legal sense and it’s not a partnership in the investment sense, where partners share costs and gains.

But in great working relationships between employer and employee, each looks out for the other. Each invests to build and maintain a good relationship and share the gains of working well together and advancing the mission and economic and social health of the organization.

The problem with rampant outsourcing is that it leads to thinking on the part of employers and contractors that relationships are reduced to a transaction. Pay me X and I’ll perform as ordered. Stop paying me and I’m gone.

The logic is the same whether it’s one contractor or ten thousand. While it is transactional in the letter of the contract, it is not in the spirit of one.

The danger of a purely transactional mindset is that loyalty goes out the window. Loyalty from a boss to an employee and loyalty from an employee or manager to the organization.

In organizations with a strongly transactional bent you can bet that any corporate talk about integrity is a watered-down concept at best.

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March 31, 2021

4 Winning Strategies to Add Value to Portfolio Companies

4 Winning Strategies to Add Value to Portfolio Companies

“For private equity funds, the clock starts ticking the second you sign, the second you own your new portfolio company. So the Holy Grail is: how do you add superior value?” That’s how InterimExecs CEO Robert Jordan helped kick-off a recent panel about adding value to portfolio companies. Sponsored by InterimExecs and hosted by Private Equity Career News publisher David Toll and John McNulty’s Private Equity Professional, panel experts shared best practices for value creation.

On the panel were Jordan, Micah Dawson, vice president of Portfolio Support at Trivest Partners; Pericles Mazarakis, managing partner of TriSpan; and Mike Zawalski, an InterimExecs RED Team member who serves in executive chairman roles with PE backed portfolio companies. Here, we round up the top insights from the panelists, everything from the importance of monthly operation reports to establishing trust with the business owner and investing in human capital.

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November 19, 2020

5 Times Companies Should Choose Interim Management Over a Full-Time Executive

5 Times Companies Should Choose Interim Management Over a Full-Time Executive

Having a qualified and competent executive management team is integral to the success of any organization. Problems arise, however, when an executive suddenly vacates a position or there is a mismatch between the internal capabilities of a leadership team and the actual skillsets needed for a specific stage of a company’s growth.

Red flags may start to arise in an organization whether it be a lack of a clear vision, high team turnover, stagnant sales, missing innovation, or breakdowns in communication. The knee-jerk reaction of many companies is to look at a leadership change via a full-time executive search, which can take 6-9 months and include long-term contracts with added costs of perks like severance and benefits.

The world of interim management, a specialty that has grown significantly through the years, has offered an alternative route for companies wanting to maintain forward motion while re-evaluating what is needed to take them into the future. As opposed to a full-time executive search, interims can be on board in a matter of days and come with flexible contracts and pricing models.

Executives who specialize in interim management have track records building, fixing, stabilizing, and growing companies around the globe. In an executive-as-a-service model, companies can bring in an executive to temporarily fill a specific role – CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, etc. – or to serve alongside the current management team to execute on a big initiative where clear vision, leadership, and even mentorship is needed.

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July 21, 2020

What are the Benefits of Interim Managers?

What are the Benefits of Interim Managers?

The only certainty in business is change. But change is accelerating, less predictable, and increasingly, beyond the control of organizations. As technology and unforeseen events continue to drive exponential change, businesses that can’t keep up risk being left behind.

Companies struggling to generate growth and stay relevant amid rapid transformation often look to new leadership. A growing number of companies are also looking to a different kind of leader—one who specializes in change and embraces the challenge of helping companies solve their biggest issues. Enter the interim executive, a new breed of on-demand leadership that brings outside perspective, cutting-edge thinking, veteran experience, and a laser focus on results.

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March 25, 2020

RED Team Executives: On Call to Help Now

RED Team Executives: On Call to Help Now

Uncertainty is growing in the US with coronavirus cases mounting. California, Illinois, Michigan, and other states have taken serious actions with shelter-in-place orders, leaving many people wondering how this will impact them personally as well as their companies and the economy as a whole.

At the same time, we’re reflecting on how much there is to be grateful for, including the strong relationships we’ve built over 10+ years with inspiring leaders. These are women and men who focus their careers on running into the burning building – the company in trouble – learning fast, listening, assembling resources, providing fresh and objective insights, developing new plans and actions for survival and ultimately blueprints for a brighter future.

We recently convened a call with some RED Team execs who shared how they are adapting to new ways to work. Many executives shared experiences on the front lines figuring out how to help combat the virus and also help people work smarter and safer:

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