July 11, 2017
Olivia Wolak

Why HR Departments Are Changing How They Approach Executive Search

Olivia Wolak | President, InterimExecs
Why HR Departments Are Changing How They Approach Executive Search

Most HR execs have been trained to look for candidates who have a track record sticking with companies for long periods of time. For many companies going through upheaval, rapid growth, or dramatic changes in their markets, that long-term permanent employee mindset may actually be more detrimental. When a company must evolve quickly, an executive hired on full-time may not be the right leader nine months or a year down the road.

The speed at which companies move in today’s world to stay relevant has paved the way for the new specialty of interim management, which includes executives focused on operations to finance, technology, sales and marketing. Interims are skilled operators who run, build, grow, and fix businesses. They take on accountability in C-level roles making decisions, reporting to the board, and being held responsible for the results.

Unlike executives who choose long-term, permanent jobs, interims are wired for transformation and usually are called in when companies need a leadership boost to get them on the right path. Once an interim brings an organization, division, or department to a better state of affairs, that new-found clarity and direction gives the HR team a cleaner slate by which to recruit and hire the next permanent person in the role.

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June 27, 2017
Jayne Heggen

Assess Marketing Performance to Meet Revenue Goals

Jayne Heggen | Interim CMO
Assess Marketing Performance to Meet Revenue Goals

The truism that every business needs marketing cannot be denied, even by businesses that owe the majority of their growth to word-of-mouth referrals. However, confusion arises when businesses mistake marketing for sales. In simple terms, marketing builds demand, sales closes the deal.

The goal of marketing is to increase sales and, by perforce, grow revenue. The trick is in measuring the success of your marketing efforts. What metrics do you use to measure marketing effectiveness? Although profit is the ultimate goal, it’s not the sole measurement of success. Other benchmarks along the way indicate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

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April 26, 2017
James B Treleaven

Seven Signs an Interim Executive Can Help Your Company

James B Treleaven | Interim CEO, Turnaround

Interim executives, or interims, have recently become an important tool that organizations can use to effectively address a variety of pressing needs. Having said that, many companies are either unaware that interims are even available or appropriate for their current situation. The most common understanding of the role of an interim is to fill an immediate need in the executive team caused by a sudden voluntary or involuntary departure. In this case, a seasoned executive can step right in and allow the company to progress unabated. While much of what an interim does is similar to consulting, successful execution is critical and unique to the role of interims. This blog presents seven case studies to help companies better understand other instances where interims can help. There are certainly more examples, but these are representative. While seven represents everything from the apocalypse to luck in gambling, we’ll stick with seven.

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March 3, 2017

We Fix. We Optimize. We Grow. We Lead.

Interim Execs works with companies, board members, and investors to match them with C-level talent wherever needed. And it’s not just about title – our Rapid Deployment Program looks at where you are at, and where you want to go.

Maybe there is a leadership gap, or maybe you are trying to get the business to the next level – expanding overseas, acquiring and integrating other businesses, transforming technology and operational processes. Maybe you see trouble on the horizon if you don’t make changes fast.

Interim executives specialize in quickly assessing your business, creating a strategy moving forward, and actually executing on it. Yes, that means doing the work. This is not consulting. We don’t deliver long reports that you can’t act on. We fix. We optimize. We grow. We lead.

February 22, 2017
William Mince

An Interim Executive’s Approach to Realize the Full Value of a Company’s Investments

William Mince | Interim CEO, COO, Turnaround

Interim executives deliver real results, in real time, real quick. An interim is unique in the depth and breadth of experience they bring to bear. This allows an interim to see hidden value in existing products/processes/systems, implement actionable strategies and gain true alignment necessary to optimize the business. The interim will review the investments the company has made into processes, organizational structure and systems. This will lead to a focus on the areas which can be easily measured and might yield the quickest return on investment such as profits, systems and process efficiency.

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February 8, 2017

Companies Watch Out for These 5 Fake Interims

Faker
Most executives who approach InterimExecs are not initially qualified for membership on the RED Team. We take a long time – usually years – to get to know great interims as they build their track records of successful engagements and happy clients, teams, customers and investors.

Occasionally someone shows up with zero experience as an interim, convinced they have the same mindset as a battle-tested interim who’s successfully killed it five or ten times before in project, interim or fractional roles. We turn away these executives, along with around 98% of applicants that approach us. Why? Because even accomplished executives can easily trip up if they haven’t been held accountable for high-impact work before, where failure would be at the company owner’s expense.

We often hear of companies bringing in executives disguising themselves as interims, which usually does not have a happy ending.

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October 20, 2016
Olivia Wolak

Executive Search May Be Long, But Interim Execs Deploy in 48 Hours

Olivia Wolak | President, Association of Interim Executives

There is no question that the executive search process is long. When a C-level executive bolts or an organization is going through a transformation – acquisition, product launch, market expansion, etc. – the right leadership needs to be in place, and needs to be in place now.

Vision Share, a consortium of eye banks, experienced this firsthand. Their mission, ensuring corneas be sent worldwide for transplant by eye surgeons, was hampered by organizational problems. The board of directors knew a new CEO was needed, but “the permanent search was estimated to be 6-9 months and came with a guarantee of a year’s employment,” Cindy Reed, Board Member at Vision Share said. “We really felt like we needed more than that.”

The board went to the Association of Interim Executives’ Rapid Executive Deployment Program to bring in Gregg Steinberg as Interim CEO to stabilize the organization, achieve immediate growth goals, and prepare them to hire the permanent CEO.

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June 24, 2016
William Mince

An Executive To Do List: How Interims Quickly Understand the Organizational Health of a Business and Team

William Mince | Interim CEO, COO, Turnaround

Interim executives are becoming a popular alternative to using a consultant or leaving a position vacant while a search for the right person is conducted. An interim executive also brings a fresh, unbiased review of factors driving organizational health and operational results. The interim executive does not waste time or company resources trying to secure a full time job, but is driven by the opportunity to make changes which lead to a sustainable value increase for all the stakeholders of the business. The client and their customers can expect immediate improvement in delivery, quality, and cost while a search is conducted to fill the permanent position.

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June 9, 2016
Scott Philips

Leadership Transition: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Scott Philips | Interim CEO, CSO, COO, CMO, Turnaround

Nearly every one of us has experienced leadership transitions that could be described as “good,” “bad,” or “ugly.” And the percentages of disastrous transitions are astoundingly high. As Australian sociologist Hugh Mackay says, “Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.” So what else should we expect but to experience our share of bad leadership transitions?

What I want to share here are a few of the complexities that make leadership transitions difficult and, more importantly, how to prevent these ugly transitions from happening to you.

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