October 26, 2015
David Johnson

Case Study: Taking a Nonprofit Organization Back to Financial Health

David Johnson | Turnaround

Overview
On March 30, 2015, I began my tenure as an interim manager (Interim Chief Operating Officer) at ChildServ, a social services agency that had recently celebrated its 120th anniversary serving at-risk children and families in the Chicagoland area. While I was new to the role, I had the benefit of not being new to the organization. In fact, I had served on the Board of Trustees of ChildServ for the prior 15 months, resigning only after my Board colleagues had voted to have me take on the difficult task of driving badly needed change from within.

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July 8, 2015

The Downside of Management Consultants

Many companies are starved for effective leadership, and as a result the demand for great interim executives who will come in and do the work is increasing. Consider this passage from the book Traction:

The inability to make a business vision a reality is epidemic. Consider it a new take on an old quote: Vision without traction is merely hallucination. All over the world, business consultants frequently conduct multiple-day strategic planning sessions and charge tens of thousands of dollars for teaching what is theoretically great material. The downside is that after making you feel warm and fuzzy about your direction, these same consultants rarely teach you how to bring your vision down to the ground and make it work in the real world.

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April 13, 2015

The New Category of Interim Executive Management

We’ve been thinking recently about GT Dave, an entrepreneur who dropped out of high school and founded GT’s Kombucha at age 17. His parents swore by the health benefits of Kombucha tea and while GT’s homemade recipe was the foundation for a new company, what he actually did was create an entirely new category. GT Kombucha holds an estimated 60% of a $600M market, and it’s still growing strong.

Creating a new category requires two things above all else: an unwavering sense of mission, and devotion to quality. The challenge is that paving a new path does not always translate to instant success and understanding. At the Association of Interim Executives we believe in the power of interim executive management and have taken on a mission to be the voice of the specialty and to help companies around the globe succeed because of access to world class executive talent.

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