Calling in an interim manager is the preferred route which matured management takes instead of frittering away its already stretched managerial resources

I have spent most of my corporate life heading the commercial function at the plant level. My brief assignments in corporate offices have not been entirely comfortable; temperamentally I am a hands-on man who likes to see the results of initiatives actually work on the ground.

Very often in my career, I have been frustrated at seeing very important issues being ignored at the ground level because of the way organisations function. Typically, if a crisis occurred, the management would get into a frenzy. A team from the corporate office would examine the issue and then prepare a report followed by an action plan.

The plan would involve appointing a consultant who, after being selected, would require some time to study the problem and the organisation and then suggest solutions - by this time the crisis would have blown over. The 'problem' would then appear on the 'follow up' minutes for a couple of months and then be considered to have been fixed without the real issue having been resolved.

Why organisations adopt this pattern of 'problem-solving' requires to be addressed in a larger management context, but such situations always made me long for 'consultants who implement what they suggest'.

It was much later that I discovered that this concept had been progressing rapidly in Europe during the '90s under the name of 'interim management' (IM).

Among the several definitions of IM, the one that I find most appealing is:

• An interim manager is characterised as an experienced executive or project specialist, available when needed, for as long as needed; a doer (not an advisor), an implementer (not a report writer), a "hands-on" manager (not a consultant); and he or she will be "sensibly overqualified" for the task, making for a minimal learning curve and effective from day one.

The IM has a vast and diverse range of experience, which is often far greater than what is needed for the assignment. IMs can be used to manage change and provide support when existing management is fully stretched.

I have been heading the commercial function for close to thirty years with leading Indian corporates such as Wipro, Tata Group, RPG and Reliance; it is this experience which I am now leveraging in my new role as an IM (Read ). For over a year now, I have been operating as an interim manager - with some success - with a leading corporate and would like to share that experience with you.

My assignment was to streamline contract labour management and optimise the use of SAP, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool that was installed at a high cost but was not being used productively.

The company is 60 years old with entrenched systems. Because of the pressures of liberalisation, a new management team had initiated several changes and most executives were under strain coping with not only work, but managing change as well.

Since the IM is not weighed down with 'internal political baggage' he can provide a more accurate insight to the real issues and deliver appropriate solutions. Within three weeks of my joining I had managed to identify all issues relating to contract labour. Initially I thought that I had made a mistake in my assessment because my analysis revealed the scope of a potential annual saving of Rs 15 crore! Ravi, an engineer who was assigned to assist me, however, was not very surprised because the grapevine did hint of a huge leak.

Ravi and I then got down to the job of renegotiating some of the high margin contracts. We were free from the burden of long associations which internal executives had developed with vendors; the executives were also relieved that they did not have to confront vendors in a demanding way. Within three months we had concluded contracts leading to a saving of about Rs 5 crore.

Having established our credentials, we then got down to the grunt work (plenty of 'clerical' work) of renegotiating about eighty contracts which finally brought in savings of about Rs 13 crore - pretty close to our initial estimate.

In hindsight, I must say, management overemphasises 'strategy' and underestimates the value of simple, senior level grunt work in its pursuit of competitive strategy!

Perhaps one of the important reasons why interim managers are more successful in such tasks is the fact that they are free to focus exclusively on the task at hand. They can mentor and coach as well as manage and, unlike many in-house executives, do not have a hidden political agenda.

While Ravi kept getting nominated for various training sessions, I did not have to attend any meetings or programmes. In a task-orientated approach like ours, distractions like meetings can impede progress. Internal managers can never be free from such distractions.

The mentoring part of IM came home to me in very significant way. The kind of work we were doing could be very taxing and Ravi and I would often get down to talking about life in general whenever we wanted to relax. I often shared some of my experiences with him and we discussed many company issues from a 'theoretical' point of view.

The company has a scheme for grooming the careers of fast track managers and Ravi, who was thirteenth on the list last year, topped the list this year and is now being trained at various group companies and at IIM Ahmedabad.

Despite the many benefits and advantages of using an IM, some companies have been reluctant to employ them out of the misplaced fear that their presence implied criticism of the existing management.

I had to face the initial reaction of 'one more consultant' from most people within the organisation, since cynicism in organisations is rampant, but that gave way to acceptance as they got to know me better. Somewhere along the way I realised that my 'customer' was the shop floor engineer and not the top management executive who is often excessively focussed on cost saving at the cost of ground realities and can make life difficult for the real implementers. I was very careful to involve the implementers and look at their genuine concerns and address those issues, sometimes at the expense of being branded "too soft" by the management.

Some managers have simply refused to ask for help, viewing such a move as a sign of weakness. Yet, in reality, it's a sign of strength and maturity; the very best managers always know when to pull in additional or specialised resources.

Other objections have included doubts that the IM would fit into an existing team; and the biggest concern of all, can an IM be trusted with confidential information? The fact that IMs are handpicked for each assignment and are always substantially over-qualified for the task they are being assigned should answer most of the concerns of organisations which have not previously employed their services.

However, I must state that any management which hires an IM, must evaluate this doubt with all seriousness. In my case, the management took a chance because, besides my resume, a very trusted senior executive who was aware of my strengths was willing to commit his organisation to the idea of hiring an IM.

A recent survey compared the characteristics of interim practitioners with 'regular' managers and executives. It found some striking differences.
Interims:

• needed power
  
• were strong leaders
  
• didn't need rules
  
• thrived on change
  
• were good planners
  
• were fast workers

Well that is all I have to share for now. I have started work on the SAP optimisation and am very excited about it. After this six-month project is over, I will be back to share this experience.