SpringingSurprises...
08 June 2010
An Interim Manager’s experience of delivering above and beyond expectations.
Interim management is a way of working that heaps benefit on both the client and the practitioner. For the interim manager, it yields a breadth of work experience not available anywhere else. For the client, that same breadth of experience brings a totally fresh perspective to whatever role the 'interim' is required to fulfil - often with unexpected, and welcome, results.
This is amply illustrated by the career of Paul Tierney, a highly qualified interim manager with wide experience of Finance, Information Systems and Project Management.
Paul has worked serial interim assignments for ten years now, and can cite many different occasions when his 'outsider's eyes' enabled him to identify issues that had gone either unnoticed or had not been fully addressed by the client company.
In one instance, he took over as interim Financial Director, with the objective of taking the client through its financial end-of-year and setting it up for subsequent trading. While seeing this task through, however, he discovered that the information systems and management information available fell short of what was required.
This arose because the systems in use were those of the client's parent company and comprised different software applications inherited through 10 years of acquisitions and takeovers. These were slow, difficult to extract targeted information from, and took much effort to manually consolidate information so as to get the full picture of business performance.
Paul suggested a 'fix' for the company's Management Information Systems that would meet its own specific needs while also working within the reporting format favoured by the parent. The proposal so impressed the client that he was retained for a further assignment to design and implement new reporting and data capture systems which, four years on, are still in use.