Interim management, the transformation is underway!

Interim management is on the rise

All the studies confirm this. The vast majority of companies and their managers have a very positive perception of this type of intervention. For the past 2 years, interim management has affected professions that were less concerned (sales, marketing or communication management).
When it comes to understanding their motivations, companies cite the response to a short-term need or the provision of external expertise. Interim managers, on the other hand, are also evolving. They put more emphasis on the development of their “professional network” or “keeping a job in a period of economic uncertainty”.

Not just a new form of employment

This discrepancy in motivations clearly highlights the current malaise in our society around the employment of executives and seniors.
The former see it positively and healthily as an opportunity for an external operational and flexible contribution. That they don’t know or don’t want to mobilize internally. And this is the fundamental goal of an Interim Management intervention.
The others, unfortunately for many petrified by the fear of the social vacuum that is a period of unemployment that is often brutal and too premature, realize that “after all, they have always done Interim Management in the company”. Or they want to force themselves to believe that their salvation is there.
Interim Management is “in fashion” in France. He experienced strong development and became a real profession.

The “Pure and Hard” interim manager

Among interim managers, those who practice it mission after mission, by choice, almost the majority have very specific intrinsic soft qualities. Beyond the fundamentals of experience and adaptability, they have definitively left a logic of status. They have fully switched to a logic of contribution. They are completely comfortable with the notions of precariousness, are confident in their ability to find their next mission. And they know that they are joining a team for a given time only. Their reasoning is entirely that of an entrepreneur, and it is in this way that they give the best of themselves.
For them, approaching a mission with the spirit of being hired would deprive them of the freedom of choice that is their strength. They have transcended the CDI. And it is not uncommon for them to refuse the contract that the company is sometimes tempted to offer them. The latter is convinced that she is offering them the salvation they are looking for, while being lured by the extraordinary qualities they display.
But this state of mind is not yet well established in our country, unlike countries such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands or Germany for example, which are the cradles of Interim Management . There, the labor code being much less protective for the employee, the issue of career choice is infinitely less difficult. Or rather, the whole system invites us to take what many believe, in France, to be risks…

Management: the best is yet to come

Of course, you should not confuse two types of interim manager.
The first, “Cape Hornier”, out of the ordinary, still rare.
The second, the more classic framework, between 2 lives of companies, who positively and intelligently seeks a solution to employ themselves. But also to seize the opportunity of a momentary intervention to get a foot in the door of his next adventure. He hopes to quickly integrate the company into a permanent contract, “more stable” as he believes.
The idea is laudable, but will certainly correspond less and less to the market demand, and they know it well by seeing the arrival of the “Millennials” generations in force, with their own codes…
In my opinion, this amalgam is neither the fault of the executive, nor that of the professional interim manager, nor even that of the company; Everyone is looking for solutions.
The job market in France is at a turning point that can only get worse in the coming years, and it is not even yet well adapted to a new demand that is growing strongly and which will be the next challenge: FLEXIBILITY!
The company has already understood this and with all due respect to the legislator or politicians, it is already adapting.
Senior executives and managers will have to follow at a forced march because it is a fact today: at this level of position, their sacrosanct “CDI” has become nothing more and nothing less than a “fixed-term contract whose term we do not yet know”…

Benoit Durand Tisnes
Managing Partner