Why is the term “Interim Management Firm” obsolete?

Interim management players must make their own transformation in 2018 in France, at the risk of going off the radar. Why? How?

The term ” interim management firm ” is obsolete because it now refers to a historical organization of the old world. In the coming years, the players in the transformation sector will have to transform themselves, in the face of the inevitable generational upheavals, and in the face of the acceleration of the digital revolution. How then do successful companies in the sector transform? The answer lies in a transversal, agile internal organization, where information circulates quickly.

 

A French name from recruitment and consulting firms

In the early 2000s, when the profession of Interim Executive Management (see the sources of interim management) arrived in France from Anglo-Saxon countries, the first players to take an interest in it were recruitment and headhunting firms , but also strategy and management consulting firms.

It is important to understand that the execution of a transition mission (discover the methodology), when it is properly carried out, includes 2 distinct and complementary phases that do not require the same skills:

• Before the start of the mission, the ability to select and mobilize the right person quickly.
• Then, from the moment the mission started, the ability to guarantee the quality of execution at a high level, in line with the clients’ objectives.

Faced with a terrain devoid of any reference, firms have very intelligently adapted their know-how to this new market, most often weighing their contribution on their intrinsic strengths, like their own business models:

• For the former, they have focused on reorienting their prospective and commercial power, and they have capitalized on their speed in anticipating the upstream execution chain (quickly recruiting a manager or a leader).
• For the latter, approaching their high-value market, they evangelized their future customers through their powerful networks, at a high level, and they implemented their strong know-how in terms of methodology to bring the best added value during the course of the missions.

Thus, out of Darwinism, the pioneers of interim management in France organized the way in which it was operated based on their own benchmarks, and they therefore naturally called themselves, in the extension of their jargon: interim management “firms”.

 

From the firm to the interim management company

Today, the Interim Management sector is also facing major transformations and traditional “firm” type organizations will know their limits. Especially in the face of the technological revolutions underway in organizations that are undergoing their digital transformation.

Like law firms, the historical internal organization of interim management actors most often consists of a sum of internal silos (their practices, the activity of each “consultant” or partner) that have been grouped together at the beginning to better exist, for example by pooling a brand, an address, a website and/or costs.
Seen from the outside, the organization is perfect and the offer is unified. Seen from the inside, everyone works above all for their own activity (and is most often directly interested in it) and therefore transversal synergies are in reality weak by nature, whatever the promises of each of them.

The amount of information needed to perform the business is growing, accelerating every year, and finding it increasingly difficult to circulate optimally and fluidly in this type of organization.
The historical model has died. It’s the old world and it will soon not really be adapted anymore.

The National Federation of Interim Management (FNMT) has understood this well; since 2017, it has been loudly advocating the name “Interim Management Company” (EMT). Initiated by a pious wish, which starts as often with the semantic debate, the will is there, the turn has been taken and this is a good thing.

Today, there are a few interim management players organized as companies. Paradoxically, almost none of them come from an adaptation of the old model. Rather, they were created ex nihilo around this new idea, because their leaders themselves do not come from recruitment or consulting, but from the company.

WAYDEN is strengthening every day, and from the beginning, with this organizational conviction, because its managers, who all come from the company, are convinced that it is the best organization to face solidly the changes and transformations that are now imposed on the market.

Valtus, which made this choice at its inception, is now reaping the benefits. They have become leaders in France in our activities, and they have overtaken historical firms such as Eim or X-pm in terms of turnover. Finally, they showed that, thanks to this organization, the sector of interim management companies could be of interest to private equity, by calling on one of France Invest’s funds, the French Association of Investors for Growth (formerly “AFIC”).

 

So how does an interim management company work?

Following the example of the industrial company, the few interim management companies that have chosen this type of organization first value and strengthen transversality, because they have understood that the challenge is to gain agility, by accelerating the circulation of information internally:

• They create HR departments, which factor, process and send precise and uniform information to each internal department about the selected candidates, and which also take care of giving full value to relations with managers.
• IThey create cross-functional layers of support and operational excellence, to ensure consistency of quality across the downstream chain of mission execution.
• They choose associate directors who have themselves been former executives and operational managers, to improve proximity, understanding and the ability to pick up on weak signals of the topics discussed.
• IThey organize themselves by orienting their vision towards customers, whom they truly put at the heart of their attention, in a “customer-centric” posture.
• They deploy and adapt the same recipes and organizations as the companies that are their customers, so that the activity does not depend on a particular person, but on a structured organization and processes, with the aim of solidifying their relationship with customers and managers.

The transformation of the actors of transformation

Because the coming years are going to be exciting: everything is accelerating and changing, and the interim management sector, which is intrinsically growing by 15 to 20% per year according to the FNMT’s annual barometers, will also experience its revolution.
First of all, it must be understood that from 2020 onwards, interim management clients and candidates will gradually become “Millennials”. They will then be past their forties, and they will move on to decision-making positions within companies.
With them, the codes change. We are no longer willing to pay to see; “what you see is what you get”. The customer now arrives with his or her purchase journey almost already completed, whether in BtoC or BtoB. Above all, he wants precise answers to his specific questions, and keys to decision. With all due respect to those who still fantasize about the traditional commercial relationship, their awakening is likely to be painful.

On the other hand, the profession, like many others, will integrate more and more numerous and complex technological bricks, which will strengthen the value chain, or even simplify it, while providing more transparency and information. A few manager platform initiatives are currently underway, but there is a good chance that the revolution will not come first from the offer; We are still mostly in a market of demand, which operates with a strong proximity intuitu personae.

More than ever, transformation is the real common denominator of growth.
Interim management is a player, but operators will also have to make their own revolution to survive.
Over the next 5 years, the market will see that the historical model of the “firm” will have definitively come to an end, and this will also coincide with the latest retirements of the baby boomer generation. Without ever daring to admit it, they have already understood that making your digital revolution does not only mean “creating an account on LinkedIn”.
The transformed world that is opening up to us will offer exciting technological and strategic opportunities to those who have been able to take the right turns early enough… and with enough speed.


Benoit DURAND-TISNES
Managing Director – WAYDEN