With businesses needing to implement growth strategies or commence work on major change programmes – but all senior team members being fully committed and financial constraints dictate that a permanent executive can’t be appointed to lead on the project, it is fuelling increased demand for interims who are adding significant value through the flexibility, task oriented and focus on delivery approach they offer.
The latest quarter results from the Ipsos MORI survey (completed by IMA members) indicate the highest reason cited for the need for an assignment remains Programme/Project Management, with almost a third of all interim executives hired for this purpose. This is closely followed by Change/ Transition management with c 20 per cent of all assignments.
Another interesting finding was the continued trend of increasing enquiries received by each provider participating in the Q2 survey 2012. This saw a substantial increase compared to previous quarters and would confirm the thoughts on the market currently that activity levels continue to grow.
The latest economic news stating that we are going to continue to be in this challenging economic climate for some time yet would lead to a sensible conclusion that organisations can’t keep waiting for much longer. Businesses need to transform to align people, process and technology. Many organisations don’t have the internal capability to drive change programmes forward and as such try to redeploy their existing leadership teams thus putting pressure on other parts of the business. With a failure rate as high as 70% on change programmes, many businesses struggle to implement the necessary changes that will ultimately transform their business. This coupled with some businesses losing ground or at best stagnating should embrace the opportunity of engaging an interim to drive their business forward in preparation for the eventual economic upturn.
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