Experience, Ability and Specialism Count

During my first blog about Management Consultancy vs Interim Management about the differences in how they are employed. You can read the blog here if you haven’t already done so.

Now we’ll move on to the first significant impact this can have on your business, this is wholeheartedly based upon Experience and Ability.  During the first blog we touched on the fact that the Agency decides who you work with. Taking a level of control out of your hands.

With this element being out of your control, how do you know that the person who is coming to work for you the experience you need?  Simply put you don’t.  Yes, typically a Management Consultant will work across a number of businesses in a number of industries.  However, each placement could be for a different reason. The skill base of a Management Consultant is much wider, ‘a jack of all trades’ springs to mind.

A very skilled well rounded ‘Jack of all Trades’ no doubt but not with the experience needed to become a specialist. With an Interim Manager they are employed by you therefore they have to prove their experience to you.

How about an Example?

As an example I’ve worked in Sales and Marketing for coming on 30 years, I started managing and coaching colleagues in 1998. And, I ran my own Document Management and Software Development business for a decade following the turn of the century.

Therefore I specialise in Interim roles that require a focus on Sales and Marketing.  I could say that I can read a balance sheet therefore I know a bit about finance. Or that I can write code so I’m a software developer. But the real truth is that I’m no specialist in those areas, I am though in Sales and Marketing.

A Management Consultant will no doubt be well versed in the principles of Sales and Marketing. But will the actually have done it, over and over again successfully?  Really got into the grips of multiple different challenges in different industries?  Over a long term sustained period? It is highly unlikely.

In Conclusion

Ultimately this proven experience and ability that an Interim Manager has, will help reduce the risk associated with bring in external help and ensure that your project is expedited in the quickest and most effective method.

So an Interim Manger is a specialist in their field, it is up to them to prove it to you the person that is employing them. Nobody other than you should feel comfortable with an Interim.

The fall out of differences doesn’t simply stop there though.  In the next blog we’ll take a look at how using a Management Consultant differs from using an Interim Manager when considering your current employees.

You can read it here.