Consulting approaches: interim manager or consultant?
MOMEN can assist you in France and abroad by providing interim managers for major company transformations, short-term replacements, or crisis management.
Several options are available to executives who want to move their company forward. Let’s take a look at the main ones: interim management, consulting services, and permanent recruitment.
Differences between consulting and interim management
Engaging a consultant from a high-level consulting firm (management or strategy consulting) addresses a need for analysis, studies, and recommendations, rather than “action.”
Engaging an interim manager meets an urgent need to have a high-level executive in position immediately, for a defined period (typically 6 to 18 months). There is no need to spend three months searching for the ideal candidate, the interim manager is operational and ready to start right away.
As for recruiting a permanent manager, it addresses a long-term need to fill the role. Even if the need is urgent, the executive must take the time to find and select the right person.
What are the approaches in consulting & interim recruitment?
Immediate deployment of an executive for a defined period, to lead a transformation or replace a member of the CODIR
Intervention of a consultant to diagnose the company’s issues and propose a method to address them, in order to achieve the objectives set by executive management
Less immediate intervention, involving the recruitment of a permanent employee for a long-term role
Intervention of a consultant to define the company’s medium- and long-term objectives, sometimes by challenging the existing setup
How to best combine these different staffing levers?
Depending on the phase your company is going through, you may choose one approach over another. For example, if your company is facing a crisis or preparing for transformation, the immediate intervention of an interim manager will be required to stabilize the situation.
If you have the time and the ambition to bring a new dynamic to your company and define a new direction, then a strategy consulting assignment will be more appropriate.
Another example: if you are recruiting for a permanent position but the process is taking time and your department director is about to leave, interim management is perfectly suited as a relay solution.
For a better understanding, interim management can be applied wherever the other approaches do not: