I have always found the analogy of the doctor useful. Just like an experienced clinician examining a patient, the interim manager must listen, observe, understand the company’s history, analyse the internal and external context, and only then propose a course of action. Two patients with the same diagnosis may respond in opposite ways to the same medication. Similarly, an organisational model that has worked extremely well in a manufacturing company in the north-east may prove counterproductive in another with a different culture, history and structure.
The risk of over-solutions
There is a trap into which managers fall with surprising regularity: that of
oversolutions. Paul Watzlawick describes it as
a solution which, although based on the best of intentions, produces negative consequences. Procedures, hierarchical levels and control systems are added, in the belief that they will bring order, but the result is a more rigid, more frustrated and slower organisation.
The operation is a complete success, but the patient gets worse.
Awareness of this risk is the first tool of a good Temporary Manager,
and recognising the attempted solutions of the past to resist the temptation to replicate them mechanically is the first effective remedy to apply.
The human dimension of change
Then there is the most delicate aspect:
people. It is estimated that in any change process, a third of staff are in favour, a third are against, and the rest are waiting to see which way the wind blows. The human mind is deeply conformist: we adapt to the group just to be part of it, even when we personally recognise the validity of the change.
The manager’s task is not to eliminate resistance, but to manage it. This means engaging in open dialogue with everyone, never excluding the most critical voices, leveraging the most motivated to bring the undecided on board, and above all, constantly reminding everyone of the common goal.
It takes effort. It requires perseverance. There are no shortcuts.
Whatever happens
During the most uncertain days of the Covid emergency, the first meeting of the company task force opened with six words: “Whatever happens, it all depends on us.”
Few words. But effective ones. An incentive to pay attention to detail, not to take anything for granted, to feel part of something worth building together.
This, ultimately, is the most important contribution a temporary manager can make to a company: not a ready-made solution,
but the ability to mobilise the energy that is already there, within the organisation, often waiting for someone who knows how to unleash it.
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