38% of UK management teams do not have the right skills to lead their firms through recession, says an Alium Partners Survey. Growing demand for strategic change capabilities from senior level interim managers.
Research from Alium Partners, a leading UK independent interim management provider, indicates that many UK organisations do not have the right management skills in place to steer them through the recession. This was the view of 38% of senior interim executives about the management of the last organisation they worked in, according to Alium Partners’ annual survey of more than 1,000 top level interims operating in the UK. Senior interim managers are highly experienced executives that organisations hire for rapid change management projects.
The key areas that interims said management need to improve are strategy development, strength of leadership, people management and communication.
Many top level interims report that the recession has led to an increased demand for their capabilities in delivering high impact organisational change. 22% of the interims surveyed said that they did up to 10% more work in 2008 than in 2007, and 9% reported an up to 25% increase in workload.
Nick Robeson, CEO of Alium Partners, said: “High level interim executives have a great deal to offer in the current environment. Many senior managers have not had experience of directing organistions through recession and are struggling with their decision making process at the moment. The best interims are seasoned in leadership through downturns and have the experience and judgement to be able to make the tough, yet measured decisions that are needed to build resilience to survive the recession. Our expectation is that the demand for senior interims will continue to grow throughout the year.”
To help combat the recession, organisations have appointed senior interim executives for a range of strategic change initiatives. The core reasons for hiring interims were internal change management programmes (39% of interims), major new projects (27%), and enhancing operational performance (17%). Over half of interims (57%) said that their most recent appointment was for a turnaround situation.
60% of interims anticipate that the recession will end in 2010, with a third believing that the economy will turn in the second half of next year. However, 22% of interims believe that the recession will not end until 2011.
Interims report that the top five negative impacts of the recession on their clients are: the need to tighten expenses (67% of interims), job cuts (64%), decline in sales (62%), recruitment freeze (50%) and declining staff morale (43%).
However 7% of interims said that the recession is providing strategic opportunities for their clients, with the key opportunities being cost base reductions (57%), business transformation (56%), acquisitions (30%), and service expansion (27%).
No comments:
Post a comment