How your company could benefit from agile leadership
Agile leadership is about steering your organisation with fluidity and resilience, with a focus on action and outcomes over and above strict protocols and hierarchy. Agile leaders are not fearful of change, are able to make decisions swiftly and with clarity, and tend to work collaboratively rather than wielding tight control. This style of leadership means the ability to respond flexibly in times of crisis, with a preparedness to make mistakes but with the ability to learn from them and to work those lessons into future responses.
Interim managers make great agile leaders in part due to the nature of their work and partly because of the way they are deployed. Interims come from outside the business at times of need, which allows them the space to work objectively; they are naturally outcome-driven without any baggage of ‘correct’ process or rigid corporate structure. Furthermore, working for a set period of time in multiple organisations means they often need to make fast decisions in times of high pressure and change, and in environments that are new to them. Moving between organisations creates an adaptable working nature essential to agile leadership.
This agility makes them exceptional at business change and transformation, large-scale projects, mergers and acquisitions, project management and other business-critical periods and events.
Engaging interim managers is in itself an agile response – deploying specific skills at the time the business needs it, rather than keeping within a permanent structure just for the sake of it. An obvious additional benefit of this is the reduction in headcount cost and recruitment spend.
3 reasons interim managers make good agile leaders:
- Objectivity: An interim manager is not a permanent employee, and is therefore unconcerned with usual corporate process, historic successes or failures or office politics of any kind. This allows them the space to work on the task at hand, objectively and without potentially disadvantageous preconceptions.
- Clarity of purpose: An interim manager will usually specialise in a particular sector/industry or project, making them highly efficient at achieving the best business outcomes and goals. Their personal success as an interim relies on them gaining successes for your business; further work depends on a proven track record. This means absolute focus on meeting the demands of their brief, such as the successful completion of project delivery within or under budget.
- Collaborative methodologies: Interims usually have high-level management experience and can organise entire teams, inter-departmental and even inter-office office collaboration (particularly important for a merger or acquisition).
Partner with an interim management services provider:
Partnering with an interim services provider now is a good way to ensure you have access to the interim talent when you need it. Specialist services like Oakwood Resources have access to a wide network of highly-skilled interims with a proven track record of success.
Oakwood Resources can accelerate your business requirements by sourcing interim managers who are assessed based on their skills and experience, and who can work alongside you to deliver successful outcomes for your business’ strategic or operational needs in 2021.
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