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I have decided to stand for Chair of the Interim Management Association. Good idea, bad idea?
Hopefully many of you will know that the Interim Management Association is the trade body for interim recruitment businesses. If you know what it is I would be very interested to hear your perceptions of it.
If you are a client – does being part of the IMA matter to you when you are deciding on which business to use. If you are an Executive Interim Manager – are you more inclined to build relationships with only those that are part the IMA?
I suspect that there are mixed views on the IMA by many interim managers – not because I am Inspector Morse but because many of you have told me. It seems to me that the major rub has been the creation of the Interim Management Association Institute (IMAI). The IMAI – not to be confused with the Institute of Interim Management, was created a few years ago – had some noble aims but failed to deliver the goods – in my humble opinion! I am not close enough to attempt to apportion blame as to why it was unsuccessful only that it was. It now has a new more independent guise which could prove to be more successful.
OK – back to the role of Chair. Why do I want to do it? I think that the IMA could be more effective in promoting the benefits of using interim managers and importantly – much better at promoting its membership.
The IMA should focus on fewer activities but do them well. Our message should be clear; sourcing an interim manager from an IMA member (as opposed to other recruitment businesses) is the most certain route to guaranteeing the highest quality, professional resource for any assignment. IMA members must be rigorous in upholding the IMA code of conduct and must ensure that we differentiate our offering from recruitment businesses who fail to understand and promote IM properly.
We must move away from “what is interim management”. I have seen too many articles like this and as the sector matures we shouldn’t need to constantly try and define ourselves. We can promote the value of interim management as opposed to what it is, through case studies and testimonials.
I don’t believe we should attempt anything linked to the accreditation of interim managers. How do you tell an Executive Interim Manager that they need another badge?
We need to re-engage with other stakeholder groups and work in a more cohesive manner. The best example of this is the IoIM. We would all benefit from closer ties, ensure we present consistent messages about the market, role and value of IM. Keeping the IMA providers and Interim Manager groups such as the IoIM or the newer API in different camps is a more honest approach but we can still work closely together.
The IMA needs a little more money to be effective. We should consider charging our members (the provider community) more to join and by arranging an event – perhaps an awards dinner to celebrate successful IM’s. Charging money through a “son of institute” would not be palatable. Worse still I heard a suggestion that interim managers should be charged to meet providers – a crazy idea. (I will come back to this one if it raises its head again).
I want to do this because it will be a lost opportunity for our sector for the IMA to stumble further. If I am successful (not counting the chickens yet) then I hope that many of you will be supportive. We can enter a new chapter that will hopefully benefit all that are involved. Your thoughts on the above are very welcome.
Doug Baird is Managing Director of Interim Partners.
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February 18th, 2011 at 8:01 am
Doug
You would get my vote for seeing the difference bteween being a service providers (Agency) body and a career interims body.
The IMA should focus on strengthening the role of service providers, supporting and promoting them on the basis of the standards they need to reach and maintain in order to become members, raising the monies required to do that from the service providers.
Good luck.
Stas’ Chobrzynski
February 18th, 2011 at 8:30 am
This is great news Doug, the opportunity to breath some life into a broken relationship (between Interim Managers and Providers) and being represented at the top level with a business that is keenly devoted to the principles of Interim Management. I wish you well in your endeavours and hope that this change of leadership, and I hope direction, will encourage the big boys to rejoin with the IMA and present a more unified message to Interim Managers, the Providers and also, most importantly, the potential client base.
For too long when I have looked at the new entrants on the IMA listing of members and tried to engage with them they say “we don’t really see Interim Management as the mainstay of our business”. So much for stringent entry requirements and a focus on professionalism. It is not clear to an outsider what criteria have been set to ensure only quality Providers are enrolled.
Much as my recent paper to the All Party Parliamentary Group considering IR35 suggests, the IMA should represent those providers who work to the definition of Interim Management as “….A Board level decision to tackle an urgent business problems that is non routine in nature!” I’ll be issuing it to my Provider network (including you, Simon and Tom) and I would commend you to have a brief read of it when you have a few moments as it is an objective view of where I believe we are as an industry with some of the confusion that you allude to in your article above.
Good Luck Doug……the time for reform is upon us, only if Interim Management is going to be more narrowly defined, the market participants more stringently controlled and the proposition more clearly understood in the marketplace.
UK plc including countless SMEs are screaming out for short term interventions from seasoned Interim Managers and the place of Interim Management Providers in this supply chain is crucial to market development.
Make every move you consider count!
February 18th, 2011 at 9:24 am
Doug – good luck with your application – I hope that you get it! – If you do, then the IMA needs to be more pro-active in opening up the lines of communication with us professional interims. We don’t need ‘professional’ status, as most have that already, but what we do need is to improve business leaders awareness of the value we can add. Also, the Interim ‘brand’ needs exporting into a wider Europe…. you should also consider inviting professional interims, such as myself, to attend some of the IMA meetings to hear views and opinions first hand – tales from the coal face, as it were..!
Good luck
Barry Ryan – 07973887374
February 18th, 2011 at 9:30 am
Best wishes and good luck in your endeavours. Certainly, the Institute of Management Consultants tried to promote the same concept – only hire consultants with its accreditation and this was not successful. Like you, I do not seek to apportion blame, but merely to point out that clients – a diverse and dispersed group – were not aware or convinced that the accreditation added any value, beyond that held by the individual. I find myself wondering what the body corporate adds? If I am one of a few individuals (or perhaps one of many) who can meet the prospective client’s requirements or specification, what – from the client’s point of view – does the institution add? In the case of the professional associations (eg accountancy, medicine) there is the certification and sanction which acts as a guarantee – as a doctor if one messes up, they lose their livelihood when the GMC removes the licence to practice in the UK. In a free market for labour, as we have in much of the world, I can’t imagine a similar set of controls on interim managers.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has however succeeded in positioning itself as the professional body without offering similar controls. In practice, many employers will not consider staff for HR posts without full membership of the CIPD. That institute does however have an examinations requirement and it is that which is seen to add the value.
So, what might the IMA do? If examinations – in what? As a sanctioning body – for what transgressions and with what sanctions?
A real challenge. From a potential member’s perspective, there is lots that could be done and offered (and no, I don’t mean ten percent off Avis car hire)to enhance the knowledge and skills of the career interim, who frequently is unable to access corporate training or development programmes. My current client has an excellent series of IT, leadership and many other programmes, which non-permanent staff are not able to attend. Recent events there have included both government ministers and senior industry figures speaking and a series of practical IT workshops. Would that these were available elsewhere.
February 18th, 2011 at 11:03 am
It is not fully clear to me and other Interims what the IMA is actually really supposed to do. Also, why do we need to have two orgisations ie the IMA and the IIM? Far better surely to have one clear well known ‘Institute’/trade body.
February 18th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
As someone new to interim work, it would seem to me that if you feel you can make a difference to the IMA membership that you should stand. It has always been my ethos that if you beleive you can make a difference you should do it!
February 20th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
You should stand. It’s very difficult to have a voice if you don’t get involved formally
February 22nd, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Doug, I trust that you will be successful.
Just to respond to some of the points that you have made. As an Executive Interim Manager I have worked from the very early days of its, (the IMA)and the IIM’s conception, to build relationships with providers that are IMA members, and far away the most professional providers are indeed, IMA members.
I would expect also the end users of our joint services, that is the client, our customer have no doubt that they are safer to entrust their requirements to an IMA member company.
You have also hit the nail on the head when you say that the major rub was the creation of the IMAI. I really don’t understand why this body is really necessary, there is no reason why there should not be a close and mutually beneficial relationship with the independent body that represents Interim Managers, namely the IIM.
I completely agree with your message about moving away from “What is Interim Management “, after all we have been answering this question for at least 12 years to my knowledge.
Good luck with your application.
February 24th, 2011 at 6:58 am
being a new interim worker, IMA has not featured on my radar, making the membership open and inclusive but then exclusive is a difficult balance. i am a chartered engineer and the institutions have this dilemma continually as require engineers to attain a professional status but the market place in the UK does not require it. Good luck