Cerius Business Today

On this episode of Cerius Business Today, Kristen has a discussion with a supply chain and operations expert, Michael Smith. They talk about ERP Implementation, the importance of working capital, inventory turnover rates and more.

On today's episode of Cerius Business Today, Kristen speaks with Interim Executive Bromley Beadle about the differences between a troubled company and the company in turnaround and how you can avoid being either.

On today's episode of cerius business today, Pamela and Kristin talk about how an interim executive can give a CEO more time for strategic initiatives.

 

On today's episode of cerius business today, Pamela and Kristin talk about how an interim executive can give a CEO more time for strategic initiatives.

Full Transcript Below

SPEAKER: Pamela

I've actually had three conversations just in the past few weeks with CEOs about this exact same situation and some things are doing they've come to us saying I want to bring in an interim GM. Why? Because I don't want to be the one that everyone goes to with all the questions I've got to get out of that someone else it was. He'd want to bring in an operations expert and an interim CEO or part time CEO his case because of cash flow and just simply to get him out of the day to day. You've seen not before with clients what types of result, wait when we bring them in and what's the conversation with the CEO after the fact, they're relieved, they're happy. It's kind of like they've got four or five hats on the top of their head. And they're no longer having to walk around juggling the hats, a picture someone walking sideways and then sidestepping trying to juggle the hats on top. They're able to hand them off to someone else. You know I hesitated when I answered that question because it's different. You know some people are relieved. Some people are, they don't know what to do because people are coming to them anymore. They're going to somebody else or they're worried. Oh my gosh you know am I going to become irrelevant. So there is an adjustment period for that. But again if you look at that person is in there to help you. And that's really the underlying reason why you brought that person in. They are there to help you, not to make you irrelevant not to you know take all the questions it's to give you more to be more time to be strategic to really take your company evaluate where you are today and know what next steps need to be taken because nobody has time to do that anymore because they're so involved in the day to day. And I know I get that way too, I'm so involved in day to day I I barely have time to think about oh my gosh our strategic plan you know we implementing it or are we executing and or you know shall we start planning for next year or I just saw something in my industry I need to be taking a look at more closely I don't have time for all that this gives you all of that time and so much to do with we actually had cut down a 30 million dollar manufacturing firm. The CPI was the original founder that built it up and kind of got into a rut and had gotten through that the team had needed to make some changes in the leadership team. And was it was a tough grueling thing to make those changes because those employees have been with them since the very beginning and he was struggling with that but yet they were continually issues going on. He wasn't sure that he wanted to be the CEO anymore and was thinking of selling out of the company or all of the company. Wasn't sure what to do so decide to bring in an interim president in the time tested out and see how that went. And it was interesting, having that individual make some of those tougher decisions be more of the day to day interface with the employees and help mentor some and figure out some of the leadership gaps and make the changes. He was having fun again. He actually enjoyed the business again not running the day to day. But as you said this weight had been lifted all shoulders, he was able to be more strategic and actually started talking some competitors and found a competitor in it and ended up doing some acquisitions. It was enthused and energized instead of sailing. He ended up growing the company.

It's amazing when you have more time how much you can do for your company. I mean you wanted to grow, you wanted to be successful but if you're so caught up in the day to day you're never going to get there. So yeah you've got to give herself a little bit of time. And these people that have put in these CEOs that have put in an interim president or an interim managing director or interim general manager, they've found this time, they've actually grown their company or we even have some CEOs that literally they've owned a company for so long whether it's privately owned or family owned there's nobody to step up and they're just burn out. So you know they can now step aside and take a breath of fresh air let somebody else run it and then when they feel like it OK they want to get involved again and the cool thing about it is usually the interim CEO or the interim presidents in there, they're going to wrap your company up. So while you're taking a breather and really readjusting and then you know getting a new perspective on where your company is in the industry and what you want to do with it, somebody is growing it for you. So by the time you get back it's up 10 percent. Profitability is good. So it's actually really good good place to be to have your time as well as somebody in there running it for you.

SPEAKER: Kristin

I'm going to throw a curveball at Pamela.

SPEAKER: Pamela

We may need have the edit team at it out a whole big thing of silence here, starting little steps because it's tough to think about bringing someone else in to run the company, no matter how burned out or tired you are. So start with one thing. And there was one hat or one thing that you do that you could bring someone in either on a project apart from time basis to take that off your plate what would it be?

SPEAKER: Kristin

Operations because operations takes most of your day. So I mean with all the things going on in the day to day stuff that happens and especially if you're the one that they always go to ask questions. So absolutely that would be it.

SPEAKER: Pamela

You came up with that a little too quick. what I'm currently giving up finance, you can be the company's finance person for a very long time and as a privately held business I've always enjoyed that part of it and I enjoy numbers. But what I have realized is as much as I can do that and enjoy that I, I enjoy being client facing more. I've forgotten how much I enjoy that part of the business and when I started with this business doing that and by getting handing it off to someone who definitely can do it better. I'm amazed at how much more fun I'm able to have and do the things that I enjoy not that I hate doing the finance part of it. But it's a bit of something off. It's a weight off my shoulders. So even just starting with little I'm not quite right up someone come out I'm still having I am having fun, I'm not ready to have someone else come in and take over the business for us. But just starting in the little fights of what am I doing that probably is not the thing that I should be doing. I can't do it but there's something else that I want to spend more time doing, whether it's spend time with my family or spending time with our clients.

SPEAKER: Kristin

You were growing your company. I mean really sitting back and thinking, it takes thought takes time to really figure out the best path for your company and if you're never having that time your company then is growing.

SPEAKER: Pamela

And we'll leave it with that as to how an interim bringing an intern whether it's a CFO, CEO, operations, sales manager think about how much time if you're not being the one who's solely responsible for the sales team anymore and I think Phil thank you as well you may get a bigger Christmas gift around the holidays from your sales team if you're not the one running it. Bring me an interim or fractional executive who can help take that off the plate and help you have fun in your business and get it to that growth that you know it is capable of. We're certainly here to help. We can be reached at [email protected].

On this episode of business today, Pam and Kristen talk about why interim management is every CEOs secret weapon.

 

Full Transcript below:

SEAKER: Kristen

And as you scale a company you really can’t do it without people and talent which is why everyone is such in a rush to get the right talent in the right places with large scale companies to grow them. We’ve got everyone in place including our leadership team and then John walks in the door on Friday morning, my number two, my right hand and says.

SPEAKER: Pamela

I’m leaving. Everyone has experience that at one time or another.

SPEAKER: Kristen

My heart sinks if it’s not going into heart attack mode.

SPEAKER: Pamela

It happens.

SPEAKER: Kristen

And this happens everything from John decides he’s leaving as of Monday, he may offer me two weeks’ notice. I have two weeks to get someone else in place. I cannot go without my right. Without a right hand what do I do?

SPEAKER: Pamela

You know it’s interesting. We all need to not be blindsided by this because think about the talent market right now. It is so tight. Talent is in such demand that no matter how well you know your employees. Somebody can come in and steal one right out from under you. So yes you want to take very good care of your employees that they don’t do that but sometimes money talks and they’re going to leave no matter what you’re doing for them. So you have to be ready, you have to have a solution that you can quickly implement to be able to fill that position, should something like that happen.

SPEAKER: Kristen

Personally I think that every CEO and their succession plan, it should be kind of like a trust or a will if anything happens call my attorney. They’ve got everything, you ever see on needs to have in case of anything. You’re Cerius. Call their number. I’ve talked to Cerius. I know exactly what they know my company. They know my leadership team, they know everything I need. Call them in case of emergency and fortunately that doesn’t happen. We get the phone call at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon that says my CFO or my CEO just gave notice, they gave me two weeks’ notice. How quick can you get someone in your training, we’ve had them in there by Tuesday Wednesday. We can absolutely interim management can be used for those cases but there’s a number of other scenarios.

SPEAKER: Pamela

Absolutely. Absolutely. So another one is you want to promote someone, they’ve been really good in their job but there’s no one to succeed them. They have no one they can step up to take the roles of a sudden, you leave them in that position. That’s true. That can happen and what can happen from that scenario is that person will leave because they’re not getting promoted so you don’t want that to happen. So you have to make sure you have some kind of succession plan in place to be able to move people around or you have a scenario where that person really needs to go back, like they really meant to go they were meant to go a year ago but you didn’t do a thing about it. Well you need to do something about those people because all they’re doing is hurting the growth of your company.

SPEAKER: Kristen

And that’s a tough one because we all have their sacred cows or otherwise. We all have someone, we look at our leadership team, you know either the company and most the time we here. My company has outgrown them. And that’s a really tough move because there’s two decision points there. One, how do I replace them with someone who is the right person and what I do with this individual? Sometimes you can upscale them. We’ve done shadow programs where we’ve brought in let’s say an interim CEO to work with the operations manager or director of operations coach then gave them the till the toolkits worked with them for six to 12 months and they were actually able to step into that role and be saved. Actually I love that story as I manufacturer about 15 million and that individual is still on board and that CEO comes in every year as their strategic planning works with the team. In other cases they’re not the right person, they’re in over their head and they can help you work through how to face them out, place them somewhere else but really it’s how to replace them? how to get that right person and profiling that right person? they carry it on and interims can be used from shadowing helping through transition situations like this. They can come in and assume the role on an interim or fractional basis and they really don’t need much onboarding, the typical onboarding. It’s not weeks, it’s not days.

SPEAKER: Pamela

literally. Yeah it’s not quite ours but literally we have gotten an engagement on Monday. They’ve called in the clients wanting. In fact this particular case it was the CFO was for public company by the way. And in five days we had all the contracts signed. The interim had been selected and on Monday they started. I mean it’s easy, it’s quick and the thing is it’s a very experienced person that can hit the ground running. You don’t have to wait to train them and they typically are like chameleons that where they go into a situation and they automatically fit into your culture, your leadership team. So they work well with it so you barely know that there’s somebody new that’s working with your team. I mean it’s really does work well.

SPEAKER: Kristen

We’ve had situations where we’ve had an interim step in and a CEO brought us in an interim stepped in and it was an interim CEO that had hired us, brought the interim CFO in and after a couple of weeks the interim CFO was talking with some of the team and the team didn’t realize that it was an interim CEO or interim CFO. They had no idea since everything was so smoothly and they were integrated quite a bit with the team. So we’ve talked about interim management can be used from sudden departures to like someone to depart the company and that’s it’s a tough thing to do. Sometimes you really do need someone there to help you kind of help you through it and make sure because there’s a lot of fear in that. Absolutely fear is probably one of a number of things that keeps us from making tough decisions that we need to make as business owners. You mentioned you want to promote someone and maybe they don’t have all the skills or there’s no one to replace them interim is great with that. Pamela I know you’ve talked a lot about project work.

SPEAKER: Pamela

Yeah, there’s a lot of times when you’re missing a particular expertise and I’ll never forget this one of the corporate companies I used to work with that I was in sales and marketing and my boss came to me one day and say’s I think we want to I think we want to go into the international market. What did you get us there? And I’m like What? I had never done any international business before. So again instead of taking me, this is the advice I would have given my boss I didn’t give it to him back then because I was excited I got to do something new but I will tell you I probably hurt the growth of the company because I didn’t do it as quickly as somebody who’s had that experience. So I see companies today where they’re missing, they’re doing acquisitions for the first time and they don’t really have that person that knows how to do it, knows what to look for, knows the due diligence, knows even how to integrate the two companies once the acquisition is finished and you get somebody with that experience because so smoothly as opposed to using your existing team to try to do something that they’re just not used to. Could they step up? Sure. Well they make mistakes? yes lots of them. Will they be the best you know doing the job? No. So why risk that and risk the time get an interim where they can very quickly get up to speed and get it done for you.

SPEAKER: Kristen

I know that story a couple of times now and I’ve never asked why did your boss choose you? You had the most international, not experience but the most time your passport Hey you travel internationally you should know the international market? Why do he pick you?

SPEAKER: Pamela

I have no idea. I had a good relationship with my boss. I was producing, I did well in the company and I think he just, like we all do. Somebody doing something really well in the company there, they’ve been promoted a couple times, they look good and they’re like if anyone can do it, it’s Pamela or whoever your person is in your company and we just assume they’re going to be able to take it run with it. Again, sure. That’s exactly what I did but we lost time, we probably would have grown faster I mean there’s all sorts of things that they could have done besides put me in that position.

SPEAKER: Kristen

And looking at interim management or fractional and with what we do it’s how quickly we can assess the situation, work with the CEO to figure out what they really need? how quickly they need it and the results? Where do you want to be three and six months from now? Set this job description aside, we appreciate that a whole lot of time and age are spent on that and they pulled it out and they freshened it up but it’s not about failing a sea, it’s about that catalyst to help that company scale. So as we’re looking at different leadership gaps that we may have as we’re looking to Skyler company whether it is a sudden departure, someone who you’d like to depart the company, what you’re promoting too quickly, you want to promote someone, you don’t have anyone to backfill, you need that help with succession planning, there’s any number of areas that really makes interim management that CEO secret weapon to come in. What do you want to call paratroopers, parachute hers in any number of ways

On this episode of Cerius Business Today, Pam and Kristen talk about the importance of learning from your peers and other items they Wished they knew when. And Later Kristen speaks seasoned Interim CMO Whitney Vosbrough explains the importance of finding the 'why' of your business. He shares his tips for creating and delivering a powerful marketing message that resonates with people.

On Today's episode, Pam and Kristen talk about how to build an advisory board. And later in the episode, Kristen speaks with Jed Daly about peer groups without agendas.

On this episode of Cerius Business today, Pam and Kristen talk about how the gig economy can fill talent gaps. Later Kristen speaks with the Alex Jewett, CEO of Right Left Agency on leveraging the gig economy in her business. 

On this episode Business Today, Pam and Kristen are talking with Managing Partner of  KSJG , Larry Gregson about, a CPA’s ABC’s.

Included in this podcast:

1. The best time to do tax planning.
2. Pass through income and tax deductions
3. Things every business should do to be financially strong.

On this episode of business today Pam and Kristen talk about how companies can leverage the gig economy to fill talent gaps and how every organization can grow by changing the way they think about hiring. 

On this episode of Cerius Business Today, Pam and Kristen talk about how you can use total talent management to get stuff done in your business. And later Kristen speaks with productivity expert John Denn on how you can make your days more productive.