It’s rare that an Interim has his or her assignment extended four times. Such was the value and impact that Mike added to this client that they kept him on site for over two years.
He joined the organisation at a critical time when it was literally haemorrhaging cash and under scrutiny from the FSA. A leading consultancy had already been in and provided the business with a high level ‘blue-sky’ plan of how they thought the future business operating model should look. But the difference between theory and practice is well known. This was the fifth attempt to shape and deliver a programme of work and actually transform strategy into tangible objectives and deliverables.
The core components requiring attention were Cost Reduction, Revenue Enhancement and Client Service. Mike recognised early on that achieving strategic goals would require the introduction of core project management disciplines into a business with limited experience of this. He proactively went out into the business to identify the key players, setting up a steering group to engage his stakeholders and help them define what could realistically be achieved within given timescales.
Across the operation – Marine, Energy, Aviation, Financial Products, and Property & Casualty, he identified disparate processes, duplication of effort and different agendas at senior level. For Mike, these were common problems and nothing he hadn’t seen before. Drawing on his vast experience he was successful in winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of key individuals, and gaining the confidence of the business to re-engineer areas of the operation. The end result was a new, greatly improved operating model which actually enhanced the business by as much as £15 million more than originally estimated.
