October Interim News Bulletin

Summer holidays are over – back to work!

Japan is the world’s second largest economy and a key supplier to China – but exports were down in July 26.5% to China (the government there is credit tightening now) and 39.5% to the USA. Manufacturing capacity utilisation is currently 70pc in Europe, 68pc in the US, 65pc in Japan, and as low as 50pc in some countries, according to the World Bank.

Toyota is suspending a key production line at its Takaoka plant in central Japan. It is cutting global capacity by 1m vehicles.

So I am far from convinced recovery is round the corner. UK house prices rose for the fourth month running – lack of supply or misguided souls thinking the bottom is being left behind and they need to jump into the market fast? Only time will tell.

We’ve had some good business wins over the summer period including from our overseas offices, but conditions remain painfully tough. The moment when down-sized companies turn to our fantastic Interim Managers to help them climb back into recovery, must surely be close at hand.

We are interested in speaking to any Interim Executive who has been trained in arbitration and mediation in the Employee Relations field. A sweep of the database does not reveal such expertise which I find hard to imagine – so if you have been trained in arbitration and mediation, or have experience in it, please let John know through jm@brookexec.com

True to our reputation of being one of the most innovative and dynamic intermediaries in your market, over recent months we have developed two new channels to market for your expertise:

Building on the success of our Career Navigation™ Consulting business – which offers executive coaching as well as a full suite of behavioural and attitudinal orientated services - we have launched Career Navigation™ Training to offer skill based training in a variety of subjects.

Some of you have already been working with us in this new business which is great news. We have been delivering training to diverse levels of staff – groups and individuals and as the upturn comes, our quality, competitive offering is well placed to seize the day.

Please take a look at the web site www.careernavigation.com and see the courses we are already offering.

• We want to hear from you if you believe you have capability to deliver any of these courses as we will need extra trainers, in addition to the ones we have lined up already. Email Martin on mb@careernavigation.com
• If you can offer us a new course not yet in the line-up, that you can deliver, please let us know. The wider the range we can offer the market the more critical mass we achieve. Email Martin on mb@careernavigation.com
• If you usually buy courses for your team whilst on assignment, please let us know what kind of courses those are that you seek. We may well be able to develop one to suit you, if it is not in the current line up. Email Martin on mb@careernavigation.com
• If you are currently on assignment and about to buy training for your staff please, contact us for a discussion about how we can help. Email Martin on mb@careernavigation.com
• If you can refer us to someone you know who buys training, we will be very grateful. Email Martin on mb@careernavigation.com
• If you or members of your family want to attend any of the courses, you get a discount in 2009. Email Martin on mb@careernavigation.com

Training is a market suffering like any other, but it is still a multi-million pound sector. We differentiate ourselves by:

• We always go the extra mile to consult with the line manager of any delegate booked on our courses, so we are aware of the motivation for investing in the course and the desired outcome.
• We always follow up the course with each delegate’s line manager to obtain feedback, as well as sharing the feedback the delegate gave us through their initial evaluation report.
• We will always conduct two post course evaluations with every delegate. The first to obtain immediate feedback to enhance our courses. The second, after a suitable interval, to establish if the lessons learned on the course are being implemented and sustained.
• We believe in Supported Learning and where a line manager identifies a need, we can provide targeted one-on-one, on-going mentoring (skill issues) or coaching (attitude and behavioural issues) as required. This facility is rare in the training industry. So rare, we have not seen it in our rivals’ offerings.
• When developing bespoke courses for in-house programmes, the lead trainer is personally involved in the client briefing process, so they directly get to grips with the issues and desired outcomes.
• We always aim to be competitive.

Courses can be delivered at our offices, client premises or in suitable conference centres or hotels. Many Interim Managers take an odd day out of a full time assignment to sit as a Non Executive Director on various boards, look after the occasional needs of a long term loyal client, or just to ‘go fishing’. So stepping ‘off assignment’ to deliver a training course from time to time will appeal to some of you I know.

Traditionally the Interim Management sector sells against the consulting world – extolling the virtues of action over thought and lower costs. However the consulting world has been around since the 1950’s and will always be there in the future. The truth is we also feed off the consulting world – once the thinking has been done our action –orientated Interim Managers get the transformation done.

However, Interim Management is too often classed as a recruitment activity these days, controlled through HR as gatekeepers, and therefore sits in the reactive space. This is one of the reasons our market has been suffering so much.

There is an elite amongst our Interim Management talent bank that also have rock solid consulting experience – often having worked at one of the ‘Big 4’. We have formed several high capability panels of consultants, specific to particular market sectors, and launched another new business – Anabol Consulting™. You can see the areas we are working in through the web site www.anabolconsulting.com

By focusing on specific sectors, we can approach CEOs and FDs with thought leadership around their organisation and activity. We can drive the agenda for the future and at a time when many Boards are asking themselves the questions “What should we do for our future?” or “Can we improve our performance by launching this product, or changing our business in some way?” we are able to provide feasibility and performance consulting expertise to help them plan a roadmap and execute it.

One of the Holy Grails of the Interim Management world is to put in teams of executives on assignment with a client, but this rarely happens. As we can see from the Anabol Consulting assignments we are now working on, the clients we are talking to need teams of Consultants from us to achieve their objectives.

If you know of any organisation needing feasibility and performance consulting expertise, please alert us on mb@anabolconsulting.com

These two new businesses are in no way dilutive of our Interim Management business or our commitment to it. On the contrary, they allow us to feed further along the ‘food chain’ and promote your talents in different proactive ways that are outside the reactive recruitment space.

Yours sincerely,

David Jensen
Director - Brooklands Executives Limited

 

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