Chris Denham FCA
Chris Denham FCA was educated at Cambridge and worked at Smith & Williamson in audit and insolvency. He was FD at Jo Y Jo from 1992 until 2005, then started as a part-time FD.
I’m not so much the classic interim. I’m more of a part-time FD with a number of clients. I’ve got one client I’ve been handling since 2005, and they’re one day a week, which fits in with the others. The main role I’m currently in, I started as an interim for them after administrators insisted on having someone who knew what they were doing in the accounts department. When I started, I had left my previous employer. To be honest, it was getting a bit boring; I was doing the same thing every week and like a lot of SMEs, the mistake you can make in your career is not getting enough training or finding out what’s out there. But I got very good at import/export and a few other things, and then because I knew people at the banks, especially HSBC, they had clients who often needed a bit of expertise in the field. So the bank would recommend me to various people and I picked up a few roles that way.
From my perspective, the initial question is always: what reports do you want your finance department to be issuing? And you’ve got some reports you must always do, such as the statutory areas. But beyond that, I say, “Well, I’m not really going to be interested in doing a role where you’re not producing monthly management accounts, or proper budgets or on order reporting – it just isn’t worth it.”
The chances are, if the business doesn’t know where it’s going, soon enough you’ll crash into something pretty substantial. So it always starts with getting proper management accounts, in a timely manner (usually within two weeks of the month end), in a readable and accurate format so people can look at them and understand them, and they can compare this month to the last, this month to this month last year, this year-to-date to last year, and the year-to-budget and have a budget for the year.
I try to instill absolute discipline: always do a budget, so there is a five-year plan. The problem is it does take a long time to get a proper management accounts package written which costs them a lot, and they don’t see much result. It is a bit of a problem, so you do have to write off a bit of time initially. Learning to be a part-time finance director is the toughest test, because a client should only select someone who’s used to doing the work on a part-time basis. They don’t want someone who’s going to take a role with them, and then the next full-time job that comes along, they’re off. As an interim FD, you’ve got to be able to juggle these things.
This is the ‘multi-tasking’ approach people talk about; you’ve got to be able, when you’re with a client, to concentrate on them, however important the job for someone else might be. You’ll always have your other commitments, and there will be times when there are conflicts. Sometimes that means being upfront and saying, “I can’t do that. I’ve got something else on.” Hopefully it doesn’t happen. Some people are uncomfortable with that approach: they’re professionals, and feel conflicted and think: “I can’t let this person down.”
Bill Jessup, FCA
Bill Jessup FCA is also a corporate treasurer. He graduated from Durham University Business School. Bill’s interim experience includes work with Ricardo Plc, Ricardo UK Ltd and HCL Plc.
I qualified and worked my way up in the typical fashion. I became finance director of couple of quoted companies, the last one of which was taken over. So it was a combination of the opportunity presented by the change in circumstances combined with my desire not to carry on as a plc FD that helped me decide to try interim and non-exec roles. That was 15 years ago. The good thing about interim work is that there are no typical jobs. You might find the client business is in financial or operational difficulty and the FD may have left. As well as that, some of my clients have had a gap between CFOs and they wanted to buy time to find the right person – using an interim was the perfect solution. As an interim FD you can ignore the longer-term, lower impact initiatives and focus on the real immediate issues. And that’s usually made easier by the management giving their backing to deliver the project.
I also find that people are often more open with you about where the real problems lie in the business. That’s because they know you’re going to be discreet, and you’re not going to be there once the project is over, so they are more likely to be candid. Since becoming an interim, I’ve made use of the agency route, although that has changed down the years. It used to be that the engagement process was quick: the client would request CVs on a Monday, you’d interview that week and start the following Monday. That speed was largely due to the fact that the process was controlled by CEOs. Over the years, however, people have become more risk averse. So the HR department is more likely to be involved, and it might actually take a couple of months from first contact to starting somewhere. And of course you can go a long way down the track only for the project to be pulled, which is a frustration you have to learn to live with.
If you’re thinking about making the switch to interim work, my advice is take a critical look at your own career and work out what your selling point is. Because ultimately, you’ve got to persuade the agency and client to work with you – it’s hard to get that first job. The second piece of advice would be to use your own black book to get started. Although agencies will be polite and responsive, what they are really after is seasoned interims. It’s very hard for them to put forward a candidate with no interim experience. So rely on your contacts to get started. And then ask yourself the question – does the lifestyle suit you? It’s a fairly solitary role and it can be lonely at times. It’s worth saying you need to be at the right stage of your career – you need financial capacity to see you through whatever lean times may come.
Finally, make sure you have fun in between assignments. Someone once told me that it’s possible to spend a few months banging away at the laptop with no result. It can be soul destroying. So try to do a couple of hours of networking/marketing a day and then go off and play golf – make good use of your personal time between jobs, because when you’re on assignment your time isn’t your own. It’s been good advice.
Interim Management Group, March 2015
© ICAEW. This article was first published by “Finance & Management Magazine” in September 2014 and is reproduced with their permission.
Read part one of The inbetweeners: life as an interim FD
