Stacking the odds

ONE of the biggest risks faced by companies testing new opportunities is the extent to which they commit management resources to the task.

Too little or too great a commitment and the end result is inevitably an expensive mistake.

Such is the challenge faced by many Western Australian companies keen to cash in on the next wave of the boom by servicing the ever-more-sophisticated requirements of the multinational resources giants.

But one Perth human resources consultancy is offering an alternative that promises to take the strain off companies and help them over the hump of the transition period.

Interim management, or executive leasing as it is known overseas, is what its name suggests.

Instead of a company having to make an all-or-nothing gamble on how to pursue an opportunity, they not only receive the strategic advice on how to pursue their goal, but are provided a skilled project management team to implement the strategy.

Once momentum has been established, management of the specific project or business objective can be handed back to a full-time permanent team. Although the approach has been in use overseas and the east coast for many years, it has never been offered in a meaningful way in WA.

Thirdman Interim principal Damon Hurst said the model was perfectly suited to WA’s project-based economy, especially given the number of relatively small services groups tendering to the multinationals.

“WA is pretty much an hourglass economy in that you’ve got these growing mining services groups who are servicing these massive corporations ... and are finding that their processes have to become quite sophisticated for a business of their scale,” he said.

“We start by offering immediate solutions to urgent operational issues.”

Mr Hurst said interim management was a “total risk management tool” which provided the structures and procedures needed to move forward permanently, fix an operational problem or simply take advantage of one-off opportunities.

Thirdman’s approach also enabled it to tap into the growing global pool of senior professionals seeking challenging non-permanent roles that better fit their lifestyle choices, he said.