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“A leader is a dealer in hope” is a famous saying of Napoleon Bonaparte – and he was right. We all admire people who plant seeds of hope.
Successful interims and consultants deal in the same currency. I am an interim of 14+ years. My experience is in project management and designing factories with a reputation as a trouble shooter and a track record of business improvement and turnarounds. I like to think I can sniff out where a business is losing money, troubleshoot and, where possible, turnaround.
In 2014 I was contracted to a unionised 800-employee bakery site with a remit to close it down within the year. Almost from day one I could feel the turnaround potential but nobody believed in my vision; not the management team or the venture capital backers. I had to remove the whole senior management team as they didn’t believe it was possible. I then brought in an Interim Finance Director, Interim Commercial Director, and promoted a very bright young guy into the Head of Ops role. I then called up a consultancy firm I had worked with before and they sent me their new Operations Director, Martyn King. Martyn and my new team immediately hit it off and Martyn was quick to see the potential. With Martyn on board we had the ‘dream team’ and everything started to change.
Martyn totally supports the process of change through competence, leadership change and empowering the onsite management to enstil that in the factory workforce. On this project we got some early quick wins and this started to give the workforce the vision and hope they needed to really get on board. It was a herculean team effort across the entire business but together we stopped the closure.
Within six months we had got the site to break even and by the end of year two we had improved performance by £5.5m. The key point here, and common to any turnaround, is that the workforce didn’t change, they just needed the catalyst of leadership to deliver an amazing result.
Over the years I have continued to work with Martyn and his team at Chasm on many other projects including Little Moons, Oscar Mayer and The Cake Crew. Martyn is who I call when I have a client in a tight spot as he brings additional ‘horsepower’ in the form of systems, controls, and training. Like me, Martyn can sniff out where the money is and where the problems are. Martyn also has the uncommon ability to lift the bonnet on your business and set out the systems you need, knowing instinctively where the ‘connections and wiring’ is needed.
The Chasm team are very clever and experienced in manufacturing and ERP systems, getting the data right whilst supporting and developing leadership and culture. You get the full package with Chasm – which is just what is needed to fix a factory.
– Finlay Nelson, Interim GM/Site Director