Interview with an Interim MD for South Africa

Major Goal for the Interim MD

The Interim MD should take a strong leadership role, reorganize the company and fixing a number of legal and labor union issues until a permanent successor will be identified and installed.

Construction Industry

Manufacturer of plastic pipes for the construction industry.

Global Manufacturer Company

The Group is a leading global manufacturer and distributor of plastics-based systems used in residential and commercial construction, as well as in industrial and public infrastructure applications. In South Africa, the operations had more than 1.000 employees.

Main Tasks

Among the management team and the Board was a full agreement that a total restructuring process was needed imminently.

For economic reasons, 10% or about 100 jobs should be cut immediately. A complete reshuffle of the existing management team should strengthen the position of the company.

The initial approach and strategy required splitting the mining and industrial parts into two legal entities. Subsequently, the task was about building new companies around them.

Across the two business newly formed, there were five common values identified to be implemented:

zero tolerance on quality
no compromise on safety
no compromise on transparent and active communication
Sales force expansion – literally close to double of what it was previously
Main focus on contribution and margins (profitability)

Achieved Results

The leadership structure was made a lot leaner, by cutting the size of the executive management team members from 9 to 4.

The management teams at all levels were restructured;

While minimizing head count overall, the best suitable people for all key functions were put at the right place, replacing low performing managers;

The company turned into profitability within 12 months.

Client`s Feedback

This turn-around required general and overall senior management experience. It would not have been possible to this without the following:

cleaning up the balance sheet (dead stock and assets needed to be written off)
giving free hand to the Interim MD to restructure and retrench, as and where needed

Once this had been accomplished, we could start moving forward our business. You can’t fix a broken business. You have to fundamentally restructure from the ground up, and this entailed removing around 20 external consultants, for instance which had been there for a long time.

We are focusing on our core business now – ‘simplifying and concentrating there. Interim Management from BRAINFORCE was ‘The Solution’ to our problems!