THE INDEPENDENT EXECUTIVE SERVICE

How troubled businesses can benefit from the skills and experience of independent directors  Need a chairman in a hurry? An emergency finance director to sort out your cashflow problems? A leading venture capital company has set up a service which provides companies with temporary executives to help them out with particular tasks or periods of development. Michael Mann helped establish the Independent Executive Service (IES) in the late eighties and, as Director of the company, has led its expansion into markets at home and abroad.
The idea is simple. The skills that make a good businessperson who can launch a new business are quite different from those needed to run a medium sized, mature operation. They are certainly not the skills needed if the business gets into difficulties, as can easily happen with fast-growing companies. It is in situations like this that the IES steps in.
It recruits people who have spent their careers in management, usually entrepreneurs themselves who have built up their own businesses and then sold them. The prospect of spending a limited time in a wide range of businesses is attractive to them. They want to do more in business, but don’t want to go through the start-up process themselves again. As Mann explains, ‘Most have experience of running their own companies and sorting out problems associated with a high growth phase - this work comes naturally to them.
After preliminary discussions with the client company’s HR Manager, we introduce five or six candidates to their Board of Directors. They then select the IES executive who best fits their requirements,’ says Mann. We provide independent directors to many troubled companies, including those that we have already provided venture capital for. The service is free to these existing clients. For a fee, we also help out other companies which we think have a good recovery potential. Additionally, we have a great deal of repeat business from satisfied customers who buy our services again to help with a later stage of expansion.
According to Mann, the first step for independent executives is often to establish how a business is meant to be run. ‘In many small businesses, it is often unclear to Board members who is responsible for what in the company. Another common starting point is helping the existing management avoid bankruptcy. Only then is it possible to turn to more long-term issues.

What service does the IES provide（）