Projects of all kinds, whether internal or involving various partners and investors, can be subject to sprawl. To accommodate unexpected problems or complexities, more and more people and teams and vendors and subcontractors are brought in to provide man-hours. Very quickly, a huge army of disparate people and corporate cultures are rubbing up against each other, and without a strong executive management structure things can quickly devolve into chaos.

The solution can often be a short-term team of interim managers. High-level managers with direct experience in your field or industry are brought in specifically to bring order to chaos: To review the existing resources working on the project, impose a rational chain of authority and management, and tackle every aspect of the problem. However, the team is designed from the outset to be temporary, to be in command only until the project is completed or the crisis has been dealt with, allowing for the original configuration to re-assert itself quickly.

This is a crucial aspect of the solution because temporary problems should not be met with permanent solutions without careful consideration and negotiation between stakeholders. Interim management solutions are flexible: They give your organization the skilled, experienced assistance it needs (led by an expert in the industry who can quickly devise solutions and meet challenges) and then step back to allow the original culture to re-assert itself. A temporary, interim management solution should always be seriously considered.