Top-Quality Candidates
When crisis management was needed in Plastmo’s newly acquired company in Norway, the business received exactly the help it required — with an interim leader who understood the task from day one.
Temporary Leader Took Control of the Situation
At Plastmo, CEO Karsten Due had been searching for a Managing Director for one of his companies. That kind of recruitment takes time. And had he chosen the same approach for the newly acquired company in Norway, it could have had serious consequences before the new leader was in place.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen — because a temporary leader came in and got things under control.
“I was genuinely worried about the company — the situation was both chaotic and critical. There was no time to lose. So I decided to go for an interim leader. We needed urgent crisis management, and frankly, I just hoped the person we brought in would manage to get through the period. He did — and with flying colors,” says Karsten Due.
How he approaches such situations, when faced with an empty management chair, depends entirely on the context and the nature of the job. In the case of Plastmo’s Norwegian subsidiary, what was needed was here-and-now leadership. At other times, the need may simply be to maintain day-to-day operations for a limited period. And in other situations, the focus can be on obtaining strategic input from the outside.
“In my view, there are wide boundaries for what you can use an interim manager for. The important thing is that the task is specific and clearly defined — the management level itself doesn’t matter as much. I can easily imagine using an interim even in a top executive role if the goal is simply to keep the business running. But it wouldn’t work if the role required deep market and customer knowledge,” says Karsten Due.
For the Norwegian company, the specific assignment was to handle the crisis the business was in. Plastmo had purchased a small Norwegian company in the same industry, with eight employees, and the transition had been somewhat problematic. That’s why an experienced leader was needed — someone skilled at navigating difficult situations.
“For us, it was about creating calm in the organization. We got an interim in his early sixties who had previously owned his own business. The most important thing was that he spoke the same ‘language’ as the former owner — and he did that extremely well,” the CEO explains.
Buys Time to Find the Permanent Solution
From the moment Karsten Due contacted Nextt & Mason — which he chose based on recommendations — it took only four weeks before Plastmo had an interim manager in place in Norway.
“It went incredibly fast to find the right person, and I can’t praise Torben Hvashøj enough. I was very surprised at how strong the candidates were and how quickly it all came together. The entire process ran completely by the book,” says the CEO.
Now, he has time to wait for the permanent leader, which he highlights as one of the biggest advantages of choosing the interim route.
“”Some might say that I could just take over myself when we’re missing a manager for a period. But no one knows how long that will take. So having someone you can bring in temporarily and start communicating with from day one is absolutely fantastic. The person we have in Norway knows exactly what the job is. His focus is on the here and now — not on what might happen beyond the six months he’s employed for,”
Facts about Plastmo
Plastmo was founded in Ringsted in 1958 and is today the market leader in Denmark within guttering systems and lightweight roofing solutions. The company markets a wide product range within water management and outdoor environments.
Its operations are based in two locations, in Denmark and Norway. Plastmo produces, sells, and distributes its solutions to timber merchants and DIY retailers across the Nordic region and Eastern Europe.
Plastmo is owned by the German family-owned group ACO, which has a turnover of DKK 5.8 billion (2017) and employs around 5,000 people worldwide.
