Tomás Pereda, Deputy Director General of the More Human FoundationHe has been a member of the EPUNTO Interim Management Advisory Board since June 2020. Drawing on his extensive experience and expertise in talent management and organizational cultural transformation, he contributes his strategic vision in the field of flexible management, both through this board and others. Convinced of the value of senior talent and the importance of intergenerational teams, he reveals in this interview what he believes are the keys to the advancement and consolidation of Interim Management in Spain.
In addition to being a member of the Advisory Board of EPUNTO Interim ManagementYou are also a member of the Council of Kreab Spain and the Tomillo Foundation, patron of FUNDIPE, collaborator of Sagardoy Business & Law School and the Transforma España Foundation, Facilitator in Cultural Transformation at Minsait (Indra) and collaborates weekly on the Human Resources Forum program of Capital Radio Besides experience, what does a professional with their extensive background bring to organizations through their advisory bodies and vice versa?
It's a reciprocal exchange, not only in the activities I undertake, but also in the learning involved. Throughout my 35-year professional life in the corporate world, I've been very focused on a large corporation that absorbed all my mental energy, and the only thing that offered me a bit of respite was my passion for teaching, which has always allowed me to step back from the day-to-day grind—very useful for gaining perspective. In this new professional phase as a consultant, I'm trying to shift my mindset, engage with different realities, and dedicate myself to a kind of naive learning—not the kind you'd expect from a seasoned professional, but rather someone who has much to listen to and learn from, and this is incredibly rewarding. Experiencing different realities, different businesses and challenges, meeting people and encountering new cultures—all of this provides me with great satisfaction and fosters intellectual and professional growth.
As for what I bring to the table as an advisor, it's primarily my experience, which requires me to start from scratch. I try to ensure that my biases and past experiences don't influence my perspective on the issues presented to me, which I analyze carefully, offering my advice and insights. Undoubtedly, the accumulation of diverse experiences throughout my life and my contributions to various organizations enriches them. I want to emphasize the importance of active listening as an essential tool in the role of an advisor. This is crucial because there's a risk of arrogance from those who have lived through many experiences, a flaw all too common among people of a certain age and experience. Senior professionals often believe they know a lot because they've lived a long life, but if we stop there, we're making a serious mistake, both in form and substance. You have to be aware of this and have the ability to combine and integrate that expert perspective with the utmost humility, in order to listen very carefully and incorporate your experience to provide solutions, always putting yourself in the shoes of the person you are advising. This is what I can contribute as a consultant.
Being a member of the EPUNTO Interim Management Advisory Board is very interesting. This is a shared shore for companies that come seeking the services of a senior professional, the raw material of EPUNTO IM and that it can be chosen for different reasons. In my case, I have reached a point in my professional career where I crave variety and temporaryity in certain collaborations; logically, these are circumstances that are better suited to a senior profile than a young one. Furthermore, it is very important to observe from the position of advisor the important changes that are taking place in the corporate world, and in this specific case, the reasons why a company requests a senior professional for a certain period of time for a senior management position. What factors or what changes are happening in our "labor market", not in our job market, it is important to differentiate between both meanings. With increasing frequency, I find myself uttering a phrase I came up with some time ago, and which I agree with as I hear it more and more often from other professionals: "There is less and less employment and more and more work." That's right, because we are changing employability to workability; it's about incorporating the option of work in a relevant way, to the traditional one of employment, as a trend that represented the common aspiration. I think the labor market is moving very quickly towards the concept of work, which is much broader and more encompassing than the current professional and business reality. The myth of employment still carries a lot of weight; that is, the search for a job, even if it is precarious, prevails in the Mediterranean mentality; however, the world of work is going in another direction. It can be self-employment or freelance work, freelancers, Gy Economy, unconventional modalities for which, in some cases, we don't even have a name, and this is where work is growing worldwide. The fact is that I don't yet feel capable of making a sufficiently well-founded assessment of whether this trend is good or bad, but it is happening, it's a fact, and it will have good and bad aspects, but, in any case, it requires a review of our paradigm that emerged from the last industrial revolution. We are heirs to a 150-year industrial tradition, in which large corporations offered employment to large masses of professionals, both in the primary and secondary sectors, as well as the service sector, and as a result, the traditional employment model was created. Current trends indicate that alongside this, a new one is emerging that requires a new perspective from the point of view of regulation and even social protection because, it is true that, with greater flexibility and a greater breakdown of those bonds of stability and protection provided by the traditional model that existed 50 or 60 years ago, the current situation requires a review of the social contract itself, since it may increase the vulnerability of professionals who, until now, were supported and covered by those large corporations in the traditional employment model, and which contrasts with a greater vulnerability in unconventional forms of work.
As the number of self-employed professionals increases, subject to greater variability and a more contingent situation, greater social protection will be needed. I'm referring, for example, to universal basic income or other formulas that may be devised for this new era. We are beginning to discuss concepts that, setting aside ideological divides, need to be debated objectively and from the perspective of the future we are heading towards.
There is no doubt about the need for and suitability of Interim Management in the Spanish business environment; however, although much progress has been made in recent years, this type of management service has not yet achieved the same importance in Spain as in other European and Anglo-Saxon countries. What do you think are the reasons for this?
I believe that there are always certain cultural traits that influence, for example, one of those reasons is the concept of tribe. Typically, senior management involves not only adherence to a project but also adherence to a group. I mean, one of the barriers to hiring Interim Management services is this mentality: "How am I going to have an executive that I will hire in January and that will leave in October; I need to put him to the test of the tribe, to see if he is really one of us." And maybe, afterwards, he goes to the tribe opposite, who are competitors, or he only works 4 or 5 working days for that company and then has a separate professional life. I mean, senior management has always had that connotation of "one of us," of "one of our own." On the other hand, this viewpoint of loyalty to the team, rather than to the project and always linked to physical presence, goes in the opposite direction to the current one, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, in which the barriers of space and time have been broken. The ability to work asynchronously and from anywhere in the world has proven to work, so that a company can have a member of its management team anywhere in the world and still be a fundamental pillar of the project. But of course, this attitude is still very disruptive to our Mediterranean mentality and has a lot to do with the hierarchical concept, that is, I, as the boss, need my people in the office and to see them every day. From the point of view of managers, it is even more pronounced, but it goes against a growing trend; in fact, in my experience in multinationals where we have worked globally, physical presence was non-existent since the managers were on different continents. Every day we had various activities that we shared and managed in real time via videoconference or telephone; we were members of different senior management teams and it worked very well. That global multinational culture that works in real time and in a global context, I don't think has yet landed in companies with a more local culture where that concept of "tribe" still carries a lot of weight, except for specific and exceptional situations, in which they have no choice but to fill a management position urgently, for example, for a restructuring. Culturally, Spain still has some resistance to collaborative models, such as Interim Management, but I think we are moving towards it; in fact, it has been commercialized for years, with increasing acceptance. In this regard, it is important to consider the difference between hiring an interim manager directly or through a specialized company, since the selection processes they carry out and the guarantees they offer their clients in Interim Management services undoubtedly represent added value for the contracting companies. Furthermore, this service contracting model fits perfectly within our legal labor framework. Furthermore, it is necessary to distinguish between a theoretical interim manager and an unemployed executive who is looking for a job in the traditional way and not the executive management of a project on an occasional basis to then tackle another one based on their professional qualities. In this sense, Interim Management companies usually provide genuine interim managers, that is, people who like to execute projects of various kinds, in different companies and during specific periods of time. The truth is that we are increasingly moving towards a model where talent is internal, but it can also be external and intervene sporadically and in certain situations.
Internal and permanent talent is just as important as external and temporary talent, and it is essential to know how to properly manage these talent ecosystems from senior management.
It's true that there are those who are theoretically interim managers, unemployed, and who take advantage of an interim management service, either directly or through a specific company, to demonstrate their value and land a regular job. In reality, these professionals aren't interim managers; they are professionals legitimately seeking a permanent position with a company. This is understandable and human, but it has nothing to do with interim management, which is why it's so important to have companies that manage this issue properly.
This type of executive management service is proving to be a clear competitive advantage for companies, thanks to its flexible nature. It also offers mutual enrichment to the client, as interim managers bring a fresh perspective and break the insularity that the inertia of time creates in any organization. When a professional with extensive experience in diverse fields, countries, and cultures joins a company on a temporary basis, it greatly enriches the permanent management team. It often happens that the regular members of a management team end up all thinking the same way about a particular issue, and when an external executive enters the picture, they bring a different perspective that helps to contrast ideas, allowing for an enriching debate that leads to the most appropriate decisions.
Her professional career over the last 35 years has always been linked to human resources management and people development in companies as important as Unidad Editorial, Hertz, Iberdrola, IKEA, Merck, Leche Pascual or Dupont, among others. What are the challenges that must be faced at the organizational level today and how do Interim Management companies fit into this transformation?
Culturally, the challenges are immense. In the last two years, the world has changed far more than organizations have, from a cultural perspective. I anticipate several irreversible changes stemming from this crisis. The first is that there will be a major talent shift at the management level. Many professionals are considering changing companies, and companies are considering replacing their executives. In fact, since May 2021, statistics in the US have shown that 2.7% of professionals have changed companies as a result of the changes brought about by the pandemic, especially regarding new work models. This is the highest figure ever seen in the labor market, and the same is expected to happen in other regions, with Europe being no exception. Obviously, Interim Management is a solution that exists and can address specific situations. This is a professional and personal reassessment stemming from the crisis caused by Covid-19, where the world has suddenly advanced six or seven years in some areas, such as digitalization and different ways of working that offer greater flexibility and autonomy. Some professionals haven't risen to the challenges of the last two years (2020/21), just as some companies haven't been able to keep up. In this context of rapid change, many will be changing partners, in both directions. Professionals best adapted to change are looking for companies that best meet their expectations, lifestyle, values, and market demands; this will happen in the short term, in fact, it's already happening. The crisis has prompted a reassessment of life and professional priorities for many people.
There has been a talent shortage for years. We continue to live with the contradiction of having extremely high unemployment rates while, at the same time, between 150.000 and 200.000 jobs go unfilled annually due to a lack of qualified professionals. Clearly, something is amiss, preventing companies from finding the professionals they seek, and conversely, thousands of professionals from finding jobs that match their training and experience. We need to reformulate what I call the "talent value proposition," formerly known as the "employee value proposition." However, as the concept of "employee" becomes blurred and talent exists both inside and outside organizations, and as the value proposition no longer meets the expectations of many professionals, a situation is emerging where both parties must reposition themselves and find common ground where they mutually satisfy their needs.
I would like to briefly clarify what talent is, to avoid any confusion: “Talent is what a professional possesses who has the professional characteristics and experience that an organization needs at a given time, and who is eager to work within that culture, in that organization, and with that team.” I emphasize the concept of eagerness, a key difference from the traditional model of someone being qualified to fill a specific management position.
A professional's desire to get involved in a project is an essential key to the success of their mission within the organization.
In recent years, particularly in technology companies or organizations of all kinds that have decided to promote more digitally savvy profiles, I've observed that they hire highly talented professionals, more than capable of filling those positions, but these individuals often leave when they realize that the digital transformation undertaken by the organization they join is more theoretical or for show than real. These individuals possess the knowledge, attitude, and experience necessary to face and successfully meet the challenges the company faces. However, their enthusiasm and drive are diluted when they encounter highly hierarchical companies based on a traditional concept of status, a type of control that stifles autonomy, excessive rigidity, or any other outdated organizational concept. As a result, they last three or four months and then move on to other companies that meet their professional expectations. Organizational change must stem from a cultural transformation; otherwise, only superficial changes occur that lead to nothing positive. It's worth recalling, or using as an example, the trend of implementing agile methodologies to demonstrate that when the mindset at the top doesn't change, nothing changes in reality. No matter how many processes or technologies you incorporate, if there isn't a change from the top down, a cross-functional change that positively impacts the entire organization is impossible.
Returning to the topic of cultural change, very important things have happened within this large, forced experiment where, for better or for worse, it has been demonstrated that there are other ways of working, and they have worked relatively well, based primarily on two concepts: flexibility and trust. Many other variables stem from these. Those who have experienced this new culture will not forget it, and if their organization doesn't have it, they will leave. How to evolve this culture of greater flexibility and trust within organizations, with the consequent increase in autonomy and a heightened sense of responsibility, is closely related to the well-known agile methodologies. That said, attempting to return to the models of 2019, before the pandemic, will be very risky for most organizations, if not fatal. It is naive to try to go back to a nonexistent past. There will be a significant break with many things, and this represents one of the challenges that professionals and organizations currently face.
Returning to what I mentioned earlier about the paradigm shift from employment to work, where managing talent ecosystems is crucial, the gig economy, freelancers, interim management, customized work, contractors, and so on are giving rise to unconventional models. Some have names, others don't, but in many cases, they represent more talent than the organization itself possesses through its employees. In the world of human resources management, we always talk about employee experience or the employee value proposition, but now it's necessary to move towards a much broader concept that aligns with the current needs of organizations.
In short, there will be an increasing number of non-employees—that is, high-value external workers hired to execute specific projects—rather than permanent employees. Managing this reality is the major challenge companies must face.
EPUNTO Interim Management burst onto the Spanish market with this specialty, bringing a fresh and innovative vision based on talent management and making it available to companies, both in Spain and throughout Latin America. As part of its international expansion, EPUNTO IM has joined the Globalise AllianceWith a presence on five continents, was this a strategic decision, given the low demand for these services among Spanish businesses? What is the best way to capitalize on this great opportunity?
I would say there are two variables that I find relevant. The first is the internationalization of talent, but not so much in terms of geographical location—"I have people in different countries"—but rather that the person I need can be anywhere in the world, even working remotely. In other words, it's not that I need an executive to send to Argentina or South Africa; no, it's that this professional can reside in their country. Perhaps they need to come to the parent company for a few days, but if they are located in the country where I have the need, it doesn't matter at all that they continue working there and we maintain a remote relationship. This is especially relevant given our experience on a global level, which has demonstrated that work is neither a time nor a place. For this reason, I find it very significant that EPUNTO Interim Management has joined a global network capable of providing executive management services in any country. This is the way forward.
The second issue or factor to consider is the speed at which everything is happening at the techno-scientific or technological level for large organizations. This means you can't expect to possess all the capabilities you need today and those you'll need tomorrow. You can aspire to have the capabilities you currently need and for the next six months, but very likely, in a year you'll discover that what you learned today is already insufficient, new ones are emerging, and that these capabilities can be found anywhere in the world. That's why it's crucial to have a channel or way to incorporate capabilities flexibly, even renting them as needed. This implies foregoing permanent, in-house integration. For example, professionals working in the technology sector are unlikely to be experts in current knowledge and also in what will happen in the next three years; it's better to rent that talent, that knowledge, whenever needed. You can always find the best talent and rent or contract their services through an Interim Management company, for example. Just as we talk about "software as a service" (SaaS), why don't we talk about "talent as a service" (TaaS)? There are many professionals who don't want to be employees of a company and prefer to work on projects for a specific period of time, among other things, because committing to a company for several years can lead to a loss of value by running the risk of becoming obsolete.
In addition to offering transition management services, EPUNTO Interim Management also conducts executive selection processes, applying cutting-edge technologies such as augmented intelligence. Given your extensive experience in these types of processes, what is your assessment of applying these procedures in the selection of executive professionals, and what future awaits us regarding talent management in the executive field?
For example, augmented intelligence is the union of the best of humanity and the best of technology. In this sense, its application in selection processes doesn't replace that human perspective, which is why I consider it appropriate. I recently spoke about the risk of algorithms eventually taking over 100% of the decisions that affect people, both in selection and in termination or dismissal. The risk lies in thinking that the algorithm makes quick decisions based on data, but this data overlooks the human factor, and that human perspective is essential. Technology for locating and capturing information about the candidate in predictive analytics for initial selection can greatly help the person carrying out that process, who should never forget the human element, I insist. However, I am very cautious regarding technology applied to people and advocate for seeking balance in all areas.