Interim Manager, Hoping to Enhance His Job Image, Labors to Save Firm

The investors and directors who retained Eckart G. Vollmer to help solve their company’s problems would scoff at any suggestion that he is not committed to the firm’s success.

Critics of the concept of hiring executives on a temporary, project-by-project basis maintain that effective management requires a long-term commitment and a thorough understanding of a company’s corporate culture.

Vollmer, a longtime financial and operational executive in a number of industries, was hired 2 months ago as temporary chief financial officer of a mid-sized business-products firm in Connecticut.

Just a few weeks ago, his assignment was changed: He now is chief executive of the company--also on an interim basis--and is staking his future on his performance.

He agreed to discuss the situation on condition that the privately owned firm was not identified.

Vollmer was hired through Interim Management Corp., a 9-month-old temporary-management agency in New York, to straighten out the financial department of the company, which has nearly $70 million in annual sales.

Vollmer said he initially was hired as temporary chief financial officer to address some specific problems.

“The management had allowed the accounting system to collapse and wasn’t getting timely financial reports,” he said. “Things were coming in 4 and 5 months late. I came in to sort things out and in the course of doing that, we discovered that the company would have a substantial annual loss.”

Confronted with that news, he said, the firm’s top managers resigned.

“The major shareholder and the directors asked me to be the interim CEO, which is what I’m doing now,” Vollmer said. “I’m not sure we’re going to make it, we may have to go into Chapter 11 (bankruptcy proceedings), but in the meantime, I’m giving it my best shot.”

Saving the company, if at all possible, is Vollmer’s goal--one that he said he is willing to work 100-hour weeks to achieve--because he wants the recognition such a success would bring.

Until recently, Vollmer was a full-time executive. He lost that job in a corporate reshuffle after a foreign investor acquired the company.

The job he now holds was his first as a temporary manager, and while he has nothing but praise for the idea, he doesn’t want to remain in a temporary situation.

“One problem is that you never know when or what your next assignment will be. So I am looking for a permanent position,” he said.

But the temporary assignment “has helped fill a gap, and by doing well, I’ll improve my exposure in the industry,” he said. “Besides, you get a lot of self-satisfaction out of salvaging a worthwhile business.”

Even though he wants to leave it, Vollmer believes there is a bright future for the interim-management business.

“There are a lot of good people out there” who have left permanent positions through no fault of their own and “who are not just theoretical practitioners but have been through the wars and have the scars to prove it,” Vollmer said.

“These are hands-on guys. They can walk into a place and in a short time tell you where the problems are and how to fix them,” he added.