The greater the challenge, the more rewarding is overcoming it.

Talking to Mariusz B?aszkiewicz could have ended up with a book – he is such an inspiring person. Being a manager with over 25 years of experience and responsibility, he is an open-minded & open hearted person, with great sense of humour. We are happy to share the result of our conversation about his Interim experience, balance in life and much more.

?When deciding on the Interim Management formula as a career path, did you assume that you would be limited to a particular industry, or were you prepared to test your competence in different areas of the market?

People who take on interim management usually have a considerable amount of professional experience. There are areas in which specialisation is a great asset, but let the undecided potential interims be encouraged by the fact that business processes are in many areas the same.

It was on the basis of this conviction, backed up by my many years of experience in servicing companies in the manufacturing industry, that I decided to take on a project in a industry that was new to me - an airline business. I took the responsibility, as interim CFO, to lead the company out of a very difficult, crisis situation that could only be healed with a real breakthrough. Although my contract stipulated a three-year time frame, for strategic reasons we were forced to act expressly and, after only five months, the company’s balance sheet was strengthened ?enough so it could show positive equity at the end of the financial year.

Did anything in particular surprise you positively when you were working on your first project - something that contradicted your fears, if there were any?

Every imaginative person has concerns. There were questions of "will we make it?", "won't my unfamiliarity with the specifics of the industry itself ultimately prove to be a hindrance?".

In addition to the extremely valuable fact for me of exploring the aviation sector, I was once again able to convince myself that my theory of repetitive processes is valid. The diversity of my professional experience in unrelated industries proved to be an incredible strength. A huge positive stimulus was the willingness to work hard, to implement change and the great determination to succeed by all involved - and this, believe me, is not such an obvious attitude. ?Strategic insight, management unity and resource fluidity - all of this ultimately contributed to the improved financial results, increases in the cash balance at the company’s disposal and the final breakthrough.?

To what extent is life-work balance important to you, taking into account the working mode of an Interim Manager?

It is a ?very important part of how we operate, and the easier for me to tame since I work as an Interim Manager. Thanks to this formula, I have gained better harmony in my life. In the earlier stages of my career path, I often worked beyond my strengths, at the expense of balancing my family life, if only. Focusing on the task at hand, gives me the chance to plan my passions, extra-professional interests and, above all, send a clear declaration to my Family that there is a huge space in all this just for them.

I always remember the saying: " Do not leave the best things in life for the last moment".

Do you think that perceiving the Interim Management formula as a cost rather than an investment is common in Poland?

I am a manager with more than 25 years' experience and I can emphatically say that it depends on the scale of the company, the openness of the management to external knowledge, the level of readiness to make changes, the determination. Introducing Interim to a company is one thing, seeing what the move will do and the benefits to the company is another.

A definite advantage of the Interim Manager is the diversity of experience, but not only in terms of competence experience, but above-average cognitive and adaptive abilities. A high degree of confidence, an excellent knowledge of business structures/models and, importantly: the ability to identify ?ESSENTIAL problems especially those hidden, quickly.

Knowing all this, it is worth giving the Interim Manager a chance, not so much as - your company and your employees. The company will incur a cost, yes, but it is only a % of the benefits that the decision to hire an Interim Manager will provide.

Do you remember any error in judgement that you made which affected the whole process, slowed it down, generated an unexpected sequence of events? Is the Interim Manager infallible?

Personally, I do not have a critical mistake in mind. Our experience is one element, the other is the ability to analyse the data and, above all, to make the firm decisions based on it. I always make a sound analysis of the situation, so that alternative scenarios can be synthesised and final course of action chosen. Potential mistakes get largely eliminated ?in this process.

Interim Manager is synonymous with measurable success. The person who takes on the task must be intellectually and emotionally autonomous. He must be able to listen to his intuition. These elements, combined with the involvement of a management that has a vested interest in this success, foster a proper assessment of the situation and, consequently, the elimination of potential mistakes.