Our transition management assignments:
by situation, when the stakes are critical.

Critical situations, one method — choose your situation

How to know which assignment fits your situation

Leaders who contact us rarely classify their situation into one of these seven categories from the outset — and that's not necessary to reach out. A site that's running but underperforming, without a clear reason why, most often falls under a site turnaround. An industrial restructuring decision already made at board level, with a social calendar to meet, matches our industrial restructuring assignment. A sudden incident — supply disruption, accident, sudden departure of a leader — calls for crisis management within days, sometimes hours. An order book that explodes while the production line can't keep up falls under a production ramp-up. Opening, transferring, or closing a site, from the building permit to the last workstation dismantled, falls under our site creation/transfer assignment. An acquisition just signed, with two organizations to bring together, matches a merger & acquisition (PMI) assignment. Finally, a vacant leadership role with no identified successor falls under interim management. These categories sometimes overlap: a site turnaround often comes with a restructuring, a merger sometimes triggers a social crisis. The first phone call exists precisely to clarify which one dominates — without asking you to decide alone.

What's common to all our assignments, whatever the situation

Whatever the category, three principles structure every assignment. First, a time-bound mandate defined by measurable objectives from day one — not an indefinite presence billed by the hour. Second, fast deployment: a callback within two business hours, three targeted profiles within 72 hours, because a transition assignment almost always occurs in a context where every week of drift has a direct, quantifiable cost. Finally, a systematic transfer of skills to the existing management team, so the results achieved outlive the manager's departure. This common foundation doesn't mean assignments look alike on the ground: running a site turnaround has nothing in common, day to day, with securing a merger and acquisition. But the method for selecting the manager — verified sector profile, real operational experience, immediate availability — remains the same across all seven situations.

The warning signs before each type of assignment

A site turnaround often shows itself months in advance through slow drift: OEE declining quarter after quarter, rising absenteeism, recurring client complaints without a follow-up action plan. An industrial restructuring is usually preceded by a shareholder decision already made upstream — an LBO reaching maturity, a performance plan imposed by a fund, a post-merger reorganization — with a social calendar constrained from the outset. Crisis management, by nature, cannot be anticipated: a critical supply disruption, a quality incident that reaches the end customer, the sudden departure of a leader with no succession plan. A production ramp-up is, in theory, planned for, but the real warning sign comes when the order book outpaces the current line's capacity faster than expected. A site creation or transfer is triggered by a strategic decision, with a horizon of several months to manage end to end. A merger & acquisition (PMI) shows itself as soon as the agreement is signed, with an integration countdown that starts immediately. Interim management, finally, is triggered the moment a key position becomes vacant with no internal successor identified.

Not sure about your situation? That's exactly why we're here

It's common for a leader to hesitate between two similar categories, or to struggle to name precisely what's blocking their site. That's normal: a real industrial situation doesn't always fit neatly into a single box. The goal of the first call isn't to make you pick the right assignment from a list, but to work with you, in a few minutes, to identify what's really at stake — and to point you to the most relevant manager, sometimes even before the situation has a clear name. Across the seven situations covered here, the commitment stays the same: a callback within two business hours, a contact who understands industry from the inside, and three targeted profiles within 72 hours if the assignment warrants it.

Why assignment duration varies so much by situation

In practice, an industrial crisis management assignment can sometimes be resolved in just a few weeks — enough time to stabilize the situation, secure critical decisions, and put in place an organization able to hold without permanent support. Interim management, by contrast, typically lasts between three and eight months, the time needed for a permanent hire to succeed under good conditions. An industrial restructuring or a merger & acquisition (PMI) often spans six to twelve months, the time required to run a social plan properly or bring two organizations together without operational damage. A site creation or transfer can, depending on the scale of the project, exceed twelve months. This variability isn't a drawback: it simply reflects the fact that each situation has its own rhythm, and imposing a standard duration would mean either cutting short an assignment that needs time, or billing for a presence that has become unnecessary. That's why every assignment starts with a two-to-three-week diagnosis that sets a realistic duration before any firm commitment.

The link between assignments: never an isolated situation

On the ground, these seven situations chain together or overlap more often than one might think. A poorly integrated merger & acquisition (PMI) frequently degenerates into a restructuring eighteen months later. A successful site turnaround sometimes leads to a production ramp-up, once performance is restored and client demand picks back up. A well-run interim management assignment often ends with a permanent hire that the transition manager themselves helped prepare. We track this continuity closely, situation after situation, rather than artificially splitting it into siloed, unconnected assignments: the same manager, or the same MT-Transition follow-up team, can support a site across several successive phases, carrying forward the context already acquired during the first intervention.

This is also why the first conversation is never limited to checking one of seven boxes. It serves to understand where your situation came from, where it risks going in the coming months, and which assignment — or sequence of assignments — will genuinely stabilize it for the long term, rather than treating an isolated symptom that will resurface in another form a few quarters later.

Every week of drift has a cost. Call now.

Callback within 2 business hours · 3 targeted profiles within 72h · 100% industry

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