Fast business growth is likely to be at the top of most business leaders’ agendas. Whether you are the founder or CEO of a growing entrepreneurial business with a new idea you want to take to market, a more seasoned small business owner who has experienced some good times and wants to get to pay-back, or an employed member of the C-suite in a larger organization striving to lead your market; accelerated growth is essential, and yet it can be elusive. It’s certainly not guaranteed, and many businesses fail, not getting anywhere close to sustained success.
So, what can increase your chances of achieving this superior growth?
We all know a business needs to have a market to serve, and one with a fair wind behind it will help. That’s a good start but that doesn’t necessarily determine who wins. Access to the right strategic thinking coupled with excellent execution from a motivated and aligned team can make the difference – it’s like the soccer teams with the full set of talented and complementary players who are culturally together and play as a unit, not a set of individuals. Yet with the relentless onslaught of never-ending external global challenges and constant pressure to do more with less, it is difficult to attract, select, energise, and retain the very best talent at the best of times.
This is where C-suite leaders and business owners can tap into a new breed of executive, the fractional CxO, to supplement internal skillsets, fill skill, capacity, and geography gaps, and use their experience and decades of wisdom to consult, advise, and help steer their organizations to success … and fast.
What is fractional leadership and how can it turbocharge growth?
Fractional leadership is a practical, alternative vision of the future of work for senior executives that is starting to gain significant interest and is being adopted by businesses globally. It disrupts and challenges the traditional full-time employment model providing firms with access to the functional, emotional, and collective intelligence they need to grow by moving positions from the ‘pay-roll’ to an ‘access-role’. Operating across the traditional C-suite disciplines of finance, marketing, people, technology, and so on, these top calibre individuals with extensive knowledge and experience have left corporate to gain more flexibility, variety, and control over their lives. They have chosen to leave this life for good, become self-employed, and work with a portfolio of growing entrepreneurial businesses or larger organizations, each on a flexible fractional basis, for example, one day per week or two days a month.
How does this work for SME businesses?
Crucially for entrepreneurial business leaders who need critical skills to scale but just don’t want, don’t need, and can’t afford full-time C-suite leaders, these fractional leaders are their Killer App. They can make the difference for these organizations between incremental growth and making it big because these leaders have trodden this path before. They have been there, seen it, and done it when it comes to their function. They know what it is like to feel ‘big’ and how to get there, after all, they have done it many times. And that’s just their functional knowledge. If you combine that with their networks, and industry and sector insights, alongside their ability to ‘open doors’, the benefit to SME business owners starts to multiply.
But it doesn’t stop there either. It can be lonely being an entrepreneur. Your employees look up to you and you don’t want them to feel the burden of growing a business that sits just on your shoulders. Fractional leaders can help share this load. They will believe in you when you doubt. They will pick you up and help you go again when you suffer setbacks. These individuals have chosen to work this way, they are highly committed and will be invested in your journey too and it’s often this emotional support which forms the bedrock of a trusted partnership which can make the real difference to the speed of growth.
What about larger organizations?
Equally, for larger corporates and employed Group CxOs who just don’t have the time to do everything on their never-ending shopping list of activities, these fractional leaders can plug their gaps and get the work done. They don’t need oversight, having sat in this seat before, and importantly they don’t just execute, their years of experience from long and varied careers mean they will be able to help the incumbent C-suite make key strategic choices which could be the difference between top and bottom quartile performance.
The real beauty of fractional support for full-time employed CxOs is that this fractional talent knows how to do your job, and they can deliver you the skills, knowledge, and extra pairs of very safe hands you need without time-consuming oversight on your part. They will do everything on your plate you don’t have time for and which you can’t train others to do, either because you don’t have the people in your team or just don’t have the bandwidth.
And the very best bit about fractional leaders is that they are non-threatening. They have made the permanent move away from employment and don’t want your job. Their whole purpose will be to support you and make you look good! This combined with the ability to bring in the right fractional specialist for each of your challenges in portions of time to suit the work, mean this wider workforce is your secret army – all geared up to support your growth.
What’s the best way to unlock value from fractional CxOs?
The key thing to remember about working with fractional CxOs is to make sure you invest in the relationship with them. That’s where the real gold is. This is where something called Psychological Ownership comes in.
Bringing in CXOs from the access economy on a fractional basis means engaging without the traditional employment contract and that can be considered by some to be a risk.
This is where it is time to go against the grain and shun orthodoxy. It is the very absence of the employment contract, and the fact these C-suite professionals are self-employed and independent that underpins why these relationships work so well. Fractional leaders are there because they want to be and are delivering value, and if they aren’t they should go. That’s the beauty of the model, it’s easy in and easy out. C-suite professionals must be competent at developing the key components of Psychological Ownership which support these relationships in the absence of employment. This involves developing common goals, shared identities, and feelings of belonging which must be carefully crafted through responsiveness, intimacy, collaboration, and creating psychological safety.
The result?
Access economy fractional leaders not only become your Ace Card but your executive superpower when it comes to fast growth!
Written by Sara Daw.
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