On the weekend, I overheard a conversation between a teenage son and his father. The boy was asking to borrow his father’s car. "Why not just get an Uber?" was the father’s reply. The boy looked perplexed and said, "Because you have a car.”
His generation thinks about access, not ownership. They stream music instead of buying albums, use software licences instead of purchasing outright.
This maps directly to a shift in the business world, as noted in a recent Forbes piece[1]: the C-suite is going through [a similar] transformation. Fractional executives, the "gig economy" version of top-tier leadership, are moving from a niche experiment to a core business strategy[2].
What's driving this shift? The same logic that made that boy question car ownership. Why commit to the immense overhead of a full-time executive role when you can access excellent strategic thinking precisely when you need it? For scaling companies, the old model of "hire a permanent exec or go without" feels as outdated as a library of CDs.
Not only is this cost-effective for SMEs; they’re also getting access to excellent strategists.
- A CFO who's navigated dozens of funding rounds
- A Chief Growth Officer who's built revenue engines across multiple sectors
- A COO who has optimised your specific operational challenges
Businesses are getting decades of experience for the exact window of time they need it. They are saving money and gaining agility.
Meanwhile, the executives choosing fractional careers aren't settling. They're building portfolio careers that offer more impact, variety, and autonomy.
What's your take on this evolution? Are you seeing companies make the switch from owning to accessing leadership?
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