The Future of Consulting is Fractional
Startups and scaleups operate in a constantly evolving environment, requiring them to be agile and adaptable in their organisational structure and staffing decisions. This can be difficult to achieve, as they are often seeking to conserve limited financial resources and are reluctant to prematurely commit to significant investment in senior permanent hires. The traditional models of engaging consultants are no longer serving clients as well as they once may have.
For some organisations, the obvious solution has been to turn to virtual executives to fill key roles such as CPO, CXO or CTO on an interim or ongoing basis working in conjunction with specialist strategy and design consultants who are engaged on a fractional basis.
At Tightrope, we’ve noticed our clients making a significant shift away from the traditional models of engaging consultants. They recognise the value of having an external partner lead a strategy definition process and challenge assumptions about future directions. They also want ongoing access to strategy, design and technology capabilities on a just-in-time basis, without committing to expensive, full-time resource allocations for fixed duration engagements. And they expect that their strategy partner will be a key knowledge holder, ensuring that the crucial elements of business intent and strategic nuances are preserved in the transition to execution.
We think this trend is set to continue. The agile ways of working popularised by startups over the past decade are now also being adopted by enterprise and government organisations. The acceptance of ‘failing fast’ and ‘pivoting’ means that the staffing needs of startups / scaleups shift more rapidly than ever before. Consequently, organisations need more flexibility to respond and adapt quickly to shifts in business direction or economic conditions.
The fractional consulting model is also an element of agile organisational design and a deliberate way of mitigating some of the key staffing challenges that startups and scaleups typically face such as attracting the right talent and being able to quickly ramp up (or ramp down) resourcing.
Key benefits of fractional consulting:
Provides expertise on-demand to review new opportunities or tackle discrete tasks
Enables access to resources with capabilities and experience that might be difficult to attract as full-time hires
Lower cost than hiring permanent internal resources
So what’s the difference between simply hiring a virtual executive and fractional consulting support? At Tightrope, one of the key differences is that clients get access to our team, not just the consultant leading the engagement. And that can make all the difference to the quality of the outcome and the pace of delivery.
Find out more about how we work here .