Latest / Best of Business / Michelle Allbon: The Fractional Directory CEO on the company signing a deal with the Singapore Government

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Michelle Allbon: The Fractional Directory CEO on the company signing a deal with the Singapore Government · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: First though, this is an interesting one. This is about
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  Speaker 2: fractional leadership. Have you heard of this? Chances are you
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  Speaker 2: probably haven't. I didn't hear about this until for the
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  Speaker 2: first time until yesterday. But a key we company that
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  Speaker 2: specializes in this new way of company leadership has just
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  Speaker 2: landed a pretty big contract with the Singapore government. The
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  Speaker 2: company is called Fractional Directory. The CEO is Michelle Aubon
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  Speaker 2: and she is with me now, good evening. Yes, Hello,
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  Speaker 2: great to have you on the show. Michelle. First of all,
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  Speaker 2: you need to explain us, explain to us what fractional
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  Speaker 2: leadership is.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's really something that before about six months ago,
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  Speaker 3: most people were asking that constantly, and now we're starting
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  Speaker 3: to hear it more and more. And what it really
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  Speaker 3: is is it's just using a full time leader at
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  Speaker 3: a fraction of their capacity. So maybe that's two days
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  Speaker 3: a month, four days a week. It's just more or
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  Speaker 3: less part time senior leadership.
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  Speaker 2: Who are these people? Why are they part time? Why
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  Speaker 2: why are they full time jobs? And are we talking
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  Speaker 2: like CEOs and CFOs stuff like that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the word part time gets a bit of
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  Speaker 3: a bad rap, doesn't it. But the truth is is
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  Speaker 3: that actually this is a completely different model. So what
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  Speaker 3: happens is that we actually we've been watching this in
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  Speaker 3: our directory over the last two years, and two years
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  Speaker 3: ago there was forty three publicly operating people and that
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  Speaker 3: has fourteen x in two years. And these are these
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  Speaker 3: senior most kind of top executives in the company excuse me,
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  Speaker 3: the country who are untethering from the five day work
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  Speaker 3: week and going back into companies, you know, as one
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  Speaker 3: or a couple of days a week and as kind
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  Speaker 3: of senior leaders working just in their expertise.
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  Speaker 2: Is are they not just consultants business consultants.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And the common question, because everyone's familiar with consulting, the
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  Speaker 3: difference between consulting and fractional is that a fractional leader
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  Speaker 3: is fully embedded. So I'll give you an example a
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  Speaker 3: company who's hired a fractional chief marketing officer. Everyone understands
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  Speaker 3: the kind of outcomes you'd want, but a fractional chief
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  Speaker 3: marketing officer pretty much does the same thing. It's just
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  Speaker 3: almost like they're not in the company two days a week,
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  Speaker 3: but there were really specific outcome that they only need
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  Speaker 3: that kind of reduced time to hit. So we're seeing
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  Speaker 3: this be really really effective, and it's not just giving
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  Speaker 3: them advice and you know, throwing a PowerPoint over the wall.
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  Speaker 3: It's actually being in with the leadership team alongside them,
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  Speaker 3: and it's really amazing kind of the effect that we're
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  Speaker 3: starting to see this have in New Zealand and around
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  Speaker 3: the world.
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  Speaker 2: So what's the deal, Michelle, You've got with the Singapool government.
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  Speaker 2: What are you actually doing for them?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so this support government started to see a bit
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  Speaker 3: of traction in this model as quite a lot of
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  Speaker 3: senior leaders are either approaching this as a result of
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  Speaker 3: mass layoffs, people are going, I want to work in
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  Speaker 3: a different model, and we're seeing some of the top
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  Speaker 3: talent you know, no longer go back into full time jobs,
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  Speaker 3: but actually just emerge as fractional leaders. And then the
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  Speaker 3: other thing that we're seeing, which is are deal with
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  Speaker 3: the government is we're seeing that enfor Singaporeans are actually
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  Speaker 3: going to be of retirement age in ten years and
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  Speaker 3: there's these senior leaders who have these big playbooks that
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  Speaker 3: have kind of proven out their expertise over their career
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  Speaker 3: and they're going, how can I still you know, be
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  Speaker 3: relevant and be impactful in a company without having to retire?
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  Speaker 3: And so the government is basically piloting the model and
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  Speaker 3: we're helping them to take fifteen companies through a full
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  Speaker 3: placement to actually show the impact that fractional can make
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  Speaker 3: instead of have full timely embedded in the company.
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  Speaker 2: Michelle, you're the CEO of the Fractional Directory. Are you
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  Speaker 2: a fractional CEO? Are you like a f time CEO?
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  Speaker 2: And is there not a contradiction if you are?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's actually it's a really relevant question
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  Speaker 3: because I started as the fractional CEO of our startup
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  Speaker 3: and then as we've moved into you know, out of
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  Speaker 3: New Zealand and into other countries, were gone full time.
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  Speaker 3: But it's true, you actually you can work in either.
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  Speaker 2: No, fair enough, I didn't wasn't being serious, Michelle. Thank you,
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  Speaker 2: Michelle Auborne with our CEO of the Fractional Directory.
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