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Part-Time Executive, Full Responsibility

Dimitris Timotheatos · · 6 min read

A few years ago, if you told a Greek business owner that he could have a Finance Director two days a week, he would have looked at you with disbelief. A director in instalments? And yet! This is exactly what is happening internationally today, and at a pace that can no longer be ignored. We are talking about so-called fractional C-level executives: experienced senior leaders (CFO, CMO, Commercial Director, COO) who take on real responsibility in a company without being employed there full time.

Let us start with the data. The global market for fractional executives is already estimated at over 5.7 billion dollars, growing at around 14% a year. Their number doubled in just two years, from 60,000 in 2022 to 120,000 in 2024. Demand for such engagements rose by 149% within a single year, from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026. Gartner estimates that by 2027 more than three in ten mid-sized companies will have at least one fractional executive, while 72% of CEOs say they plan to increase their use of them over the next year.

And Europe? It is following. More slowly, but it is following. In the United Kingdom, LinkedIn profiles mentioning fractional leadership rose from around 2,000 in 2022 to more than 140,000 today. In Germany, where interim management has been a mature institution for decades, the market is close to 2.7 billion euros, with an average daily fee of 1,317 euros. 74% of assignments involve companies with between 250 and 10,000 employees. In other words, the backbone of the German economy. The most interesting finding for us, however, comes from the European surveys on interim management: in the North these executives mostly serve large organisations, while in the South they mostly serve smaller companies.

Why does this concern us? Because Greek business is, above all, small and medium-sized. In my view, this is the critical point. A Greek company with a turnover of 10, 20 or 30 million euros needs strategic thinking at the level of a multinational. What it does not need, and cannot carry, is the full management team of a multinational. The result? Either the owner does everything himself, or he hands critical functions to people who do not yet have the experience to carry them. Either way, he pays a cost that does not show on the balance sheet. It does show in the results, though.

The reasonable objection is: “But this is nothing new. There have always been consultants.” True. Except that a fractional executive is not a consultant. The consultant recommends. The fractional executive decides, executes and is held accountable. He is part of the management team, has targets, has people and is judged by the numbers. It is no coincidence that 91% of fractional executives say they do hands-on execution and not just advisory work. I say this from personal experience too, as I currently serve as Fractional Commercial Director at a bottled water company. The distance between writing a study and building next year’s targets together with the sales team is the distance between theory and results.

Here, as so often, it is worth inviting Machiavelli into the conversation. In “The Prince”, the Florentine is merciless with mercenaries. He considers them useless and dangerous, because nothing keeps them on the battlefield beyond a small wage. So someone might wonder: are fractional executives the modern mercenaries of management? The answer is no. On one condition.

In reality, Machiavelli had no problem with pay. His problem was the lack of commitment to the outcome. The mercenary was paid whether he won or lost. And above all, when he left, he left behind a state just as defenceless as before. That is why his advice was clear: the Prince must have arms of his own.

The right fractional executive, then, does exactly the opposite of the mercenary. He does not come to fight in your place. He comes to build your army. He sets up processes, trains people, transfers know-how and ties his fee to measurable targets. And when at some point he leaves, the company must be stronger than it was when he arrived. If it is not, then you did indeed hire a mercenary. As I have argued in my book “Conversations with Machiavelli”, the Florentine did not teach cynicism but realism. And realism here says something simple: what counts is not how many days someone spends in the office. What counts is what he leaves behind.

There is, however, another side. The model is not a cure-all. It needs a clear mandate, real authority, and the owner’s honest acceptance that someone else will share the decisions with him. A fractional executive without authority is simply an expensive consultant. We should also read the international figures with a critical eye, since many of the estimates of the market’s size come from platforms that profit from its growth. The direction, however, is clear. And it is not changing.

What does all this mean for the Greek company? That Leadership is no longer the privilege of those who can afford all of it. That a mid-sized producer in Crete, Thessaly or Northern Greece can gain access to experience that until yesterday only the big players had. It will only pay off, however, when the owner treats the fractional executive not as a cost to be cut at the first difficulty, but as an investment with targets, a timeline and accountability.

Machiavelli wrote that fortunate is the one who adapts his way of acting to the spirit of the times. The times have changed. The question is whether we will change too.

Because, in the end, Leadership is not measured in hours of presence. It is measured by what it leaves behind.

Sources

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