Executive Insights

Before taking Alan Giles’ Practical AI for Business Founders course, I thought I had a reasonable understanding of artificial intelligence. Like many people, I had experimented with tools such as ChatGPT and could see their potential for answering questions, generating ideas and helping with written content.

There is a moment in the life of a growing business when something changes. The business is still working. Revenue is growing. Customers are coming in. The team is busy. The founder and leadership team are making decisions every day. But somehow, the leadership structure that worked perfectly well a year or two ago no longer feels quite enough.

For UK and European start-ups, the right fractional executive may not live within commuting distance of head office. That person may be in South Africa, working in almost the same time zone, bringing international experience and a perspective shaped by building businesses in one of the world’s most inventive emerging markets.

In a small business, every conversation carries weight. In a small business there is nowhere to hide. There’s less of a buffer, fewer layers and tighter margins. A single unclear agreement can cost time, money or trust.

Somewhere today, one of your customers asked ChatGPT what to buy instead of searching Google. The answer named three brands. If yours was not one of them, you were invisible at the exact moment the decision was made, and the engines remember their favourites.

A customer contract may require consent before ownership can change. Important intellectual property may not be properly documented. A key employee may have contractual issues. There may be an unresolved dispute, an unexpected liability or an obligation the buyer simply didn't know about.

Most of the leadership advice available to a woman founder was written by, and for, someone who never had to prove they bel They are posting on LinkedIn. Updating the website. Sending the occasional email. Running a campaign when there is a launch, a quiet sales period or a sudden internal push. They may have a designer, a freelancer, an agency, a CRM platform and a content calendar somewhere in the background. On paper, marketing is happening. But commercially, ve

Many growing businesses are not short of marketing activity. They are posting on LinkedIn. Updating the website. Sending the occasional email. Running a campaign when there is a launch, a quiet sales period or a sudden internal push. They may have a designer, a freelancer, an agency, a CRM platform and a content calendar somewhere in the background. On paper, marketing is happening. But commercially, very little is moving.

Every founder hits the "Complexity Wall." It’s that moment when your vision has successfully translated into a product, your first customers are live, and the business is finally breathing on its own.

In an SME, especially in the first few years, everyone has to put a shoulder to the wheel and push, even if it is not their wheel. This is how I discovered something that is not often understood in business, and is what I call Left and Right thinking.

When to Migrate, How to Time It, and Why Maintenance Costs Matter More Than You Think The most expensive cloud migration an SME can make is not the one that overruns budget. It is the one it delays until ageing infrastructure, mounting cyber risk and operational drag have already started to tax growth, distract leadership and quietly erode resilience. By the time many firms ask whether it is time to move, they are already paying the price of not moving. For years, cloud migra

Groupthink occurs when the desire for harmony or conformity within a group leads to irrational or dysfunctional decision-making.

I’ve spent much of my career building and scaling businesses across Europe, North America and Asia. What I’ve seen – repeatedly – is this: Companies treat international expansion as a geography problem.

The shift toward business agility is no longer a corporate buzzword; it is a survival mechanism. As industries move from rigid, top-down hierarchies to fluid, project-based models, the recruitment function—the very gateway to an organisation’s talent—must evolve at the same pace. But it isn’t, and it remains true that in a world where the talent pool is deeper and richer than ever before, engaging with and securing the right talent is becoming a problem that keeps hiring mana

We are proud to share that Fractional Execs has been featured yet again in Your Business , James Caan’s leading publication for founders and growing companies. The feature focuses on a topic that is dominating boardroom conversations across the UK: artificial intelligence, and more importantly, how businesses are actually using it to drive growth. Why this feature matters Your Business is known for spotlighting practical insight from operators who are working directly with s

When revenue stalls or growth slows, most organisations look to the sales team first. And while Sales Directors and...

When revenue stalls or growth slows, most organisations look to the sales team first. And while Sales Directors and...

When revenue stalls or growth slows, most organisations look to the sales team first. And while Sales Directors and...

When revenue stalls or growth slows, most organisations look to the sales team first. And while Sales Directors and...

Making the leap from a corporate executive role to managing your own portfolio career is both exciting and daunting, I speak from...