Hi Zee. How familiar are you with Fractional work?
I’ll admit, today’s letter is a little self-serving. But stick with me, because the way I make a living actually ties right back into everything we’ve been talking about.
Dear Zee. As much fun as writing these letters to you is, it doesn't exactly pay my bills or fund my future yacht.
Yes, I spend a great deal of time digging into this massive generational workforce pile-up, but I also have a day job.
I’m a fractional executive. Sounds fancy, right? When people ask me what that actually means, I usually pause, because the answer depends entirely on who is asking.
Sometimes I've stepped into a senior project management role, leading high-touch marketing campaigns for agencies that needed experienced hands for a season.
Sometimes I've become an Operations Director, untangling years of undocumented processes, auditing workflows, writing SOPs and making businesses easier to run.
Sometimes I'm a Marketing Director, building strategic marketing roadmaps, pressure-testing big ideas, and helping teams turn ambitious concepts into campaigns that actually deliver.
One time I even helped run a program focussed on tourism resiliency, working with hundreds of small businesses to completely rethink how they market themselves when the world suddenly stops travelling.
Lots of times I’ve found myself being th person someone calls when they have an idea scribbled on a napkin and asks, "Can you tell me if you think this will work?"
The common thread isn't the title of the role, it’s that I become part of the team for awhile. Not forever and not full-time. Sometimes it’s one day a week, sometimes is a 3 month gig. And sometimes it’s 100 hours spread over the course of 6 months. Essentially I’m there long enough to understand the people, earn trust and actually move something forward.
Our Definition of Fractional
To me, "fractional" doesn't mean consulting from the safe sidelines. It means sitting in the awkward meetings, feeling like a true member of the squad and wrestling with the messy problems. I care about the outcome and my goal is always to leave the business stronger than I found it.
Do I like it?
I love it. Not because I get to parachute in pretending to be a superhero with all the answers, but because it allows me to focus purely on the work. I don't have to navigate office politics, and I don’t have to waste energy protecting fragile egos or defending ideas just because "that's how we've always done it." Instead, I get to ask the glaring questions that people on the inside stopped asking years ago. There’s something incredibly powerful about being close enough to care, but far enough away to maintain total clarity.
One of the best parts of this gig is that I don’t have to hold that lens alone. My business partner, Jane, and I bring completely different strengths to the table (kinda yin and yang like), but we’re united by the exact same belief: that work should be more human. Together, we operate less like two separate consultants and more like a tag-team for organizational health. Some clients need deep operational systems, some need high-level strategy, and some just need someone to facilitate the hard conversations that everyone is avoiding. Between the two of us, we offer all of it.
Jane brings a rare blend of deep executive experience and intuitive clarity to the mix. Her background is a based in business leadership, spanning commercial launches, international partnerships and organizational transformations. She knows how strategy actually lands inside a company, not just how it looks on a pretty slide deck. What truly sets her apart is her ability to see beneath the surface of a corporate problem. Jane asks the exact questions no one else is asking, cutting through the noise to get to what’s really driving decisions, behaviours and culture. She a master at holding both the strategy and the "soul" of a company in the same conversation, giving leaders the space and courage to move with total honesty.
When we started MatterBetter, it was never about becoming just another stuffy consultancy. It was about taking that combined energy and helping organizations build workplaces that actually work for the humans inside them. Better systems, better leadership, better communication, better purpose alignment. And, more recently, helping leaders understand a generation they’ve spent years misunderstanding.
That’s where you come in, Zee. I spend so much time writing to you because your generation is forcing the questions that corporate spaces have actively avoided for decades. Those questions about flexibility, purpose, mental health and boundaries. Sure, some of the demands across the board can be unrealistic, but a lot of them just make sense. This conversation matters. I want to help work itself... matter better. (See what I did there?)
So yes. This was a shameless explanation of what I do. Maybe Google will pick it up, maybe it won’t. But regardless, thanks for indulging me.