The Great Un-Learning: What Going Fractional Taught Me about Radical Rejection

06.04.2024 I By Maggie Spicer

Every week THE BOARD amplifies the voice of one of its members through Op-Ed pieces, sharing the diverse range of experiences and perspectives that it represents. I’m thrilled to be joining the ranks of so many incredible thought leaders.

Let’s be honest, lawyers aren’t known for taking risks. In fact, we’re good at doing just the opposite. We identify risk, mitigate risk, protect from risk. But seldom do we make a leap into the great unknown.

The first decade of my professional experience was in some of the most well-respected legal environments I could have hoped for (White & Case, Amazon). When I finally decided to go out on my own, I knew the broad strokes of what I hoped to accomplish. I wanted to take those years of legal and supply chain regulatory experience and apply them to the consumer goods industries that I used every day, layering on my passion for sustainability and product design. What I didn’t have was a language to describe that work. “Fractional” wasn’t part of my lexicon until I joined THE BOARD.

Fractional executives were allowed to be unicorns. Beyond consultants, typically tasked with standard operational roles of an organization, fractional executives come in at the highest level of an organization. They provide value like no other because they are like no other. They deploy with agility right to where the market needs them. While this sounded great, it required a massive un-learning of how I thought a consultant could work and to reject the models I had previously been taught.

👉 To reject that only at a certain stage of my career would it be appropriate to go off on my own.

👉 To reject that lawyers shouldn’t work across disciplines, incorporating creative and operational roles as well as structural and legal.

👉 And to reject that the “dream” job was a destination, rather than a journey.

I now know that my pathway to professional fulfilment was rejecting all those things and embracing what other Board members like Jo McKinney Alisa Greenspan April Uchitel Sydney Badger Liz Alessi Holly Moore, MPH Rachel Roberts Mattox and so many others have shown me. That in creating a space to express all facets of our skills, interests, and ambitions, we can learn to be the greatest versions of ourselves.

* WE ARE THE BOARD is a curated team of fractional executives in beauty, fashion, technology, and retail. To learn more, visit THEBOARD.CO.