Fractional Leaders Driving AI-Enabled Businesses: Why On-Demand Expertise Is Shaping 2026

The Elevate Accelerate session that we hosted on the end of 2025 “Fractionals Driving AI-Enabled Businesses” brought together experienced fractional CEO, CMO, and AI leaders to explore what this model looks like in practice, and why it is becoming a defining advantage for companies preparing for 2026.

This article is based on insights shared during Lion People Global’s live Elevate Accelerate event held on 11 December 2025.

What Is a Fractional Leader, and Why the Model Is Scaling Fast

Fractional leadership is about deploying senior expertise precisely when and where it is needed – without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire. As Dave Ruane put it, “Businesses don’t always need more people, they need the right people at the right moment.”

Fractional leaders operate at a senior level, to address specific challenges such as growth stalls, capability gaps, or transformation pressure, and are expected to deliver results quickly. Olga Blasco, CEO and M&A consultant, described the model simply: “It’s basically tailor-made, for each person and each company.”

What was once considered a niche approach is now firmly entering the mainstream. According to Harvard Business Review, the number of professionals identifying as fractional leaders grew from approximately 2,000 in 2022 to more than 110,000 by early 2024, underscoring just how rapidly this leadership model is being adopted across industries.*

Looking ahead, adoption is expected to continue accelerating. Gartner forecasts that by 2027, over 30% of midsize enterprises will have at least one fractional executive on retainer, reflecting a broader shift toward flexible, outcome-driven leadership models.**

Sources:
* Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2024/07/how-part-time-senior-leaders-can-help-your-business
** Industry summary referencing Gartner Future of Work Forecast: https://fractionus.com/blog/rise-of-portfolio-careers-2025

Fractional CMOs and AI in Marketing: From Hype to Measurable Impact

Marketing is often where AI expectations and reality collide first. CEOs want results; pipeline, positioning, growth – but are wary of chasing tools without outcomes.

Juliana Pereira, fractional CMO with experience across from B2B and B2C tech and SaaS startups to e-commerce and non-profits, shared what she is seeing from the C-suite:“The CEOs I’ve been talking to… are much more focused on outcomes. I had a CEO tell me, ‘I don’t really care how you get there, just get there.’”

This indicates that people are over the hype and now want results. AI can deliver real value in marketing, but only when applied with discipline. Juliana outlined where she sees the fastest wins today:

• Data integrity and enrichment
  
• Content creation (with strong human oversight)
  
• Automation and orchestration
  
• Faster campaign execution
  

One critical shift she highlighted is that many of the tools companies already use are now AI-powered, often without teams fully realizing it. As she noted, if a marketing stack does not include AI capabilities today, it is likely already outdated. The real challenge is not adding more tools, but learning how to use existing ones more effectively with their enhanced AI features to drive required outcomes.

She also emphasized that AI should accelerate execution, not replace strategic thinking. While AI can help teams move faster – launching more campaigns and automating repetitive tasks – it still relies on humans to define direction, messaging, and creative intent.

Juliana issued a clear warning against low-quality output:

“AI can’t do the creative thinking. That’s still something humans need to do.”

She explained that “AI slop” (generic, low-quality AI generated content flooding the market) is a major no-no for any marketing touchpoints.. Those that continue to use it will be found out. 

Her advice to leaders is simple: use AI to amplify unique thinking, not replace it, and stay relentlessly focused on outcomes, not tools.

Why So Many AI Implementations Fail

Despite the hype, most AI initiatives never reach their potential. As Iwona Bak, an AI training and agent implementation expert, pointed out, “around 70% of implementations of AI fail.” The reason is rarely the technology itself. More often, failure stems from unfocused deployment, siloed experimentation, or rolling out AI at scale without addressing underlying workflows.

This is why her approach is deliberately pragmatic. She emphasizes the need to “always start from the ground up. Workflow by workflow.” Rather than attempting to deploy “AI everywhere,” successful companies begin by identifying repetitive, time-consuming tasks that employees actively dislike and starting there. This creates quick wins, builds trust and shared understanding within teams, and accelerates adoption across the organization.

Fast ROI Use Cases: Why Sales Is Often the Starting Point

When it comes to visible ROI, sales is often the fastest place to start. As Iwona explained, “if you implement AI properly in the sales department, you get the ROI pretty quickly. This return is visible, and it’s visible in the revenue.” AI can support sales teams in very practical ways, for example:

• Automating follow-ups and administrative tasks
  
• Preparing conversation briefs before client meetings
  
• Simulating difficult customer conversations through AI role-play

Once those wins are established, organizations typically extend AI into adjacent areas where similar workflow-level gains can be achieved. These include recruitment and hiring, where AI helps update and improve job descriptions; sourcing, where it accelerates the search for suitable candidates; and operational workflows, where repetitive, time-consuming tasks can be reduced to free up teams for higher-value work.

Beyond sales, the next areas where AI delivers practical, measurable value are:

• Recruitment and hiring – using AI to update and improve job descriptions, making roles clearer and searches more effective.
  
• Sourcing and candidate search – accelerating candidate identification through AI-assisted searches, improving speed and quality of matches.
  
• Talent matching and team fit – supporting better alignment by identifying profiles that match required skills and characteristics.
  
• Operational workflows – reducing repetitive, time-consuming tasks that slow teams down and create frustration.
  

Each of these areas benefits from the same principle: start with specific workflows, focus on real problems, and build adoption through visible, practical wins.

AI Is Holding Up a Mirror to Organizations

Rodrigo Fuentes Corradi, a Consultant and Transformation Manager with extensive experience in business, technology, and AI transformation, described today’s reality with a striking metaphor, noting that “AI is holding quite a visceral mirror to what we were doing in the past.” 

For many organizations, AI initiatives stall not because of a lack of ambition, but because the fundamentals are missing. Data often has no clear owner. Critical knowledge lives in disconnected systems, personal files, or in people’s heads. And when something breaks – an insight is wrong, a process fails, or an AI output can’t be trusted – it is often unclear who is responsible for fixing it.

As Rodrigo put it, “data is everywhere, and yet it’s also nowhere in the organization.” This is why experienced fractional AI and transformation leaders typically begin not with tools, but with audits of content, data, workflows, and decision-making structures. 

Without this groundwork, AI transformation remains largely theoretical, regardless of the technology in place.

From Service Provider to Trusted Advisor: Repositioning for 2026

As AI reshapes industries, execution alone is no longer a differentiator. Trust, context, and governance are becoming just as important. As Rodrigo emphasized, organizations willing to evolve “can’t be seen just as a production line anymore.” Instead, they are being pushed to develop deeper, more advisory capabilities.

Emerging roles – ontologists, taxonomists, knowledge graph specialists – are becoming critical to making AI reliable and valuable. This is where fractional expertise becomes particularly powerful, allowing companies to access scarce, highly specialized skills without committing to permanent structures too early in the transformation journey.

Watch the full Elevate Accelerate session recording to hear insights directly from the experts:

The Fractional CEO Lens: Knowing When It’s Time to Pivot

Fractional CEOs are often brought in during moments of uncertainty: flat growth, margin pressure, or strategic drift. Olga Blasco explained that her starting point is always diagnostic, noting that “the first thing I tend to look at is the company’s strategy and the value proposition… and whether they’re aligned with the current market realities.”

She outlined clear signals that it may be time to pivot:

• Clients no longer feel understood
  
• Margins quietly erode before collapsing
  
• Teams work harder for diminishing returns

As she put it:

“Economics start whispering before they scream.”

The goal is not reactive change, but proactive repositioning: shifting from pure execution to trusted advisory relationships that align with AI-enabled professional services.

Bringing Calm to Chaos: The Real Value of Fractional Leadership

One theme echoed throughout the session: fractional leaders bring clarity. They arrive with objectivity, challenge assumptions, and introduce discipline without becoming entangled in internal politics. They help break hero culture and establish cadence and accountability. As Rodrigo described it candidly, the goal is that “you’re working to make yourself redundant.”

Juliana echoed this sentiment, explaining that “a big measure of success for me is that I’m leaving it in a better place than when I arrived.” Fractional leadership is not about dependency – it is about enabling organizations to sustain change long after the engagement ends.

Conclusion: Why Fractional Leaders Will Define AI-Enabled Growth

AI transformation is no longer optional, but successful transformation requires more than tools. It demands clarity, focus, governance, and experienced leadership.

Fractional leaders offer a powerful alternative to traditional hiring models: faster impact, lower risk, and sharper alignment with business outcomes.

As organizations prepare for 2026, those who combine AI ambition with fractional expertise will be best positioned to move faster, adapt smarter, and build sustainable advantage.

If your organization is navigating AI adoption, transformation pressure, or leadership gaps, fractional expertise can provide the clarity and momentum you need – without long-term overhead.

The future belongs to organizations that know when to build, and when to bring in the right expertise at the right moment.

If your organization could benefit from a fractional expert, you can book some initial hours through us.