As the established principal, the time comes when you need to step back from the business. We provide temporary senior level cover for the work you personally drive, until you're back at the helm. Call it momentum hold--our specialty. Your mandate, across companies, departments, titles, and levels of detail.
As the established principal, the time comes when you need to step back from the business. We provide temporary senior level cover for the work you personally drive, until you're back at the helm. Call it momentum hold--our specialty. Your mandate, across companies, departments, titles, and levels of detail.
As the established principal, the time comes when you need to step back from the business. We provide temporary senior level cover for the work you personally drive, until you're back at the helm. Call it momentum hold--our specialty. Your mandate, across companies, departments, titles, and levels of detail.
15%
of surveyed principals feel momentum holds while they're away.
26
years of hands-on operating experience.
Our service is designed to advance and maintain the initiatives you're personally driving, especially those that cross departments or disciplines. The ones that tend to drift while you're away. You define what you want, responsibilities, authority, and limits. GrayWire steps in with your mandate, and keeps your initiatives moving, makes calls as needed, and keeps them on track in your absence. You retain the direction.
A leader becomes unavailable, a vacancy appears, or circumstances change without notice. We plug in alongside your staff, cover the gap, maintain accountability, and keep the systems, teams, and decisions from drifting while you work through what comes next.
You've been driving a core initiative hands-on, and momentum is solid. Then something changes, a summer in the Mediterranean, a key person lost, a vendor issue, competing priorities--and that opens a gap. Left untended, momentum will fade. GrayWire step in, drive it, and keep it on track until you're back at the helm, or the season passes.
Something important needs doing. It's complicated or nuanced. You'd handle it yourself, hands-on, personally, your way. But you're out of town, or havent the time. We do it on your behalf, the way you want it done. Those initiatives that need senior leadership and a driving force, empowered to act in your name until they're delivered.
When it comes to our Clients, I've come to appreciate the difference between getting a job done for you, and getting that same job done your way. Same result, but in a different way--that's style. And many clients appreciate it. And that's just a small piece of what sets us apart--the GrayWire difference.
Nick McKenzie Founder & CEO - GrayWire
The GrayWire Way
Whatever your reason: leadership vacancy, a health season, a senior leader unavailable, a month away—something needs cover. Our process is straightforward. Of course, an early start always makes things easier.
Learn moreWe begin with a private conversation about what you personally need covered. Together we work through your operating model, the right structure, responsibilities, authority, limits, and expected end state.
We assign the person able to operate across the required range. That may include a broad range, depending on your needs. It may be, all or part of a siloed C-level function, working horizontally across business functions, or work that moves vertically, from senior direction down into operational minutiae. It's all about the right tool for the job.
Your GrayWire resource operator plugs in with your team—in step with their operating rhythm, inside the systems, relationships, and decision cadence already in place. Enough presence to maintain your momentum, but no more; accountable for advancing your initiatives, as you would from within.
We manage and track to the outcomes per your mandate, keeping the necessary work moving. We track against defined operational outcomes, with accountability structures in place, remaining until you return or we've delivered.
Our Niche Offering
Our client survey tells the story:
Having GrayWire on the job, opens up endless possibilities. Above all else, time is the asset, the gift: your time, and your freedom. To be honest, GrayWire is actually peddling you time and freedom, in a roundabout way. What you do with it, is nobody's business. Still, here are some thought starters.
We cover for you. You get your life back.
Free up time to work on other things. We'll hold the fort.
Less time at work, more time with those you love.
Sit back, relax. We've got it covered.
We'll hold the line.
Try it once...
What matters to you keeps moving, even as you pull back.
Say goodbye to late night worries. Relax, sleep easy. You deserve it.
Buy the yacht. Polish up your the golf swing. Take the month. Take two. Dabble in pickleball. Get healthy and spend time with family.
If you've got kids, you know. Finding a great babysitter you trust is a game changer. You get your life back. Well, Corp-sitting is exactly the same. Try it just once, and you'll be addicted. And it'll change your life.
Nick McKenzie Founder & CEO - GrayWire
The services can look similar from a distance. Both may place an experienced resource inside a business for a time. The difference is what defines the work: a conventional role, or the principal's particular combination of responsibilities. Here's the distinction.
Fractional Executive providers work with anyone who needs to fill a clearly-defined executive role, and is willing to pay.
GrayWire's Corp-Sitting is targeted to business principals of privately held companies, who take an active role in their business.
Fractional Executive providers provide "role-replacement" resources: CEO, CTO, COO, to fill a vacant spot you have on your leadership team; part-time, full-time, or temp-to-permanent. Their pool of candidates have corresponding experience. If you've got an empty C-level seat, it works great.
Our Corp-Sitting is geared towards standing in for you, an actively engaged business principal. We keep your important initiatives on track, or as we call it, "owner-momentum hold." To be effective, our resources typically work across the C-Level roles, or down into the weeds, as you may do, at times. This calls for a rare talent and skill set.
A 'Fractional Executive Provider' is an employment agency. They find and build up a stable of available talent, based on C-Level roles, and they pitch them to you, to fill your empty C-Level seat. Fractional really means 'try before you buy.' If you like them, you keep them longer. If you really like them, you buy them outright.
On the other hand, Corp-Sitting is about you — the principal. Keeping things moving when needed, your way — from time to time, when and as needed. We aim to give you a powerful, lasting tool, available to you when, and if you need it.
Choose a Fractional Executive if you need to fill a standard C-Level role, with a standard corporate "box" defining what that role does
Choose Corp-Sitting when you need someone to 'do what you do,' across departments, roles, divisions, management levels or businesses, while you're away.
Get Started
We start with a conversation about you, what needs tending, and whether GrayWire is the right fit. If it is, we can move on to assignment, proposals, and fees. There is no minimum consulting commitment required to begin the relationship.
