Fractional executives leaving corporate jobs face isolation that traditional networking doesn't solve. The pandemic and remote work have reshaped what community means, creating new needs for connection, information, and structure among independent workers.
Chapters
So I think, you know, first of all, we have to define what community is, because everybody's got this word in their head about, you know, what is a community. And we all have our own interpretation of that, and it's loosely used, right? So to me, community is truly. It is a cultural experience. That, to me, is the distinction that I see as community today. We have come off of several years of the most shocking personal and professional experience we possibly could ever have had, where at the same time, it was like a perfect storm, where at the same time that we experienced a global pandemic forcing us to be isolated, we also had the advent of new tools and technology where we could actually do exactly like this. This isolation and the complete shift in the workplace where so many executives have shifted out of corporate roles, choosing for the very first time to go independent at the same time that we were experiencing this isolation factor, and at the same time as we were experiencing this technological advance, where we could actually be in the same room with each other easily. It's a lonely thing after being in a company for so many years or companies where you are part of the corporate structure and you've got people coming in and out of your office every single day, and now for the first time, you are on your own. You've got all this dependent independence, which you wanted, all this autonomy, which you wanted, and you're sitting there, you know, on your kitchen count, you know, at your kitchen island, or in your own, you know, second bedroom or third bedroom, and with it, with a computer in front of you, and you're alone. Now what? The need for community means something different in 2023 than it ever meant in 2015 and 14 and 12. So the bonding that we need and the connection that we need, the information that we need, the structure we need, is completely.
