Michel Fortin

Tag: Power Positioning

Fractional executive studying a revenue system diagram to diagnose where the business is leaking before filling a role

What a Fractional Executive Actually Does, and When You Need One

by Michel Fortin

A fractional executive is a senior leader who owns one part of your revenue system part-time, on retainer, and stays accountable for the outcome. Most companies hire the title they think they need (a CMO, a CRO, a CSO, a CGO) when the real seam that is broken sits somewhere else in the system. The role you need is an output of the diagnosis, not the input. Hire the seat after you find the leak, not before. The work I do first with every company is the diagnosis, and the seat we land on is often not the one they called about.

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A senior executive at a tablet in a premium office, eyes fixed on the screen with subtle skepticism, catching the half-second of recognition someone shows when reading content that looks competent on the surface but feels hollow underneath. The image stages the article's opening argument that the reader can tell, within the first three paragraphs, whether a real person was on the other side of the page.

How EAT 2.0 Builds Authority That AI Cannot Flatten

by Michel Fortin

Google’s EAT 1.0 was the four signals the algorithm could measure: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. The problem in 2026 is that AI passes the surface test. EAT 2.0 stacks the human layer the framework was never asked to measure. Empathy, Authenticity, Transparency. These three are what authority now compounds on, and they are the move AI cannot imitate.

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A senior executive sits at a leather-bound journal on a dark wood desk, examining a freshly written coined term under the warm glow of a brass lamp in a premium office at late afternoon. The image illustrates the article's argument that brandifying, the act of naming a category into existence, is a different move from branding what already exists.

Why I Brandify Categories Instead of Branding Products

by Michel Fortin

Most people use ‘branding’ and ‘brandifying’ as if they were the same word. They are not. Branding decorates what already exists. Brandifying names the thing into existence first, so it can be owned. I have been doing the second one for 35 years without a word for it. Here is the line, the move, and why expert-led firms that want to claim a category have to learn to brandify rather than brand.

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