Managerial Capability in SMEs and Fractional Management: the true competitive advantage of Italian businesses is not AI, but managerial capability.

Federmanager launches a Manifesto to revitalize the country. The Politecnico research on Fractional Management shows one of the possible paths. And perhaps the time has come to look at the problem from a different perspective.

We keep talking about AI. Perhaps we are looking at the finger and not the moon.

In the last two years we have talked almost exclusively about Artificial Intelligence, digitalization, Industry 5.0, and automation.

These are fundamental themes.

But I have been working in Human Resources for over twenty years, and I keep asking myself a different question.

Are we sure that the real problem for Italian SMEs is technology?

Or is the problem much deeper? Perhaps something is missing that no algorithm will ever be able to install:

managerial capability.

The Federmanager Manifesto starts from a courageous diagnosis

In the July issue of Economy, the President of Federmanager, Valter Quercioli, launches a message that deserves attention.

Italy needs to bring managerial competencies into thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Incentives are not enough.

Bonuses are not enough.

Not even Artificial Intelligence is enough.

We need people capable of reading complexity, making decisions, building organizations, and transforming strategies into results.

Because no technology creates value if leadership capable of guiding it is missing.

Technology accelerates. But who is driving?

In my career I have seen companies invest tens of millions in new facilities, ERPs, CRMs, HR platforms and, more recently, in Artificial Intelligence.

Yet the problems were rarely technological. They were managerial.

I have seen decisions postponed for months because no one wanted to take responsibility for them.

Processes perfectly designed on paper and completely ignored in practice.

Managers excellent from a technical standpoint but incapable of building a team.

And companies that attributed to technology problems that, in reality, arose from the lack of clear governance.

It is a lesson I have carried with me for years.

Software improves a process. A manager changes an organization.

They are two profoundly different things.

Fractional Management is the answer to a real problem

While reading the Federmanager Manifesto, I was reminded of the Observatory on Fractional Management at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano.

The research starts from exactly the same question.

How do you increase the managerial capability of SMEs if many companies cannot afford senior executives full-time?

The answer is simple: make managerial capability accessible.

The Fractional Manager is not a consultant who delivers a report.

They are an executive who enters the organization with operational responsibilities, builds governance, introduces method, develops internal competencies, and accompanies the company through change.

In other words: Federmanager tells us what is needed. The Politecnico research shows us how to make it possible.

Andrea Pietrini intuited this shift many years ago

When Andrea Pietrini founded YOURgroup, talking about Fractional Management seemed almost a theoretical exercise.

Today, instead, that model appears surprisingly current.

The idea is simple but powerful. A manager’s value is not measured by the number of hours spent in the company. It is measured by the impact they manage to generate.

It is an enormous paradigm shift. For decades we purchased presence. Today we can purchase competence.

A five-day-a-week HR director is not necessarily needed. It can be far more effective to have the right person, at the right time, with the responsibility to produce concrete results.

Why I believe this model will grow

We live in a context where everything is changing simultaneously.

Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Pay Transparency, ESG, Internationalization, generational transitions, acquisitions by Private Equity Funds.

Thinking that an SME can have all the necessary competencies in-house is simply unrealistic.

Thinking you can access them when needed, however, is a strategy.

And this is where Fractional Management stops being a contractual model. It becomes a competitiveness model.

Why I chose YOURgroup

This is also why I decided to join the YOURgroup community. Not because it represents only a new professional opportunity.

But because I share the vision that sustains it.

After over twenty years as an HR Director, I am convinced that the future of Italian businesses will not depend only on the adoption of Artificial Intelligence.

It will depend on the ability to bring the highest-level managerial competencies even where, until yesterday, they seemed economically unreachable.

Because true innovation does not consist in replacing people. It consists in making talent finally accessible.

A question we should start asking ourselves

Perhaps we should stop asking ourselves how much Artificial Intelligence will enter Italian SMEs.

And start asking ourselves how much managerial intelligence is still missing.

Because the former, without the latter, risks being only very expensive software.