Can outsiders be insiders?

I was talking to a partner at an accounting firm last week, whose client, a tight-knit family-owned business with a longstanding history in manufacturing was facing increasingly stiff competition. It must modernise and desperately needs new thinking and skills to reinvent itself while retaining the essence of what has made it great to this day. The partner can see that engaging with the right fractional support is what they need. It’s flexible, affordable, quick, and easy to engage with.

The trouble is the family don’t want to bring in any outsiders.

They’ve never done it before and quite frankly don’t believe that anyone from the outside will have the passion and drive that they do. Besides, how will anyone be able to grasp their special culture and fit in?

I hear these concerns quite a lot amongst business owners and it got me thinking.

What makes an outsider stay forever on the outside?

And what makes an insider?

What’s the divide and does it matter?

We tend to think about this issue in terms of the employer/employee relationship.

If you are an employee, you are by default, an insider, right?

And if you aren’t on the payroll then you are stood out in the cold, waiting to be let in.

Or are you?

My own experience of working with typical outsiders i.e. contractors, freelancers, fractional and part-time executives, non-execs, and consultants is that the relationship I develop with them can be very deep, solid, enduring, and intimate (in a business sense, of course). Looking back over my relationships, I still have very strong bonds with many ‘outsiders’, they are some of my closest confidantes, my inner circle, the ones I always call when I need help. And more to the point, on reflection, I have been both the employee and employer, where the relationship hasn’t been nearly so strong, and I’ve been on the outside…

So it’s not about that bit of paper, the employment contract, is it?

It’s about the relationship.

This insider/outsider dilemma fascinates me. I’m interested in the experience of others.

What is it about these relationships that means an outsider is in fact working on the inside?