What Responsibilities and Scope Should I Give a Fractional Executive?

If you’re hiring a fractional exec, their scope will entirely depend on what your needs are. The scope can be as small and tightly defined, or it can be as large and open-ended.

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What Fractional Execs Can Do

Fractional execs and other fractional talent generally come into your organization to own something by leveraging their past expertise.

Fractional execs can own a function area like Finance, Analytics, or Customer Success. This means they can establish the strategy for that function, they can manage or mentor existing team members, and they can hire and fire.

Other types of fractional talent can own a specific growth channel for your company. Or own a product area. Or own a sub-function like “People Operations”.

Fractional talent, even executives, can own execution too. It’s a common misconception that fractional leaders can only do advisory or consultative work. Absolutely untrue.

One of the most common requests that Fractional Jobs gets from our clients is to find a fractional exec that can do the necessary execution work. If you need help finding this kind of person, feel free to reach out.

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What Fractional Execs Can’t Do

The limiting factor for what a fractional exec can do is primarily just their time commitment.

Fractional execs, at least the good ones, are exceptionally efficient and outcome-oriented. It is not uncommon to replace an underperforming CFO with an incredible Fractional CFO and see an increase in output.

But of course, fractional execs are not superhuman. Because of the time commitment you’re engaging them for, there are some practical limitations to their scope. If you’re engaging with a fractional exec for 5 hours per week, don’t expect them to have the same output as someone working 40 hours per week.

These limitations are resolved by prioritizing the highest impact work.

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Communicating With Your Fractional Exec

Your fractional exec should be in your Slack, just like a full-time employee. If you expect them to be sending external emails, you should give them an email account too.

Generally, you should feel free to reach out to your fractional hire any time, though response times will vary. Different fractionals have different engagement styles, so you should be aligned with yours about how they work. Many are available throughout the week, as long as it stays in line with the agreed upon scope. Some fractionals, especially for roles like Engineering, might dedicate set days and times to different clients. This helps them protect the required deep work time they need.

Tip: If you’re considering adding your fractional hire to all the company meetings, ask yourself how important it is, given you have a limited amount of their time. You may find it’s not necessary, and this allows the fractional exec to stay focused on moving the needle for you.

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Measuring Success of Your Fractional Exec

You should be tracking the success of your fractional hire based on the proposal and contract you agreed to.

Beyond that though, your Fractional CMO, or Fractional COO, etc. can be measured by customer growth achieved, or operational efficiencies created. In other words, by their outcomes. Just like you would measure a full-time hire.

If you feel like your fractional hire is not proving successful, consider the following:

• Are they missing expectations set in the proposal?
• Are you giving them the space and resources to be successful?
• Are they committing the time to your company that they said they would?

If you think your fractional exec is falling short, it may be time to revisit the relationship. There are so many great fractional execs out there that you can absolutely find a great match. Learn how Fractional Jobs can help.

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