You don’t need a full-time leader
Fractional leadership is getting more popular. But it is just the beginning.
As we have tectonic shifts in how we work, employing part-time staff will become a norm in the upcoming years.
In today's newsletter, I will talk about fractional leadership. What it means, but more importantly, when should you consider going with a fractional leader instead a full-time one?
So what is a fractional leader?
Most people mix and match three terms: part-time, consultant, and fractional. So let's clear up the clouds and go into terminology mode.
A consultant works on projects, and they have an end date on their contract. They are hired to do a project. Once that's done, they are out.
They are also externals, so they are not part of your internal team. No one is reporting to them. So they don't act on behalf of your company.
Fractionals have no end date on their contract. They are hired to do the job for you. They can stay with the company indefinitely as other employees.
They are part of your internal team, part of your org chart, and can act on behalf of your company.
Part-time, on the other hand, just explains the availability. Fractionals are working for you part-time, depending on your needs.
When do you need a fractional leader?
I see two use cases nowadays, and other fractionals confirm these.
Most are small businesses—startups, scaleups, or just regular brick-and-mortar SMBs.
The other ones are grown-up companies, even enterprises. They need a helping hand of a fractional member whom, in most cases, they move full-time later.
Let's talk about the first ones here only.
In most cases, let's be honest here, you don't need a full-time CFO/CMO/COO for your tech startup at a stage where you have only 10-20 people.
Yet, you still need leadership. A C-suite executive with solid experience who can build out your foundational processes, define and implement your strategy, and build & manage your team.
So more and more scaleups opt-in for a fractional. They don't want to spend 200K+ per year for a rockstar. So they spend friction of this cost for a fractional, who's there for 1-3 days with their team but provides the same results.
The terms are the same as a full-time person. The results, however, can be even more.
Fractionals don't have time to dive into politics or bureaucracy. Instead, they need to produce results in a shorter period.
Some companies even employ a full-time leader AND a fractional next to it. It is a trend in CMOs, by the way. Why? The full-time CMO leader is busy with strategy & management, so help is needed to kick off a new campaign. An occasionally available fractional CMO is a perfect solution.
The future of work is fractional.
There is a bigger picture in this trend. Two main factors are driving the adoption of fractional employment.
The first one is remote work. Previously, it was hard to do multiple part-time jobs as you had to travel to multiple offices. Now this is not the case.
The second one is AI. The mass-scale adoption of AI leads to a point where automation will take over more workflows. The less work we need to do, the less need to keep people tied into a full-time management role.
Today it is the mid-management that is doing fractional work. However, it will be a norm for everyone in the following years, even on junior levels.
If you want to dive deeper into this topic, I had a fantastic talk with Karina Mikhli. She is a fractional COO and the founder of the largest community of fractional leaders, Fractionals United.
Over to you - what do you think? Would you employ fractional leaders?
Peter
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