Fractional leadership

Have you been hearing folks in your network use the phrase “fractional executive” to refer to themselves? I first noticed this phrase popping up more and more about 6 months ago. As I’ve launched out as an entrepreneur this year, I found myself curious about this emerging way of working, how it differs from consulting, and who may need these fractional leaders.

What the frak?

Here’s my definition of a fractional executive, heavily influenced by the warm and delightful John Arms.

A fractional executive is an embedded member of a leadership team for an extended period of time to leverage their expertise in service of company goals, who is not a full time employee.

The benefit to companies is relatively cheaper access to amazing experience and talent. Fractional executives traditionally demand high compensation as a full time employee, working a full time schedule with one employer. In Fractional work, they work a % of their work week in a role, though maintain responsibilities tied to company outcomes and team leadership. The most common Fractional positions I’m seeing a CHRO, CMO, CFO, and CTO or CISO roles*. (Acronyns spelled out at the end of this post).

Reclaiming the way we work

There is a passion with the fractional community that I have been energized by – how do we give our expertise to companies we believe in, in a win-win fashion. Fractional work expands flexibility for many humans seeking reduced work hours for any reason – from partial retirement to home or caretaking responsibilities. Or variety for those still wanting to work full time (40+ hours per week in the US), who may have multiple Fractional roles at once.

It’s a great way to make work… work for humans.

can design be fractional?

The jury is out on this one! As I have gotten involed in the Fractional community (newly forming) it’s been a very interesting experiment to share my skillset (human centered experience design, product strategy, creative leadership), and seek feedback or advice from these professionals. There are three camps;

• those who think any form of design is completely unessential until we need a graphic designer to make a logo 🙄
• those who know building products to meet human centered needs iteratively leads to great product-market fit but still don’t think they need someone in a leadership role
• and those who do buy in to human centered design early on, but expect Product Management to tackle that.

I think there’s a huge missed opportunity here, that I’m not willing to walk away from yet. However, as with my post The Broken Three-legged Stool, the value of “design” and what the word “design” means to founders, small businesses and c-suite teams is truly one of nice-to-have and not essential.

I’m not ready to walk away from pursuing this kind of work yet, though finding the right timing of when the value proposition of a Design Leader (however we re-word “Design”) in these spaces will be a continued experiment.

Stay tuned!

DEFINITIONS

CHRO: Chief Human Resources Officer
CMO: Chief Marketing Officer
CTO: Chief Technology Officer
CFO: Chief Financial Officer
CISCO: Chief Information Security Officer