Fractional Leadership: C-Suite Execs at a Fraction of the Cost
Growing a company requires a lot. You need creativity and agility. You need a product that can make a splash. You need a way to get that in front of the right customers. And you need a team to help with all of this.
With that last part, things can get tricky. Ideally, you’d bring the best and the brightest on board. In reality, though, those high-performers don’t come cheap. Many a founder has been hard-pressed to find the balance between hiring the right people and keeping overhead manageable.
Enter: fractional leadership. This could be your golden ticket to the sweet spot.
The best for less
A fractional leader is someone who joins your team — sort of.
Rather than coming on as a full-time employee (with a full-blown compensation package), this individual comes on board more like a part-time employee. They’re more invested in your company’s success than, say, a consultant, but they function pretty similarly when it comes down to pay.
In exchange for their fee, the fractional leader steps up and steps in where you need them. They provide their (usually very extensive) expertise and experience, but you don’t have to provide a full-time salary, medical benefits, PTO, and more.
Think of it this way: with a fractional leader, you get the C-suite executive you need, but at a fraction of the cost of a full-time employee’s salary.
3 major benefits of fractional leadership
Sound good? Let’s keep this train rolling. Here are a few reasons you might want to explore fractional leadership for your own company.
#1: You can hire higher
Let’s say you need a CMO. Ideally, you’d hire someone who recently exploded a product on the market or someone who has decades of experience at a household brand name. But it might not be financially prudent for your company to take on the major salary expense of someone like that.
So, what do you do? Hire someone with limited experience? Pray your middlingly qualified executive ends up being a smash hit?
Sure, you could. Or you could bring on a fractional leader. This way, you can get the deep well of experience your company deserves.
#2: It keeps you agile
Headcount is hard for any company, but it’s especially challenging at early-stage companies and those going through major inflection points. The problem? Those are the times when your leadership matters most.
You need guidance, but you don’t need to be locked into some major compensation package to get it. With a fractional leader, you get that flexibility.
Let’s be real: executives will always find ways to fill their days. But in a lot of cases, the actual work they do could be handled by someone else if it was properly delegated. You need your C-suite to guide your company in critical moments, but there probably aren’t 40 hours a week of critical moments.
With fractional leadership, you can scale up or scale down the individual’s involvement. This way, you can tap into expertise while staying as agile as possible.
#3: You get someone who can see the forest and the tree
There can be some cases when a fractional leader actually benefits companies more than a full-time exec, even if money was no object.
When someone’s a full-time part of your team, they’re in the weeds with you day in and day out. That can be a good thing. But it can also spell trouble. If your team of executives gets fixated on a specific opportunity or issue, it can lead your company down the wrong path — or at least prevent precious resources from getting properly distributed.
With a fractional leader, you have someone who will jump into the trenches with you when needed. But they’ll climb right back out, too. And that gives them the elevation to help you make strategic decisions. In fact, as they work with companies other than yours, they get a finger more firmly placed on the pulse of the current market environment. The resulting insights could be game-changers for your growing business.
People often think fractional leadership is a stop-gap measure. You outsource your executive until you can afford to hire someone full-time. And sure, that’s an option. But because fractional leaders can give you deeper expertise, more agility, and clearer insights for less money, you might choose to keep this solution in place long-term.
How long it lasts doesn’t really matter, though. What does is getting the right person involved with your team. To talk with us about hiring a fractional CMO, get in touch.