How to work with fractional partners
Hiring fractional (or part-time) executives and staff gives leaders a super-flexible opportunity to tap into specialized talent when they're growing their teams and operations. If you're not ready to commit to a full-time, permanent hire, or you want to tap into deeply senior folks you might not be able to afford to hire full-time, grabbing that fractional or advisory consultant can help you level up with the resources you can manage. But taking this route gives a lot of folks anxiety about effectively managing folks who aren't engaged in your team full time.
What if they're not in a key meeting? What if they can't keep up? These are real concerns, but there are ways to manage these relationships that can give folks clear lines of input and ownership. I'm going to share two approaches I've seen work for partnering with fractional staff.
The horizontal approach - for strategic partners
Give your fractional hire a broad impact area with a 30,000 foot view. Spend the time with your fractional partner to empower them to deeply understand your vision, and ask them to build relationships with your existing team members who work in areas where they'll be influential.
Ask them to understand everything happening in their ownership area, to review strategic plans, to consume executive updates, and to provide input, advice, and direction. Direct them to stay out of the details. Empower them to ask your team for summaries and high level views where necessary to inform their decision making, but do not hold them accountable for having instant mastery of day to day operations or project details.
What can you hold them accountable for? Participating in strategic planning, acting as a stakeholder and reviewer in key initiatives, coaching full-time hires, ensuring that projects and work are aligned with executive vision, and bringing fresh ideas, industry expertise, and perspective to bear in their participation in your team.
The vertical approach - for operational partners
Give your fractional hire ownership of one or more key initiatives to take them off your plate. Choose the projects wisely here—empower your fractional hire to have ownership in situations where your direct involvement is not necessary. Be clear about how you want to participate and provide input, but do not move forward with this approach unless you are prepared to trust your hire's work and walk away from the details. This is your opportunity to delegate work to a talented independent consultant, and if you think you won't be able to let go of ownership, don't do this. (But maybe consider working on your delegation skills.)
You can hold the vertical hire accountable for depth of knowledge on their initiative and the team they're working with, but plan to act as their eyes and ears across the organization, because they won't have capacity to be across all of the projects and initiatives you've got going on. You'll need to coach them when they might need to bring in cross-functional partners or shift strategic focus due to changing company circumstances.
In summary, the vertical hire is narrow and deep, where the horizontal hire is wide and high-level. These aren't the only ways to work with fractional partners, but it's an effective way to structure engagements so that you can get a feel for working with fractional hires effectively.
