Last week in Part 1, we talked about the growing Fractional executive movement with a real question: What fraction are you selling?
This week, we ask the question — how does Fraction Drift happen, and how can you avoid it?
While written for people considering fractional, this is applicable to any coaches, consultants, or service providers who feel the tug of scope creep in your projects.
In each Fraction, we find common failure modes:
- Time Creep: "We said it would be 15 hours, but we really need you checking in every day."
- Responsibility Creep: "Sure, you're just setting direction, but this campaign needs additional revisions before it goes out. Can you tackle that?"
- Bandwidth Creep: "We said this was the most important project, but now this one is. Can you hop to that one instead?"
- Results Creep: "Well sure you're just advisory, but can you review this deck/watch this sales call/provide coaching to this other leader."
Every failure mode is a version of the same thing: Fraction Drift. The engagement starts as one Fraction and, over time, becomes another, without the terms of the engagement changing with it.
A Functional Leader starts by providing direction, then becomes accountable for execution: Fraction 2 drifts toward Fraction 1.
A Strategic Initiative Lead starts with one project that ends and then gets pulled into whatever strategic problem needs attention that week: Fraction 3 drifts into general senior capacity, with no clear definition of what that capacity is supposed to accomplish.
A Strategic Advisor gets pulled closer to execution because the leaders they’re advising can’t implement the recommendations: Fraction 4 drifts toward Fraction 2, or, as in my case, all the way to Fraction 1.
And a Pure Fractional role demands more and more attention until “part-time” exists primarily on the invoice: Fraction 1 drifts toward full-time.
The organization might genuinely need to shift the Fraction. The problem is when the environment—and the engagement—changes without renegotiating the scope, authority, time, resources, measures of success, or price required for the new Fraction.
Head off Fraction Drift by Anticipating it
The best way to head off Fraction Drift is to anticipate it and use your sales process and your delivery process to address it head on.
To address Time Creep, discuss availability during the sales process, and outline the expected responsibilities of the role, not just the estimated hours.
- What processes will you be running?
- What meetings will you attend?
- What decisions are you expected to make?
- And what level of availability does the organization actually need?
Importantly, first estimate if that at all fits within the hours you've scoped.
Then, define different levels of time commitment and availability, and price them accordingly. Include expectations for response times, availability outside scheduled working hours, and how urgent issues get handled. Be explicit about what’s included at each price point.
To address Responsibility Creep and Results Creep, offer two or three clearly differentiated scopes of work at different price points. Your preferred option might be advisory or functional direction only, with higher-priced options that provide more frequent access, deeper involvement, or additional support. You don’t have to offer hands-on execution if that’s not the work you want to do.
But you should make clear what each level of support includes, and what it doesn’t. That includes what happens if the team doesn’t deliver.
Do you flag the problem and recommend a fix? Send the work back? Step in and fix it yourself? There’s often no leader between you and the team, so if you don’t define this upfront, the answer defaults to you.
That way, if the organization needs more involvement, there’s a defined path to upgrade the engagement. And if it needs less, there’s a path to downshift as well. You’re not renegotiating your boundaries from scratch every time the client needs something different.
To address Bandwidth Creep, don’t just sell a retainer. Structure each major phase of your engagement as a project with defined milestones, measures of success, and committed resources and responsibilities from the client, even if you’re billing a flat monthly rate.
When one project ends, explicitly agree on the next one rather than allowing your capacity to be absorbed into whatever needs attention.
And to address all forms of Fraction Drift, build a quarterly strategic planning and scope review into the engagement. Make it a required part of working together.
Review what was committed, what’s actually happening, what the organization needs next, and whether the current level of access, responsibility, and support still makes sense. This is where you scale the engagement up or down, or renegotiate scope, authority, time, resources, measures of success, and price, before the mismatch becomes a problem.
Which Fraction are you selling?
Fractional goes wrong when three things don't match:
- The Fraction you're selling.
- The Fraction the organization actually needs.
- The Fraction you can profitably deliver, given the time, authority, attention, and responsibility it requires.
Most fractional providers never really decide which Fraction they want to sell. They decide they're a "Fractional CMO" or "Fractional COO," set a monthly price, and then go looking for companies that need some version of senior marketing or operations help.
That makes the scope something you discover after the client is already interested.
I'd reverse it.
Decide what Fraction you actually want to deliver. Decide what level of responsibility, authority, attention, and embedding you're willing to take on. Then design and price different levels of support within those boundaries, so clients can choose the level of access and involvement they actually need—and you have clear ways to scale the engagement up or down as those needs change.
Then look for organizations that need (and are set up to receive) that Fraction.
If you want to sell Pure Fractional, look for companies that need the full scope of a senior role but can't yet fill a full week of it, and that will give you the authority the role carries. Price the time commitment and availability required, not just the title.
If you want to sell Functional Leadership, look for organizations with capable execution teams that genuinely need senior functional leadership. Be clear about how much direction, oversight, and responsibility you're providing at each level of support.
If you want to sell Strategic Initiative Lead, lead with the specific strategic projects you're most equipped to lead, and look for organizations with the resources and sponsorship to support them. Consider selling the project rather than selling yourself as fractional. You can still bill monthly for predictability.
If you want to sell Strategic Advisory, look for capable leaders who can act on senior advice. Define and price the level of access and involvement you're willing to provide without taking responsibility for execution.
It's an easier sell anyway when you're marketing to a concrete organizational problem instead of selling generic access to a "fractional" executive.
So sure, put "fractional" in your headline if it helps the right people find you.
But before you sell the engagement, make sure everyone knows which Fraction they're actually buying.