Fractional executive

A fractional executive is a senior leader who holds a C level seat for part of the week, on an ongoing basis, in a company that cannot yet justify or afford a full time executive. The role is real: the fractional executive owns the function, attends the leadership meeting, sets the plan and is accountable for the number. What is fractional is the time, not the authority.

In British Columbia most companies between $500K and $30M in revenue have never had a CMO, CTO, COO or CFO. The owner holds those seats by default. A fractional executive gives the owner a peer in the function for a fraction of the salary, benefits and recruiting cost of a full time hire, and with no idle time, because small companies rarely have forty hours a week of executive work in any one function.

In practice the arrangement works when the executive has a weekly meeting that happens regardless, authority over the budget of their function and a scorecard that both sides watch. It fails when the owner treats the executive as a vendor to supervise. Ali Sedighi takes fractional CMO and CTO seats himself and brings finance and operations specialists from his team for COO and CFO seats. Pricing follows the SAZ Fractional Executive band of $25K to $60K per month, outcome based and never hourly. The alternative for a defined period with an end date is an interim executive.