We have hired a fractional Chief Financial Officer who only works for us eight hours a week. How do we represent this fractional resource on our Accountability Chart, and how do we ensure they are held to the same standards of accountability as our full-time leadership team members?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You must treat a fractional leader exactly like a full-time leadership team member on your Accountability Chart. A common mistake is leaving fractional resources off the chart or creating a separate, advisory box for them. This creates a gap in accountability and confuses the rest of the team.

Place the fractional Chief Financial Officer directly in the CFO seat on your Accountability Chart. By putting their name in that box, you are establishing that they own the outcomes of that function, regardless of how many hours they work each week.

The fractional CFO must GWC™ the seat. They must get it, want it, and have the capacity to deliver the required results. They must also attend your weekly Level 10 Meeting™, own specific financial Rocks, and be accountable for key financial metrics on your Scorecard.

To make this work, you must define the exact roles of the fractional seat to fit their limited hours, focusing on high-impact strategic oversight while delegating administrative tasks to a bookkeeper or assistant. If you do not hold your fractional resources to the same level of ownership as your full-time team, you will end up with incomplete execution and a leadership team that lacks alignment.