We are transitioning our fractional Chief Technology Officer to a full-time seat as we scale, but he wants to retain a few legacy consulting clients. How do we evaluate his GWC and represent this split capacity on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you transition a fractional leader to a full-time leadership seat, you are moving from a part-time advisory arrangement to complete operational ownership. If this leader wants to keep side consulting clients, you have a major capacity issue that must be addressed immediately using the GWC™ tool.

Under GWC™, Capacity is not just about mental capability. It is about emotional bandwidth and physical time. A full-time leadership seat on an EOS® Accountability Chart requires undivided focus, especially if you are scaling for an exit. If your CTO is distracted by external clients, he will not have the capacity to lead his team, drive technical Rocks, and manage system reliability.

To resolve this, you must be unsentimental. You cannot allow a full-time leadership team member to have split focus. If he wants to remain in the full-time CTO seat, he must commit to winding down his external consulting clients within a strict, agreed-upon timeframe, such as thirty days. This commitment must be documented.

If he refuses to give up his clients, he does not GWC™ the full-time seat. In that case, you must keep him in a clearly defined, fractional advisor seat on the chart, or begin searching for a full-time CTO who is fully committed.

Do not compromise on the integrity of your leadership team seats. A buyer will discount your company value if they see a key technology executive who is legally and operationally split between your business and outside interests.