We are hiring a fractional Chief Financial Officer to help us prepare for an exit, but they will only work ten hours a week. How do we document a fractional leader on our Accountability Chart without confusing our full-time team members about who actually owns the seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A fractional leader must be treated exactly like a full-time employee on your Accountability Chart. There is no special designation, dotted line, or asterisk for fractional team members. They either own the seat, or they do not.

On your Accountability Chart, place the fractional CFO in the Head of Finance seat. Under their name, list the five major roles they are accountable for delivering. The fact that they only work ten hours a week is completely irrelevant to the structure. What matters is that they own the outcomes of that seat.

To avoid confusing your full-time team, you must clearly define their roles and set expectations. The fractional leader must attend your leadership team Level 10 Meeting and actively participate in solving issues.

If there are day-to-day administrative financial tasks that the fractional leader does not have the capacity to run due to their limited hours, those tasks must be broken out into a separate, lower-level seat, such as a bookkeeper or finance assistant, who reports to the fractional CFO.

This maintains a clean reporting structure. Your team will know exactly who is responsible for the high-level financial strategy and who to go to for daily transactional issues, keeping your operations running smoothly.