The benefits of fractional leadership

After years of working with and for a variety of different kinds of social impact organizations—from educational institutions to cooperative federations, small community-based charities to global non-profits—we’ve been lucky to see how our strategy and “critical friend” services can help leaders set foundations for an organizational programme or initiative.

It’s only lately that we’ve thought about some of what we do through the lens of “Fractional Leadership.” We are experts in cooperation, learning, technology and community, which means the type of leadership that we bring into projects is quite specifically Open.

What is Fractional Leadership?

Fractional leadership is essentially outsourcing a role or a part of a role to an expert who can help you hit the ground running. Such positions are great when you know you need a new department (e.g. Digital Transformation) or if you’re kicking off a new project that needs someone to lead. They’re also helpful when you know you want to hire someone full-time, but want to find the right person for your organization.

Fractional leadership provides you and your organization with some flexibility because it gives you the time and space to make the right decisions in staffing and for your organization as a whole. It’s potentially less expensive than hiring someone full time and can be explicitly bound in a statement of work. It’s also a way to test whether or not a particular new position makes sense to your organization.

It is a way to work with diverse experts who have wide-ranging experience that you would like to apply to your organization as it grows, changes and transitions.

The shadow side of fractional leadership

As with any concept we pull from the world of business into the social impact space, we need to be aware of how it can manifest inside an organization that isn’t only trying to maximize profits.

Often, organizations in our space are unaware that what they need is a leader and look to us to create a specific “thing”. “We just need a digital strategy,” or “We just need a training programme,” are things that often come up in projects that obviously need something more. Working openly and helping people to understand how technology and funding intermingle, how community drives participation, how recognition motivates or how a learning programme can scale all require leadership.

Often funding in the social impact space is to develop a specific thing, not the impact that thing should have. Complex realities also mean that someone who might be a leader in one context might not have what it takes to lead in your context. This is why an open leader is so important. Fractional leadership in the open is a rare thing indeed.

A fractional leader needs to be adaptable and find ways to stay within the bounds the organization has, while also setting a project or department up for future impact.

Preparing for a new colleague

Still, experienced fractional leaders are well versed in making do with what they’re given. They can lay out plans and programmes with the future in mind. The strategies and processes put in place during a time of transition reflect a moment in time. Setting them up as iterative and designing them to evolve empowers future leaders.

We’ve offered “critical friend” services to help onboard the people who will take over from what we were asked to start. We’ve advised on workload and priority based on community engagement in tandem with organizational goals. We like to do the work of documenting and establishing open, productive processes and policies to help future collaborators take over when the time comes.

Is Fractional Leadership for you?

Your fractional leader can start:

• Developing a strategy that focuses on long term social impact
• Creating processes or frameworks to measure impact or create processes for gathering data and insights
• Building assets to begin implementing the change needed to achieve the impact you’re looking for
• Supporting and working with others on your team to co-design principles and approaches that support your mission
• Determining the skills and competencies necessary to lead the project, programme or department they’re working within and helping your organization find someone to take over

The whole point is that you can bring in engaged experts to help you get something going while looking for your forever person. There are lots of people working in the social impact space who have deep expertise in everything from finance to HR to product development and design.

Fractional leadership is something you can simply try out. As you create briefs or write out job descriptions just ask yourself, “Would a designated fractional leader give me more time and space to ensure this is a long-term success?” If so, get in touch!

This article is adapted from Fractional Leadership in Social Impact Organisations by Laura Hilliger, and is republished with the author's permission.