The honest version
When not to hire fractionally.
Every firm selling fractional executives will tell you when to buy one. Almost none will tell you when not to, because it costs them a sale. We are paid on introductions that work, so a bad match is worth less to us than no match. Here is where the model genuinely fails.
The role needs daily presence
Some jobs are constituted by being there. A plant manager during a ramp, a head of customer operations in a live incident, a sales leader who must be in the room with the team every morning. Two days a week of excellent is worse than five days of adequate here.
You are below the threshold
Under roughly USD 1–2m of revenue, most companies do not have a CFO problem. They have a bookkeeping problem, a pricing problem, or a founder-time problem. A fractional CFO at USD 4,000 a month will produce excellent analysis of a business too small to need it.
The real problem is the founder
If decisions are reversed after they are made, if the last three senior hires left within a year, or if the org chart has one node — a fractional executive will not fix that and will not last. This is the single most common reason these engagements fail.
You need a signatory, not an adviser
In Thailand a non-director cannot sign bank mandates or tax filings. In Japan authority sits with the seal and the registered representative director. In China it is the chop. If what you actually need is someone who can bind the company, check that the engagement structure gives them that before you sign it.
The work is a project, not a function
A systems implementation, a one-off transaction, a data migration — those are consulting engagements with a deliverable and an end date. Buying them as a fractional C-suite role costs more and gives you less accountability for the outcome.
You cannot give them authority
A fractional executive with responsibility and no decision rights is an expensive observer. If the board or the family will not delegate, the engagement will produce good advice that nobody acts on, and you will conclude — wrongly — that the model does not work.
What to do instead
- Below the revenue threshold: a good outsourced accountant and a monthly review with someone senior, at a fifth of the cost.
- Project-shaped work: a fixed-scope consulting engagement with a deliverable, priced on the outcome.
- Daily presence needed: an interim full-time hire on a fixed term, which is a different instrument from fractional and often the right one.
- Founder-shaped problems: an executive coach or a genuinely independent non-executive director, before any operating hire.
Write to us anyway and say so. We would rather spend twenty minutes telling you this is not the right moment than make an introduction that wastes your time and a partner firm's.