We're going to have fun chatting about this topic in our Conversationality this week. I was thinking of a third type of model for fractionals that's equally confining than the other two you mentioned, but that is very typical at companies because they haven't broken free of the current model of work that is so tied to hours and pay: Level stacking. The thinking goes: If I'm going t pay you a big boy/girl rate as a fractional, I can only justify doing so by either firing or simply not hiring the execution layer to help you do your job well. In essence, you become the departnent, decently compensated, but at great emotional cost. The emotional cost: Doing work you can do feasibly but that isn't, or isn't any longer in your advanced skill set; or that requires too much strategy/management/executional/administrative context switches in the day. Even if you agree to this, it takes a toll.
“Level stacking” is a great term, and I think it’s an example of how employers are seeing hiring fractional resources as a cost-saving tactic, not a strategic enhancement to how they allocate resources. So not only do they save hiring a fractional exec, they then think they can save by asking the exec to be the hands on executor of everything.
To me hiring the fractional exec would provide the perfect opportunity to direct some of those saved resources *to* a team to better support execution.
We're going to have fun chatting about this topic in our Conversationality this week. I was thinking of a third type of model for fractionals that's equally confining than the other two you mentioned, but that is very typical at companies because they haven't broken free of the current model of work that is so tied to hours and pay: Level stacking. The thinking goes: If I'm going t pay you a big boy/girl rate as a fractional, I can only justify doing so by either firing or simply not hiring the execution layer to help you do your job well. In essence, you become the departnent, decently compensated, but at great emotional cost. The emotional cost: Doing work you can do feasibly but that isn't, or isn't any longer in your advanced skill set; or that requires too much strategy/management/executional/administrative context switches in the day. Even if you agree to this, it takes a toll.
“Level stacking” is a great term, and I think it’s an example of how employers are seeing hiring fractional resources as a cost-saving tactic, not a strategic enhancement to how they allocate resources. So not only do they save hiring a fractional exec, they then think they can save by asking the exec to be the hands on executor of everything.
To me hiring the fractional exec would provide the perfect opportunity to direct some of those saved resources *to* a team to better support execution.