The first 90 days of a fractional executive engagement

• Talk to the people who do the work. Not only the leadership team. The difference between what is described in the boardroom and what happens in the operation is the first useful finding.
• Read the numbers that exist. Pipeline, margin, delivery backlog, retention, and whatever the team already argues about. Note where definitions differ.
• Sit in the recurring meetings. Observe what gets decided and what re-appears on the next agenda.
• Write it down, plainly. A short document that names what is working, what is not, and what is unknown, circulated before conclusions are drawn.

The output of this month is a shared version of reality, not a recommendation. Where it is contested, that disagreement is the most important thing to surface early.

1. Choose two or three priorities with the owner, each with a named change and a date.
2. Write down which decisions belong to the role, which to the owner, and which need both.
3. Confirm how disagreements are resolved, and by whom, before the first disagreement arrives.
4. Set the reporting rhythm: what is reviewed, with whom, and how often, kept short.
5. State what is not in scope for this period, so the boundary is visible to everyone.

Most fractional engagements that drift do so here. The priorities are broad enough to accommodate any activity, and the decision rights are left to be worked out case by case. Both feel cooperative at the time and become a source of friction by month three.

By the third month there should be something to look at: a process that now has an owner, a report that two people finally agree on, a pipeline review that ends with decisions, a hiring decision taken with a defined brief. It needs to be specific enough that its absence would be noticed.

The same review should settle the next term's scope, rather than continuing with the original scope for comfort.

A fractional executive with a good diagnosis and no access to the people, data, or decisions that would change the outcome is an expensive commentator. The owner's job in the first weeks is to open the doors: introductions to the managers, read access to the systems that hold the numbers, and an explicit statement to the team about what the role is for.

The role's job is to use that access visibly and early, so the team learns what to expect. A second month of one-to-ones alone suggests the engagement has not yet landed.

The example below is hypothetical and describes a pattern rather than a client engagement.

• Limited hours create blind spots. Two days a week sees two days a week of the operation.
• Authority is borrowed. Whatever authority the role has is lent by the owner and can be withdrawn. Where the team senses ambiguity, decisions get referred upward.
• Ninety days is short for behaviour change. Process changes can land in that window; habits usually need longer. The first term should aim at structural changes with visible evidence rather than at culture.
• Dependency can form. A fractional role that becomes the decision-maker for everything has replaced one bottleneck with another. The exit condition belongs in the scope from the start.

Structuring an engagement sits inside the Strategy & Transformation capability, and the specific function determines the rest: the fractional COO guide covers the operating role in more detail. Where the work is choosing which initiatives to run, the notes on prioritizing initiatives cover the sequencing.