So You Want to Be a Fractional Ops Leader?

Why Fractional Work Matters Now

Every so often, a career model arrives that feels less like a trend and more like a correction. Fractional work is one of those models. It didn’t come out of nowhere—it’s been slowly building—but right now, it feels like the dam has broken.

Why? Because both companies and operators are rethinking what it means to work.

On the company side, the math is undeniable. Many small businesses, nonprofits, and founder-led organizations desperately need senior-level strategy and operational leadership—but they don’t need (or can’t afford) that leadership at forty-plus hours a week with all the bells and whistles of full-time employment. A full-time COO salary isn’t just a line item. It’s salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, overhead. A six-figure role can easily cost 1.3–1.5x that amount in actual outlay. Fractional leadership lets them access the horsepower they need without carrying that load full-time.

On the operator side, the shift feels even bigger. The old model—one company, one boss, one narrow job description—doesn’t work for everyone anymore. It certainly doesn’t work for people like me, people who’ve always been a little too wide-ranging, a little too curious, a little too restless to thrive in one silo.

You’ve heard the cliché: jack of all trades, master of none. But as I wrote in my very first newsletter, that phrase is almost always quoted wrong. The full line is: “Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than master of one.”

That’s what fractional work rewards. Breadth. Versatility. The ability to flex across industries, spot patterns quickly, and connect seemingly disparate dots into a whole picture. For a long time, those of us with broad skillsets were told to pick a lane, specialize, narrow down. But in fractional work, that range is the asset.

And then there are the broader tailwinds—forces shaping the whole landscape of work:

• Portfolio careers. More and more people are piecing together work they love instead of anchoring their identity to one job. Fractional fits beautifully into that.

• AI and automation. The tasks that once took hours are now handled in minutes. That means ops leaders can deliver strategy faster, but also that companies don’t need full-time humans for work that can be partially automated.

• Remote-first as default. Fractional thrives in remote culture. When a team is already distributed, bringing in a leader for 1–3 days a week doesn’t feel strange—it feels natural.

• Burnout backlash. The hustle-at-all-costs era is cracking. People are realizing they don’t just want more control of their time—they need it if they want to stay in this work for the long haul.

Taken together, these forces create a sweet spot. Fractional work isn’t just a clever workaround for companies that can’t afford execs. It’s a better alignment of how many of us actually want to work—with freedom, variety, and more control over our energy.

Which is why, right now, this model feels less like a side path and more like the main road. Fractional work isn’t a stopgap. It’s not a compromise. It’s a deliberate choice—and for many of us, it feels like the only one that makes sense.

What is Fractional Work? 

One of the biggest sources of confusion in this space is how “fractional” actually differs from all the other labels floating around: full-time employee, interim, consultant, advisor.

Here’s how I see it:

• A full-time employee is embedded—they belong to one company, one culture, one org chart.

• An interim leader is a temporary replacement—brought in to hold down the fort during a transition, usually full-time and with a clear end date.

• A consultant parachutes in to diagnose, recommend, and maybe deliver a project—but they’re not embedded in the day-to-day.

• An advisor is even further removed: directional guidance, but not in the weeds.

A fractional, though, is something else entirely. You’re part-time but embedded: leading strategy, managing teams, driving execution, often for multiple organizations at once. You’re not a stopgap or a sideline voice. You’re in the business, steering the ship—just not all day, every day, and not for one company alone.