When a mid-market company brings in outside help, the choice usually gets framed as who is smartest or who costs less. The better question comes first: do you need a team to deliver a project, or one person to own a result inside your leadership team? Those are two different purchases, and buying the wrong one is how a good engagement ends with a strong report and nobody to run it.
Here in Columbus, that choice is getting more crowded. In August, the private equity firm Trinity Hunt Partners invested in Fisher Management Partners, a Columbus consultancy founded in 2015 that works with middle-market companies, and made it the foundation of a new "value creation services platform," according to the deal announcement. I read that as investors betting that operating help for mid-market companies is a business worth building out. Owners here should expect more firms at the door, each with a bench of partners behind it.
A consulting firm and a fractional executive solve different problems
A firm with partners across several practices brings that breadth to you at once: strategy, operations, finance, technology and more, each practice led by its own partner. The breadth is worth paying for when your problem crosses several of those lines at the same time and has a finish line: a supply chain redesign, a pricing study, a system that has to go live by spring.
A fractional executive works differently. One person takes a seat on your leadership team for part of the week and owns a result over months. The plan gets built with you, the owner keeps running the day to day, and the fractional leader turns the plan into steps with dates and owners and keeps them moving. The job is the result. A report is something they might write along the way.
Ask who owns the result after the kickoff
Whichever kind of help you call, get answers to three questions before the work starts.
Who from their side will sit in your leadership meeting every week, by name? If the answer changes depending on the phase of the work, you are buying a project.
Whose name goes on the number? Outside help works best on an agreed path, with someone on your side who holds them to it and someone on their side who has put their name on the forecast. If nobody will commit to a number, you are buying advice.
Who on your team runs it when they leave? Any good engagement ends with your own people able to carry the work. Ask to see that plan in the first month, while there is still time to build it.
Hire the firm when the work has a finish line
If you need five specialists for six months, a fractional executive is the wrong hire. One person cannot staff a project that size, and pretending otherwise wastes your money and their time. A defined project with several workstreams, a deadline and a clear deliverable is what a firm with a bench is built for.
The reverse holds too. If the plan already exists and the problem is that it is not moving, more analysis rarely helps. You need someone to own it.
Write one sentence before you call anyone
Finish this sentence before the first meeting: "In twelve months, this will be true, and this person on my team will own it." If the first blank is a deliverable, call a firm. If it is a number that has to keep moving after the work is done, you need someone in the seat.
I have written more on what you are buying when you hire a fractional executive, and here is how an engagement works. If you are weighing the two right now, I will read your sentence and tell you which way I would lean.
John Wyatt · John Wyatt's page · All posts · RSS