Last week, LinkedIn shared this article with me: Sara Daw – Less than 1 in 3 Fractional Leaders Get This Right.
At first glance, I disagreed vehemently.
In the Fractional CTO Coffee group, we talk all the time about how dangerous it is to become the insider - how easy it is to lose focus, lose time, and get dragged into employee-mode.
Fractional means fractional.
It’s supposed to be scoped, sharp, intentional.
If you get too close - if you start trying to “join the team” too much - you lose what makes you valuable.
You lose the clarity, the scoped focus, the freedom that lets you actually be fractional.
You get pulled into the day-to-day gravity of the company - and lose the time, perspective, and space you need to really serve them (and your other clients) well.
But the more I sat with Sara’s article - and read a few more things she’s written - the more I started wondering if we’re not even talking about the same thing at all.
Maybe it’s the seat you hold that changes the whole game.
Sara appears to come from a CFO background.
And in finance? Being embedded might actually be the right answer.
Finance touches everything. You can’t really do fractional CFO work if you’re standing on the outside throwing advice over the wall.
You need to be trusted. You need to see the guts of the company.
You have to become part of the fabric.
Same for a fractional CEO, probably even more so.
You are the company’s heartbeat for a while. You can’t stay emotionally distant and expect to lead.
But for a fractional CTO?
Or a fractional product leader, a fractional head of engineering, even fractional architects or advisors?
It’s different.
You’re often hired because the company needs outside force.
Clear thinking. Hard choices.
The ability to push back against the way “we’ve always done it.”
If you get too close - if you start trying to “join the team” too much - you lose what makes you valuable.
You get pulled into the gravitational pull of the day-to-day - and lose the clarity you were brought in to bring.
There’s real risk in becoming the insider if you’re in the wrong role.
Just last week, I was talking with a fractional CTO dealing with exactly this:
Their CEO wanted them to “behave and be accountable like an employee.”
That’s the trap.
The CEO wasn’t wrong for wanting accountability.
But they were wrong about what they’d actually hired:
They’d hired a fractional leader - not an employee.
This is where it gets messy:
You can’t be both.
You’re either a trusted advisor with clear boundaries, or you’re a part-time employee with unclear expectations.
One of these works.
One of these burns everyone out.
When you’re inside too far, you’re not fractional anymore.
You’re just an overused external employee.
You give up the thing they actually needed: independent thought, sharper perspective, scoped action.
And that’s the real question:
Not every fractional is supposed to integrate.
Not every success story is supposed to last forever.
In Sara’s world - and maybe for a lot of CFOs - the right move is embedding and building a long-term home.
But for a lot of us in tech leadership?
Success might look like building the thing, strengthening the team, and leaving.
On purpose.
Cleanly.
Without getting absorbed into the daily churn.
That’s where my head landed after thinking it through.
Not all fractional roles are the same.
Not all seats need the same proximity.
Success looks different depending on which seat you’re sitting in - and what problem you were hired to solve.
Curious for thoughts:
If you’re sitting in a true C-Suite seat - fCFO, fCOO, fCEO - do you think you can stay “outside”?
Or is part of the job stepping fully inside the company?
And for the rest of us - the fCTOs, fHeads of Product, soloists, advisors, fractional engineering leaders trying to move up the ladder -
what’s the right balance?
I’m still thinking it through.
Would love to hear how you see it.
Want to discuss how to maintain the right balance in your fractional role? Let’s talk strategy.
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