Fractional Was the On-Ramp. Full-Time Is the Destination.
Why the operator role keeps getting rented — and why the smartest founders eventually buy.
The fractional operations wave was one of the healthiest things to happen to growing companies in years. It let founders who couldn't yet justify a full executive hire get real operational leadership on a schedule they could afford. It worked. I've done it, and I've watched it change how companies run.
But I want to say something that cuts against my own business model: for a lot of companies, fractional was never the destination. It was the on-ramp — the thing that finally showed them the role was load-bearing.
What I Actually Do in My First 90 Days
Most executives spend their first 90 days listening. I spend mine fixing.
That’s not a brag. It’s a structural reality. When a founder brings in a fractional COO or Chief of Staff, they’re not hiring someone to observe. They’re hiring someone because something — often several things — has quietly broken, and the company is scaling faster than its operating system can handle.
The “listen first” advice exists for a reason: premature action based on incomplete information is a real failure mode. But there’s another failure mode nobody talks about. It’s the executive who spends 90 days in discovery while the team keeps bleeding, the process debt keeps compounding, and the founder keeps wondering when they’re going to see a return on the hire.
Here’s what I actually do.
Where AI Actually Helps in Your Role: A Field Guide for Operations, HR, EAs, and Chiefs of Staff
The most common mistake I see people make with AI is starting with the tool.
They sign up for ChatGPT or Claude or Copilot, stare at the blinking cursor, and try to think of something to do. A few half-useful prompts later, they decide AI is overhyped and go back to their day.
That's a tooling mindset. And it's the wrong way in.
If you actually want AI to make a dent in your work, you have to start with your role, not with the model. Here's the framework I use, and how it plays out for some of the most common operational roles I work with.