Fractional Executive Services: The CEO Bench of CFO, COO, CTO, CMO and CRO Partners, How Engagements Run and What They Cost

By Andreas Pettersson, Founder, Leaders ADAPT

You grew the company by grind. Somewhere around $5M you tried to hire an operations person or a general manager, and it did not work. You still feel it. Now you type fractional executive services into a search bar because you want the capability without repeating the hire.

I understand the search. I ran a company from zero to 150 people, sold it to Canon, and ran it inside Canon as their youngest standalone CEO. For long stretches I was CEO, CFO and CTO at once. Not because I was good at all three. Because the company could not yet pay for three people who were.

Here's the definition this page uses. Fractional executive services put an experienced C-level leader inside your company for a fraction of a full time schedule, on a monthly retainer, with ownership of a function and its results. Not a project. Not advice from the sidelines. A seat on your leadership team, filled by someone who has held it before, for one to three days a week.

Harvard Business Review describes these leaders as typically carrying 20 to 30 years of experience and serving several organizations at a time, mostly small to mid size companies that could not otherwise access or afford that level of talent (July 2024). The word fractional describes the schedule, not the seniority.

Three things separate fractional from the other ways of buying outside help. Ownership: the fractional executive owns a function, where a consultant owns a deliverable and an advisor owns an opinion. Presence: they are in the leadership meeting, on the scorecard, on the org chart. Duration: six to eighteen months, long enough to build something and short enough to force the question of what happens after. If any of the three is missing you are buying something else, and the fractional vs interim vs advisory page lays the alternatives out side by side.

Which roles sit on the fractional bench?

Seven, in the companies I work with. Each one has its own page on this site, and each page carries the same structure: what the role does for a company your size, what it costs on the open market, and the point at which fractional stops being enough.

Some owners need less than a seat. They have a sitting executive who is good and green, and what they want is an hour or two a week with someone who has done the job at scale. That is advisory, and it has its own three pages: CFO advisory, CTO advisor and COO advisor. Same bench, smaller slice.

The eighth seat is the one I built the practice on. A fractional AI executive sits across the other seven, because every one of them now has an AI question inside it. More on that below.

Advisory, fractional or exit readiness: which shape do you need?

Every engagement through Leaders ADAPT takes one of three shapes. Here is how they compare.

The honest test between the first two: do you have someone in the seat? If yes, and they are capable, buy advisory. Replacing a good but inexperienced executive with a fractional one teaches your team that growth gets you replaced. If no, or the person in the seat is the problem, buy fractional.

The third shape is different in kind. Exit readiness is not a seat, it is a read. An owner who has decided to sell in the next two years gets a fixed fee look at the three things a buyer will test: the leadership team without you in it, the operating system without you running it, and the technology without the one person who understands it. What comes back is a list of what to fix and in what order, and often the fix is one of the seats above for a year. I keep that page separate on purpose, because selling readiness and selling the exit are different jobs, and I only do the first.

How does an engagement run through Leaders ADAPT?

The same way every time, because the way it runs is most of what you are paying for.

The first call is with me. Thirty minutes. You tell me the business problem in the first five, and I tell you which shape I think you need and whether the bench has the right person. Sometimes the answer is that you need a full time hire and a recruiter, and I say so. Sometimes the answer is that the problem you named is not the problem. The two reasons most CEOs book that call are that they hate one on ones and that everything they delegate comes back to them. Neither of those is a CFO problem, and I will tell you that too.

Then the match. I pick the partner, not a platform. I have worked with each person on the bench, I know what they are good at and what they are not, and I will not put a fractional CFO who loves fundraising into a company that needs cash discipline. You meet the partner before anything is signed.

Then the 90 day plan. The partner and I write it with you in the first two weeks: three outcomes, one number each, and the names of the people inside your company who will carry it when the partner is not there. Without the names it is a consulting plan. With them it is a leadership plan, and that is the difference that outlasts the engagement.

Then the monthly review. You, the partner and me, once a month, against the three outcomes. I stay in the room for the life of the engagement. If the partner is not working, I fix it. If the scope has to change, I change it. You are never left managing a stranger alone, which is what went wrong the last time you hired someone for this seat.

This is the shape I wished I had at Arcules. I had excellent people around me and nobody above me who would say "you are carrying three jobs, hand one over, here is who to." I built the bench so the CEOs I work with get that sentence early.

Who is on the bench for this?

A bench is only as good as the names on it, so here are mine. I describe each person with the credentials that matter for the seat and nothing else.

Steve Shaw is the fractional CFO on the bench. Steve has twenty years in finance leadership. He works with owners on clean books, cash discipline, financial positioning before a sale, and the numbers conversation with buyers and lenders. He also takes COO seats where the operating problem is finance led: cash, margin, pricing and the operating cadence around them.

Chris Geddes is a fractional COO on the bench. Chris is an operator who pairs operations leadership with AI transformation work in owner led companies, which is the combination the COO seat now needs. The operating system has to work, and it has to be built so AI can run inside it.

Marina is a fractional COO on the bench. Operations leadership for owner led companies, detail strong, she runs the cadence and the follow through. When the job is a weekly rhythm that holds without the owner in the room, Marina is the operator across the table.

Sergey Dmitriev is the fractional CTO and AI systems partner. Sergey builds and runs the AI and data work Leaders ADAPT delivers, including digital twin and company knowledge systems, and trains leadership teams on AI tools with me. When an owner needs technology due diligence before a sale, Sergey writes it.

Steve Proger is the fractional Chief Revenue Officer. Steve builds revenue engines, pipeline discipline and sales leadership for owner led companies. He is the person for the founder who is still the best salesperson in the building and knows that cannot last. Stacey is the sales advisor on the bench, and works with owners and sales leads on pipeline, process and the deals in flight, which is the advisory slice of the same seat.

Thor Legvold is the leadership psychologist on the bench. Thor runs assessments, executive fit, team dynamics and the people decisions behind a scale up or a sale. When the question is whether the leadership team can run the company without you, Thor answers it with data rather than impressions.

The CMO seat is held by marketing operators who have run a function at $20M to $100M and can build positioning, a measured pipeline and a small team in a company that has never had real marketing. I match the person to the market you sell into.

If your problem is leadership before it is any one function, that is still me: 1:1 CEO advisory, the CEO masterminds and the leadership team development work that gets a team to the point where it can absorb a fractional executive at all.

What do fractional executive services cost?

Two kinds of numbers here. Market ranges from published third party sources, which I give you with dates. And Leaders ADAPT pricing, which I do not publish, because every engagement is quoted as a fixed fee after the first call once I know the shape, the days and the partner.

The market first. One fractional talent marketplace, GoFractional, publishes rate guides by role. They are a reasonable est. for the US market as a whole.

For scale, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for chief executives at $213,990 (May 2025), before bonus, benefits and equity, and the full time salary for a seasoned CFO, COO or CTO in a mid size company sits well above the median. A fractional executive at two days a week costs a fraction of that and gives you someone who has done the job at a scale you have not reached yet.

The fractional executive cost page carries the full table, day rates, and what moves a quote up or down. The short version: days per week, the seniority of the partner, and whether the engagement includes building a team or only running one.

What I will say about Leaders ADAPT pricing is the shape. Advisory is a fixed monthly fee or a fixed price per working session. Fractional is a fixed monthly retainer for a stated number of days. Exit readiness is a fixed fee for the read. You will know the number before you commit, and it will not change because the work got interesting.

Where AI fits in a fractional executive engagement

Every seat on the bench now has an AI question inside it, and most owners meet that question as a sales pitch rather than an operating decision.

Here is how I see it from the CEO's chair. AI changes what a fractional executive can get done in two days a week. A fractional CFO with a clean data layer can produce a weekly cash view that used to take a controller a week. A fractional CMO can test ten positioning angles in the time it used to take to write one. A fractional COO can document the operating system as a living knowledge base instead of a binder nobody opens.

That is the upside. The downside is that AI also tempts owners to delegate judgment they should keep. The what not to delegate to AI page is the list I use: the decisions about people, the decisions that set direction, and the decisions where the CEO's name is on the outcome. A fractional executive who hands those to a tool is not saving you money. They are removing you from your own company.

So the bench runs AI in two ways. Sergey and Chris build the systems, the knowledge base, the data layer, the automations around the operating cadence. And every partner on the bench, whatever the seat, works to the same rule on what stays human. For companies running EOS, the AI for EOS companies page shows where the tools sit inside the Level 10 meeting, the scorecard and the rocks, which is exactly where a fractional integrator or COO will put them.

The free AI readiness assessment on this site is the first step. It tells you whether your company can absorb the AI work before you pay anyone to do it.

Fractional vs interim vs advisory: how to choose

Three questions settle it in most first calls.

Is the seat empty, and does it need to be filled this month? If someone just left and the function cannot pause, you want an interim executive. Full time, three to nine months, covering the gap while you recruit. Interim buys continuity. It does not usually build anything new, because the interim leader knows they are leaving.

Is the seat empty, or badly filled, and the work fills two days a week rather than five? That is fractional. You get a senior leader who builds the function to the point where a full time hire can run it, or who runs it indefinitely at the fraction you need.

Is the seat filled by someone good who has not done this at scale? That is advisory. One to two hours a week with your executive, or a fixed price working session when a specific decision is in front of them. The executive stays in charge. The partner adds the judgment they have not had time to earn.

The fractional vs interim vs advisory page carries the full comparison table, including the failure mode of each. The one I see most: an owner buys fractional when they should have bought advisory, and a capable executive quietly starts looking for a company that believes in them.

What a fractional executive does not fix

I would rather lose the engagement than sell you the wrong one, so here is the list.

A CEO who will not delegate. If everything you hand over comes back to you, a fractional COO will experience exactly what your last ops hire experienced, and leave for the same reason. In a 2018 McKinsey global survey of 1,259 participants, just over a quarter said their organizations make good delegated decisions, both fast and high quality. The constraint is almost never the executive. Fix the delegation habit first. The founder to CEO delegation systems page is where I start.

A leadership team that cannot hold a decision. A fractional executive joins a team. If the team meets without agenda, decides without owners and revisits every decision the following week, the new seat gets the same treatment. The leadership team development hub is the fix, and sometimes it has to come first.

A full time job. If the function is your core engine and the work fills a week, hire full time. Fractional at five days is just an expensive employee without the loyalty.

An exit you have already announced. Once the buyer is in the data room, there is no time to fix what a fractional CFO or COO would fix. Readiness has to start 12 to 24 months out, which is why exit readiness is its own page and its own engagement.

If you recognized yourself in the first two, the first step is not a fractional executive. It is the free assessments, which take fifteen minutes and tell you whether the gap is in a seat or in the chair at the head of the table.

Fractional executive services FAQ

What are fractional executive services?

Fractional executive services place an experienced C-level leader inside a company for a fraction of a full time schedule, typically one to three days a week on a monthly retainer. The executive owns a function, a team and a set of outcomes, not a project. The roles most often filled this way are CFO, COO, CTO, CMO, CRO and chief people officer, usually in companies too small to carry the full time salary.

How is a fractional executive different from a consultant?

A consultant delivers a defined project and leaves. A fractional executive takes the seat, runs the function, manages the people in it and is accountable for results over months. The consultant is paid for a deliverable, the fractional executive for the function working. If the person will not sit in your leadership team meeting and own a number, you are buying consulting, whatever the invoice says.

How much do fractional executives cost?

Published 2026 benchmarks from the fractional marketplace GoFractional put monthly retainers at roughly $10,000 to $20,000 for a COO or CRO, $10,000 to $25,000 for a CTO, $4,000 to $20,000 for a CMO, and about $11,500 to $16,200 for a CFO at 10 to 25 hours a week. Leaders ADAPT quotes every engagement after the first call, as a fixed monthly fee.

When should a company hire a fractional executive instead of a full time one?

Hire fractional when the function needs senior judgment but not forty hours of it, when the company cannot yet afford or attract the full time leader, or when a specific stretch such as a sale, a system rebuild or a revenue plateau needs a leader who has done it before. Hire full time when the function is the company's core engine and the work fills a week.

How long does a fractional executive engagement last?

Most run six to eighteen months. Shorter than six months rarely leaves anything behind, because the first ninety days go to diagnosis and the first plan. Longer than eighteen months usually means the role should have become a full time hire, or the fractional leader has become a permanent crutch. A good engagement plans its own end, including who takes the seat next.

Who manages the fractional executive?

The CEO does, like any other member of the leadership team. The fractional executive attends the leadership meeting, carries a scorecard number and reports to the CEO. At Leaders ADAPT, Andreas Pettersson takes the first call, matches the partner from the bench and stays in a monthly review for the life of the engagement, so the CEO is not managing a stranger alone.

Can a fractional executive help a business owner prepare to sell?

Yes, and that is one of the most common reasons owners hire one. A fractional CFO cleans the books and builds the numbers story, a fractional COO documents the operating system, a fractional CTO closes technology risk. Leaders ADAPT offers an exit readiness read first, a fixed fee look at leadership, operations and technology, so the owner knows what to fix before the sale is announced.

Is a fractional executive the same as an interim executive?

No. An interim executive works full time to cover a vacancy, usually for three to nine months while a permanent hire is found. A fractional executive works part time, for longer, in a seat the company does not intend to fill full time yet. Interim buys continuity, fractional buys senior capability at a fraction of the cost. The comparison page on this site sets them side by side.

The bench, not the brochure

Here is what I want you to take from this page. The company you built by grind has outgrown what one person can hold, and the last time you tried to hand part of it to someone, it hurt. Fractional executive services, done the way I run them, are how you try again with the odds changed: a leader who has done it before, for the days you can afford, with me in the room so the match holds.

Picture the quarter after. The numbers arrive before you ask. The operating meeting runs without you narrating it. Marketing feeds a pipeline you can read. And when something needs deciding, it goes to the person in the seat, not back to you.