If you’re considering hiring a fractional operations manager, it’s likely you already understand what the role covers, how much it costs and how to pick the right person. Flexibility is the main reason the fractional model works for small, founder-led businesses, because priorities are constantly changing and the scope of work can change with them. But it’s this same flexibility which can make it difficult to visualise what the support looks like in practice.
Speaking to a fractional operations manager certainly helps, though you’ll get more out of this conversation by arriving with a sense of what you’d be agreeing to. We’ll take you through what happens once you commit to an engagement, how your new operations leader gets to know the business, their approach to prioritising and delivering work, and the role you need to play in its success.
Once you’ve agreed to work with a fractional operations manager, there are a few steps you need to complete before they can officially start.
The first is to establish a services agreement, which sets the foundational rules followed by both parties throughout the duration of the engagement, including obligations, fees, payment terms and termination notices. It’s also good practice to establish a mutual confidentiality agreement, which prevents both sides from disclosing sensitive company information to third parties. You don’t have to worry about creating this documentation yourself as most fractional operations managers will bring their own, but it is important that you review the documentation carefully.
With the legal basis established, the next steps are to provide your new operations partner with company IT so that they can integrate themselves with your team. This includes setting up a new email account on your domain and providing access to the systems and communication channels that you use. Unless you have strict IT requirements, you usually won’t need to provide a company laptop or phone.
During this process, you’ll also agree on a start date. On this day, expect to hold an onboarding meeting where you bring them up to speed on everything across your business. It can be helpful to provide additional business context in advance of this meeting, in the form of reading on key projects, clients, team members, systems or strategies.
Upon entering the business, your new fractional operations manager will explore the challenges you discussed together in your earlier conversations. This starts with an initial session to cover everything happening across the business in more detail.
Once the scene is set, they’ll then reach out to your team members, usually one-on-one, to introduce themselves and learn more about their experiences. The goal is to get their take on what they perceive to be working well and what they would like to see improved. These are the same people who will later be asked to change how they work, so the relationship is stronger if it opens with someone listening to them rather than instructing them.
For arrangements which include the management of your operations, these introductions extend to clients and third party vendors. They’ll read through your project documentation and task lists to gain the context they need to be able to manage everything, whilst also embedding themselves in project and team meetings.
Armed with this information, your fractional operations manager can pull together a shortlist of problem statements and improvements that need to be made across your business. You’ll then review them together, prioritising the list based on the impact they deliver and sequencing them in a logical order.
This is called the operations roadmap, which outlines all of the internal work that needs to happen to make your business more efficient, structured and controlled. It sits separately from client-facing delivery plans because the tasks run parallel to delivery and have their own scope and owners.
But improvement work doesn’t have to wait until this roadmap has been created. Instead, your fractional operations manager will have started work on any quick wins so they can demonstrate an immediate impact. This means that towards the end of your first month together, you’ll have an agreed roadmap in place and work will have already begun on optimising your operations.
Each item on the roadmap is tackled in a similar way. With a problem statement in hand, the work is scoped in more detail so that the definition of success is known before anything is built. This provides a clear goal to aim for during solution design and implementation.
An important point here is that the solutions are continuously tested and refined. Doing so has the added benefit of ensuring your team have their say in what the final solution looks like, which makes them easier to train and more likely that the change becomes embedded in their daily work.
Each completed item is then documented, covering how the change works, why it was designed that way and what to do if something goes wrong.
The delivery of each item also offers a new opportunity to collect data about the business, which supports regular monitoring of business performance through key performance indicators (KPIs) and reports. This information is then reviewed with you on a regular rhythm, alongside the roadmap, which is re-prioritised according to any new developments or data insights.
For retainers that cover operations management, all of this is done in parallel to running the business. That means taking ownership of clients and projects, running weekly meetings, making resourcing decisions, proposing new work, managing suppliers and leading your team.
Whilst your fractional operations manager will do the heavy lifting, you as the founder have your part to play as the expert in all things your business. It can be tempting to immediately delegate your work and then move on, but you do need to set them up correctly to ensure they’re successful. As a minimum, you’ll need to:
If you find you have no time to give to your fractional operations manager, it’s important to temporarily give them some of your daily work. Passing over tasks in this way ensures you can invest yourself in the improvements they’re working on, in turn earning you back more time over the long run.
As the engagement progresses, you’ll both learn more about each other’s strengths and working styles. The relationship will then reach a point where you’re comfortable trusting them with more consequential decisions. Be sure to review the authority you delegate regularly, so you can gradually hand over more responsibility and remove yourself from day-to-day operations.
By the 90 day mark, the earliest improvements will have demonstrated their impact and you’ll have a good feel for whether the working arrangement is one you’d like to continue.
Operations management and roadmap work can carry on as usual under the same retainer, so nothing needs to reset at this point. But should you decide to scale back or move on, rest assured that your processes, systems, documentation and training belong to your business.
Now you know what to expect, it's time to talk about your own challenges and where fractional operations support can make the biggest difference.