Growth has outrun the organisation
Revenue is rising, headcount follows, and the methods that worked at eight people break at twenty. Delays pile up, quality becomes uneven, the margin slips without anyone knowing exactly where.
Home / Fractional COO
Operations leadership
An operations director, a few days a month.
The fractional COO is the answer for companies that have outgrown the size where the founder handles everything alone, but not yet the size that justifies a full time operations director.
A fractional COO is a part time operations director. They take operational responsibility for a company a few days a month: team organisation, processes, dashboards, margin control and hiring of the key roles.
The difference with a consultant fits in one sentence: the consultant recommends and leaves, the fractional COO executes and stays until the organisation runs without them.
01 / Definition
The role, in plain terms.
Three ways to bring operations leadership skills into a company. They do not serve the same situation and they are not bought in the same way.
| Criterion | Fractional COO | Consultant | Salaried operations director |
|---|---|---|---|
| What they do | Runs the operations and takes in hand what has been decided. | Analyses a situation, delivers a diagnosis and recommendations. | Runs the operations day to day and holds the function over time. |
| What they commit to | An operational result on a scope defined at the outset. | The quality of the analysis and of the recommendations delivered. | Holding the role, written into an employment contract. |
| The rhythm | Two to four days a month, over six to twelve months in general. | A bounded engagement, from a few days to a few weeks. | Full time, continuous presence. |
| What is left when they go | Written processes, dashboards and someone trained to keep them. | A report, a method, and decisions the company still has to implement. | It all depends on what was documented; their departure reopens a hiring process. |
| The relative cost | Proportional to the number of days, with no fixed annual charge. | Concentrated over a short period. | A fully loaded annual salary, plus the cost of hiring. |
The term comes from the United States, where part time executives have existed since the 2000s: fractional CFO for finance, fractional CMO for marketing, fractional COO for operations. The idea is simple: a company can need an executive skill without having the volume of work, or the means, for a full time role.
It is arriving in France for two reasons. Small and mid sized companies structure themselves earlier than they used to, with tools, distributed teams and tighter margins, which makes operational control indispensable even before the first salaried director. And experienced executives are more numerous working independently, across several companies at once, which makes the format available. The French equivalents are directeur des opérations externalisé and direction des opérations à temps partagé.
02 / Fit
When it makes sense, and when it does not.
Four situations where a fractional COO changes something, three where the role costs money without fixing anything. Better said before the conversation than after the first invoice.
You are fewer than five
Below five people there is no organisation to install: there is work to do. A fractional COO would add a layer of oversight to a team that mainly needs to sell and to produce. An occasional operational hand will be more useful.
The founder spends the day on operations
Schedules, supplier disputes, last minute replacements. The founder keeps the shop running and no longer has time for sales, for product or for strategy. It is not a question of willingness, it is a question of a missing role.
You need an expert on a single subject
Rebuilding payroll, choosing an ERP, auditing a supply chain, settling an employment dispute. These are expert subjects, handled faster and more cheaply by a specialist in that field. A fractional COO steers a whole, they do not replace deep expertise.
A transformation phase
A change of model, an acquisition, a merger of two teams, a shift from one channel to another. During those periods someone has to hold the day to day while the decisions are taken, and make sure that the decisions turn into action.
You are trying to delegate a decision that is yours
Parting with a partner, closing a site, dropping an activity, choosing between two visions. An outsider can inform these decisions and take on their implementation, but cannot take them in your place. Hiring someone for that only delays the moment and costs months.
Opening a site or an activity
A new location, a new country, a new product line. An organisation has to be built from nothing, people hired, procedures written and deadlines met, without pulling away the team that runs the existing business.
03 / Engagement
What I install.
Four steps, in order. Each one produces something that stays in the company after I leave.
The first thirty days
Immersion in the business, reading the real figures and not the figures presented, one to one interviews with the teams. I propose nothing before I have seen how the work actually gets done. That month ends with a written assessment and three priorities.
The organisation
Mapping of the processes that matter, from the quote to the payment and from the order to the delivery. Who decides what, who approves what, who gets told. The grey areas are almost always where the company loses time and margin.
The steering
Six dashboards, no more: activity, margin, cash, quality, team, and the indicator specific to the trade. Each one with an owner, a data source and a review rhythm. One short meeting a week, one deep review a month.
The handover
Training someone to hold the role, internally or through a hire that I run. The procedures are written, the dashboards are kept by their owners, and the routine decisions are taken without me. My presence shrinks as that person takes over.
The goal of a successful engagement is that the fractional COO becomes unnecessary. If after a year the company still cannot work without my days on site, the engagement has failed, whatever the intermediate results.
04 / Practical
Format and terms.
The usual frame of a fractional operations leadership engagement. It adjusts to the situation, but it always starts there.
Rhythm
Two to four days a month
Enough to hold an executive role, not enough to do the work of the teams in their place.
- Days spread out or grouped as needed
- At least one visit on site each month
- A short weekly call between two visits
- Rhythm reviewed every quarter
Detail
The first month is denser, often double, because immersion cannot be split into fractions.
Duration
Six months minimum
Below six months, an organisation does not have the time to take hold.
- Month 1: immersion and assessment
- Months 2 and 3: processes and organisation
- Months 4 to 6: steering and first measured results
- Beyond that: handover
Detail
A checkpoint at three months makes it possible to stop the engagement if the effects are not visible.
Commitment
Short engagement possible
During a transformation phase, a shorter and more intense engagement makes sense.
- Opening, acquisition, merger of two teams
- Covering for an executive during an absence
- Preparing a full time hire
- Scope and end date written at the outset
Detail
No automatic renewal clause: every extension is decided on the strength of what has been done.
Budget
It is calculated on the number of days and the scope. The figure is given at the end of the thirty minute conversation, once the situation is known.
05 / Credentials
Who I am to say this.
The roles I describe on this page, I held them for myself before holding them for others.
- 15 yearsbuilding, launching and running companies in France and Portugal
- 6companies founded or co-founded
- 1,500 m²venue run in Lisbon: bar, 100 seat restaurant, 40 desk coworking space
- 2markets: France and Portugal
I held these roles for myself before holding them for others. I have written schedules, hired and replaced, negotiated purchases, read profit and loss accounts that were not going the right way and taken the decisions that go with them. Four restaurants opened, three in Paris and one in Canada under a knowhow licence, and a 1,500 m² venue run in Lisbon. That experience guarantees nothing, but it avoids learning the trade at your expense.
06 / Questions
Questions.
The six questions asked on the first call, in the order in which they come.
What is the difference between a fractional COO and a consultant?
The consultant recommends and leaves, the fractional COO executes and stays.
The consultant commits to the quality of the analysis. The fractional COO commits to an operational result: the processes are written and applied, the dashboards kept, the key roles filled. They take decisions within the scope entrusted to them and they answer for them. Both trades are useful, but they are not paid for the same thing.
What is the difference with interim management?
Interim management replaces a full time executive for a set period, the fractional COO holds a role that does not yet exist full time.
An interim manager arrives after a departure, a crisis or a sale, full time, to hold a seat for a few months. A fractional COO comes in a few days a month, over time, because the company needs the function but not yet the role. The two formats meet when a short engagement precedes a hire.
How many days a month?
Two to four days a month in most cases, with a denser start in the first month.
The right volume depends on the size of the team and on the number of projects open at the same time. Two days are enough to keep an established steering routine running. Four are needed when there is hiring to do, processes to rewrite and an opening to follow in parallel. The rhythm is reviewed every quarter, up or down.
What is the minimum length of an engagement?
Six months, because below that an organisation does not have the time to take hold.
A process written in two months is not a process applied. It takes time to install it, to see where it meets resistance, to correct it and to turn it into a habit. A shorter engagement remains possible during a precise transformation phase, with a scope and an end date decided at the outset.
What happens if it does not work?
We call it quickly and we stop, rather than letting an engagement settle in without effect.
A checkpoint is set at three months, on indicators decided in the first month. If the effects are not visible, we look at why: a wrong initial diagnosis, a badly cut scope, decisions that are not being taken, or simply a company that did not need this role. In the last three cases the right decision is to stop, and I say so.
How does an engagement start?
With a thirty minute conversation, then thirty days of immersion before any structural decision.
The conversation is there to find out whether your situation calls for this format or for something else. If it does, I send you a proposal with a scope, a number of days and a checkpoint date. The engagement starts with the immersion: real figures, interviews, a day spent inside the business. Nothing important is decided before the end of that first month.
07 / Recommendation
What the people who worked with me say.
His entrepreneurial path is remarkable for its diversity, and even more for the quality of the perspective he brought to it. He does not settle for analysing situations, he understands the people, the dynamics and the balances that move a project forward. That mix of strategic distance and human intelligence makes him a partner of choice for any founder or team in a launch, transformation or acceleration phase.
Get in touch
Let us talk about your project.
Thirty minutes, no commitment. You set out the situation, I tell you frankly whether I am the right person and what I would do in your place.
- Format
- Engagement or fractional time
- Experience
- 15 years
- Markets
- France, Portugal
- armel@aj-conseil.com
- Phone
- +33 6 10 64 02 88
Availability
Paris / Lisbon