What we can learn from fractional positions
Though I’m sure fractional positions have been around a long time, it seems like they’ve really exploded onto the scene in the past few years. Businesses offer them for various reasons and employees fill them for their own reasons.
But what’s most interesting to me is the way fractional positions inadvertently cut through a lot of the usual corporate BS.
If done well, a fractional position does two crucial things:
Creates specific, agreed-upon boundaries to a role
Cuts out extraneous time-wasters
These are two things that plague most run-of-the-mill 40-hour-a-week (or more) roles because the sheer amount of time in those 40 hours and 5 days leaves all sorts of room for role creep and time-wasting to-do-list items.
Knowing a fractional role is inherently limited compels employers to think more conservatively about what and how much is asked of the person because of limited availability. It creates useful constraints that indicate where that person could make the most impact.
And this is exactly the kind of approach that could dramatically impact and accelerate results and success for “regular” employees at large. If there were an eye to thinking about eliciting the most impact in the least time for any individual contributor…what would you ask them to do? Probably not something found on the average job description; more likely, you would take the time to figure out their superpowers and have them work in those, while minimizing any time not spent in that wheelhouse.
