What is a fractional chief of staff?

A fractional chief of staff is a senior generalist operator who works part-time alongside a CEO to make the leadership system function: the planning cycle, the meeting cadence, the decision log, board preparation, and the two or three cross-functional projects nobody else owns.

They are not an executive assistant, who owns the calendar and inbox. They are not a COO, who owns functional execution and usually carries a P&L. The chief of staff owns coordination, follow-through, and the CEO's leverage.

Typical scope in a 20 to 30 hour month:

• Run the quarterly planning process and maintain the company goal system
• Own the leadership meeting agenda, notes, and decision log
• Prepare the board pack and manage the board calendar
• Drive two or three cross-functional projects to completion
• Prepare the CEO for high-stakes conversations with investors, customers, and candidates
• Track commitments across the leadership team and surface slippage early

The measurable output is decision velocity and follow-through, not documents produced.

Four signals. The leadership team makes decisions that nobody executes, because no mechanism tracks them. The CEO spends more than a third of the week on internal coordination. Board preparation consumes a full week each quarter. Or the company just crossed roughly 40 people and the informal coordination that worked at 20 has quietly stopped working.

A fractional chief of staff is often the highest-leverage part-time hire at 40 to 120 people, because the constraint at that size is usually coordination rather than functional talent.

• Light engagement, 10 to 15 hours per month: $3,500 to $6,000
• Standard, 20 to 30 hours: $6,000 to $11,000
• Heavy, 30 to 40 hours: $10,000 to $14,000

Full-time chiefs of staff earn $150,000 to $260,000 base plus equity, or roughly $190,000 to $340,000 loaded. The fractional version at 25 hours per month costs about $100,000 per year and suits companies where the coordination load is real but not yet full-time.

The executive assistant owns the CEO's time: calendar, travel, inbox, logistics. Cost $60,000 to $110,000 full-time.

The chief of staff owns the CEO's leverage: planning, cadence, follow-through, board, and special projects. No functional P&L, no large team.

The COO owns execution across functions: delivery, operations, often finance and people, with direct reports and accountability for operating metrics.

Many companies hire a COO when the actual need is a chief of staff, then discover the COO has no function to run. Ask whether the problem is coordination or execution before choosing.

By day 30 the leadership meeting has a standing agenda, a written decision log, and named owners with dates for every open item.

By day 60 the quarterly planning cycle is documented, goals are set at company and team level, and the board pack has a repeatable template that takes two days rather than a week.

By day 90 the CEO has recovered a measurable block of time, cross-functional slippage is visible before it becomes a miss, and at least two stalled projects have shipped.

If none of that has happened by day 90, the engagement was scoped as support rather than ownership.

Four to avoid:

• Hiring a junior chief of staff, which produces note-taking rather than leverage. The role only works with operating seniority.
• Failing to give the role authority to hold executives to commitments, which turns it into administration.
• Overlapping the role with an existing COO without dividing scope explicitly.
• Under-hours it. Ten hours a month cannot run a planning cycle and a board process.

Post a private mandate on RecruitFractional describing headcount, the coordination problem, and the outcome you want in 90 days. Reference-verified operators respond within 72 hours, and you can start with a paid 30-day trial focused on the leadership meeting and planning cycle.