Forget the 90 day Plan

Forget the 90-Day Plan. Here’s How a Fractional COO Actually Creates Impact

Most people treat the first 90 days in a leadership role like a ramp. Observe. Listen. Build trust. Then start making changes.
That playbook makes sense for full-time hires. But fractional leadership runs on a different clock. You’re not here to slowly gather context. You’re here to create momentum. Fast.

The key isn’t moving faster just for speed’s sake. It’s knowing where to move first. In a fractional COO role, the focus has to be razor sharp. Not on downstream wins that feel good—but on upstream fixes that make downstream problems irrelevant.

Fractional Isn’t Just Part-Time. It’s Precision Work.

When I’m embedded full-time, I’ll usually spend a few weeks walking the floor. I look for patterns, listen for friction, and wait until I understand the whole system before pulling any levers.

As a fractional COO, that luxury is gone. You’re dropping into an active system that’s already under strain. Founders don’t bring in a fractional operator to observe. They bring one in to act.

That means cutting through noise and locking in on the single constraint that’s creating the most drag. This isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about finding the upstream issue that, once solved, frees up the system to move again.

Two Honest Conversations Will Tell You More Than 200 Docs

I always start with two conversations. One with the founder or CEO. One with a handful of people closest to the work.

I’m not looking for status updates. I’m listening for misalignments. A missed deadline might look like a tooling issue. But if the team is unclear on priorities or ownership, no project management system will save them.

Instead of asking for slide decks or spreadsheets, I ask questions like:
• Where are you constantly getting pulled back into the weeds?
• What do you avoid dealing with because it feels messy or vague?
• What’s the conversation that never seems to happen, but needs to?

You don’t need a full company diagnostic to find the truth. You just need to know where to listen.

Avoid the Low-Hanging Fruit Trap

There’s a common urge in the first 30 days to go after small, visible wins. Fix a Slack channel. Clean up a doc. Move a task from one column to another.

These things feel productive, but they’re usually distractions. They solve symptoms, not causes.

Instead, I look for the one fix that can create a domino effect. Not the shiniest opportunity. The most foundational one. Clearer decision rights. Real accountability. Sane prioritization. Those are upstream levers that move everything else.

If I only have 8 hours a week, they’re going to the pressure points—not the optics.

Tweaks Before Overhauls. Always.

I don’t walk in with a wrecking ball. Even in broken systems, I start small. Clarify a role. Rebuild a handoff. Align a leadership cadence.

You’d be surprised how often one smart adjustment can change the tone of an entire team. Once you stop the bleeding, then you earn the space to do surgery. But not before.

Founders sometimes want sweeping restructuring on day one. I get it. But rushed change creates new messes. In a fractional model, your credibility comes from solving one thing well—then the next. One clear move at a time.

Takeaway: Upstream Fixes. Downstream Momentum.

Fractional COOs don’t get 90 days to observe. We get a few hours to listen, decide, and act.

But the goal isn’t quick wins or superficial fixes. It’s finding the upstream issues that are silently shaping everything downstream. Fix those, and the rest often takes care of itself.

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