Help Your Team Go From Fractured to Fractional
Fractured teams are bad. Fractional employees are good — and no, those aren’t the same words. We’re not trying to be cute here. Going from fractured to fractional is actually a thing, and it will help you save money instead of losing it.
Let us explain.
Bones and Teams
Having a fractured team can feel worse than having a broken team. Just like bones.
We’re not doctors, but we do know from personal experience fractures are not great. They hurt. A lot. A bone fracture is a tiny crack in the bone — so small it’s hard to pinpoint on an x-ray. And you’d think it shouldn’t really hurt that much and it would heal quickly, right? We wish. A broken bone can be set and cast so it will heal quickly. But a fracture is so small, the only thing Doc says is to do that RICE thing: rest, ice, compression and elevation. He sends you home with a few packs of extra strength Tylenol, but that’s about it.
Just like in bones, a fracture in a team is painful, difficult and dangerous.
A team can become fractured in a variety of ways: miscommunication, a faulty flow of information, too many projects to keep up with, outdated policies, inadequate tools, ideas and tasks slipping through the cracks, etc. Any one of these can cause a team to become fractured, and then you’re on your way to burn out and revenue loss.
And just like using a fractured bone is dangerous, so is working with a fractured team. If you go on like nothing is wrong, you risk further damage and causing other injuries. Other parts of the team work harder to compensate for the fractured area, draining more energy and resources while performing at a lower standard and a slower pace. It eventually burns out the healthy parts of the team as the team tries to keep up.
Ultimately, teams lose money when they’re fractured.
That’s a problem.
Fractured vs. Fractional
But there’s a big difference between having a fractured team and having fractional team members. Fractional employees can help a fractured team heal by taking on small loads of work so the rest of the team’s resources and energies aren’t drained.
Fractional team members, or fractional employees, work on a part-time basis, getting things done you don’t have time for. You might also not have a ton of room in your budget to hire another full-time expert, but you still need to accomplish tasks. So you hire an employee to work a fraction of the time for a fraction of the price. A fractional employee.
The good thing about fractional employees is you’re getting expert work but not paying expert prices. You might not be paying entry-level prices, either, but you’re getting much more than entry-level work.
Fractional employees add to the health of your team instead of drain it.
Fractured teams lose money, but fractional employees bring in revenue. And that’s always the direction you want the money to flow.
Take care of your team — protect it from becoming fractured — by hiring a fractional employee.
Oh, one more thing. From personal experience, the RICE thing does help for bone fractures as well as for sprains and breaks. But we’re not doctors — you should probably get that checked out.
Originally published at Shattered.biz.
