Fractional leadership and 0-to-10k communities

Think in 4D: Design Futures

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Fractional leadership and 0-to-10k communities

Think in 4D with Karina Mikhili of Fractionals United

Erica Heinz

and

Karina Mikhli

Jul 09, 2024

Transcript

This one’s for the leaders and community builders: a 20-minute chat with Karina Mikhli, founder of Fractionals United as well as a fractional COO and workflow consultant (with some current availability)!

“FrUn” is a Slack and a collection of resources for part-time executives. I heard about the group (and work style) at the Mind the Product conference last summer, joined the community, and was impressed by its liveliness, structure, resources, and rapid growth.

I asked Karina to share her COO secrets for building a great community so quickly, and her thoughts on how fractional roles are affecting the future of work.

Press the big button above to listen here, or go watch the video on YouTube. You can also subscribe to Think in 4D in Apple/Google Podcasts or the Substack app.

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5 questions and some favorite quotes

Listen to the episode or read the transcript for full context and more great insights!

Why did you want to start this community? How specific was the vision?
I came back in the beginning of 2023 to a very different fractional landscape than existed two years prior to that, which was the last time I had been actively looking for fractional work. And I was dismayed by how different it felt, and also lonelier and harder, which I understand now, but I didn’t then…
Upwork was no longer a viable source of leads at all, it’s a race to the bottom… it was really hard figuring out where the work is and how to deal with this… I couldn’t really find what I was looking for: community for the sake of community. There were a couple of… courses or paid firewalls or other things, but no fractional community.
How did you build such a thriving community in such a short time?
There’s a lot of commonality between being a leader and running a community, which has made it easier than I anticipated. Because leadership is this fine line of, you have to support and enable and listen and nurture... all the things that a community needs, but also no leader gives their team everything they want when they want it. Because they have the bigger picture…

I joke with people that it’s my first time as CEO, so on the one hand I have zero bosses, which is great, but on the other hand, I have 10K+ bosses, which isn’t so great! But it’s not like I give them everything they want…

I try to keep things really simple. I personally have one overarching focus for every year. You have goals and you have other things, but my one focus for 2023 was growth. My one focus for 2024 is self-sustaining; I want the community to be at the point where it is self sufficient and funded. Everybody on my team has one focus.
What patterns or needs have you seen in the community or industry?
If you’re a small business or a startup, you may not necessarily need someone at our level for 40 hours…If you’re hired full time and you’re good at what you do, there isn’t always 40 hours of work to do... So there’s a lot of waste out there, especially when you’re a leader not doing the work and just putting things in place, strategizing, leading, ensuring it gets done through your team…

Right now there’s definitely more supply than demand. Because unfortunately there have been layoffs, COVID has made many of us reconsider the 9-to-5 or the way things were, and we don’t want to go back. So I think there’s a confluence of factors that are making leaders want to be fractional and to have more work/life balance, and say in their lives, and flexibility, and all the things fractional allows…

I do truly believe this is the way of the future because it makes so much sense for both sides of the equation. So I don’t think this is a trend that is going to fade. I think that this is just going to keep growing, and at some point it will be the default for SMBs, startups, and scale-ups. And for leaders at a certain stage in their career.
Any advice you’d give to people considering or starting fractional work?
A consultant is brought on for a project, even if it’s a long term project… A fractional is a fully embedded part of the team… the only true difference between a full-time COO and a fractional COO is they’re part time.

You should have done the role full-time before you try doing it fractionally. It is not an opportunity to promote yourself… you’re expected to be effective in a fraction of the time, this is not the opportunity to figure things out. You need to know your stuff, and well, because you have to jump in. So first do the thing, ensure this is right for you and aligns with your skills and strengths.
The biggest challenge right now is still finding the work… and then once you find the work, the challenge is to juggle doing the work, plus the pipeline, and running a business… you have to learn how to be in business for yourself… There’s all these things many W2s don’t know because they’ve never been in business for themselves.
How do you learn and stay up to date as a senior leader?
Community specifically, I am part of Rosieland, she shares things. Leadership… I have been unsubscribing from a lot of newsletters and a lot of stuff because there’s so much noise out there. The only newsletter I religiously read and reread is James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. I don’t know how this guy puts so much richness into so few words, it is an amazing newsletter… I skim the LinkedIn feed to see if there’s anything. People share interesting things in the [Fractionals United] community. I belong to Operations Nation, Operators Guild, Generalists World… Things that are worth looking at tend to get a lot of likes and percolate up, and those are the things I pay attention to.