Structure & Planning
The function itself: fractional communications leadership, operating model, team structure, and measurement that reports progress over activity.
Busy is not the same as effective.
Functions under pressure default to volume. More posts, more announcements, more requests absorbed, and a dashboard that reports activity because activity is easy to count. Nobody in the organization can say what the function is for.
The second problem is seniority. Many teams have capable people and nobody senior enough to say no, which means the function spends its capacity on whatever arrived most recently rather than on what matters most.
So the work is to define what the function is for, then build the structure and the measures that follow from it.
Three situations
A function that needs structure, not more output
Capable people, constant delivery, no operating model. Everything is a request and nothing is a plan.
No senior communications leader
The organization needs the judgment of a communications director without yet needing the headcount, or is between leaders.
Measurement nobody trusts
A monthly report full of numbers that no executive uses to make a decision. Activity counted because outcomes were never defined.
How it runs here
The same four stages as every Plumb engagement, in the shape they take when the subject is the function itself.
Sounding
Conversations with the executive team about what they actually want from communications, and with the team about what they are actually asked for. A read of the last two quarters of work and of what it was intended to change. The gap between those two is the finding.
Structure
The operating model written down: purpose, how work arrives and is prioritized, decision rights, and what the function will not do. Then the team shape and the hiring order that follows from it.
Alignment
The model is agreed with the executives who will have to live inside it, particularly the parts that involve saying no. A model the wider leadership team has not accepted is a document rather than a change.
Rhythm
The function runs on rhythm: the planning cycle, the standing forums, the reporting, and the review that keeps the plan honest. Fractional leadership continues here where it is useful, and stops when the structure holds.
Three shapes this takes
Every engagement is scoped by phase and agreed in writing before it begins. The diagnosis comes first, because building a team before defining the function is how the current problem was created.
Diagnosis and model
Sounding, operating model, team design and a measurement framework.
Standing the function up
Hiring support, planning cycle, forums, and the first quarter run against the model.
Leading the function
Senior direction on a defined basis, including team mentoring and executive-level counsel.
Scope is set by what the situation requires and confirmed after the first conversation. Engagements are limited by how much work one person can genuinely do well.
What this usually sits alongside
A well-built function exists to make the rest of this possible. These three come up in most structure engagements.
Questions we hear most
What does fractional communications leadership mean here?+
Senior direction on a defined basis rather than a full-time hire. Leading the function, setting the plan, mentoring the team, and sitting in the executive conversations where communications is decided.
Will you help us hire?+
Yes. Role definition, interview structure, and honest assessment of candidates. The order of hiring usually matters more than the volume.
Our leadership wants better reporting. Where do we start?+
With what a decision would actually depend on. Measurement built before outcomes are defined produces a report nobody reads, which is the situation most teams are already in.
Is this consulting, or is it doing the work?+
Both, deliberately. A model handed over as a document tends not to survive contact with the first busy quarter, so the early cycles are run rather than recommended.
What if the honest answer is that we do not need this?+
Then that is the answer you will get. Sounding regularly reveals that the presenting problem is not the problem, and saying so early is worth more than a well-written engagement aimed at the wrong thing.
Bring the situation, not a brief.
If the function is delivering constantly and nobody can say what it is for, that is enough to start.