When an executive at a small or medium business needs to take a leave of absence, covering their duties can place a significant strain on the rest of the team.
At vChief, we recently had an executive take an unplanned leave of absence. To keep the business moving forward without sacrificing the health of the team during her absence, we leveraged the help of a fractional executive.
In this blog post, I’ll share how we reacted to the temporary loss of a key member of our leadership team and actually achieved one of our strongest months in revenue during her absence.
Backfilling the President’s Role in Two Weeks
When vChief’s president, Beth Jacobs, found out she needed to take a five-week medical leave, we only had two weeks to prepare for her absence. While that timeline would have allowed enough time to bring in a new fractional team member from our pool of hundreds of vetted candidates, in our case we determined that backfilling Beth’s role with a new team member didn’t make sense. Beth’s role touches every aspect of the business and is very client-facing. It would have been nearly impossible to find an external person with the necessary skills, relationships, and social capital to take over her role and get up to speed in just two weeks.
Instead, we looked to the rest of the leadership team to see if someone could step into the president’s role temporarily. As the head of sales and marketing, I was the best candidate for the job. But covering Beth’s responsibilities on top of my own would have stretched me too thin, so we turned to a fractional executive to expand my capacity.
From our talent pool of more than 400 fractional executives, we quickly identified an associate chief of staff (ACoS) who had the right skills and experience to support me, and brought her on for 120 hours per month during Beth’s absence.
Deciding What to Delegate and What to Put on Hold
As a fractional staffing agency, we often support companies who are preparing for an executive leave of absence, but this was our first time going through the process ourselves. We’ve shared resources about how to plan for a sabbatical or leave, and we followed our own advice.
Before leaving, Beth prioritized her to-do list based on the impact, risk, and capacity requirements of each task or responsibility using our Leave of Absence Planning Tool.
That helped her determine which projects could go on the back burner until she returned, and which ones she needed to delegate to me or another team member. Since most of my time was going to be consumed covering Beth’s normal responsibilities, I did the same thing to determine which initiatives to delegate and which to put on hold.
An ACoS is a strong project manager and a generalist capable of handling complex tasks that require cross-departmental collaboration. I handed off two key projects to my new support team member: identifying and analyzing our Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP), and planning for an industry conference event. The ICP project was one of our Q2 priorities, and many of our Q3 priorities hinged on its results. It couldn’t wait until Beth got back. The project involved data analysis, project management, and presentations to the rest of the team — activities that I enjoy, but don’t necessarily fall within my zone of genius. And the conference event was fast approaching, so planning for it couldn’t be pushed back.
Our ACoS also took the lead on an internal project that was on Beth’s plate but didn’t require my expertise. Every year, we host a leadership retreat, which Beth normally helps plan. With Beth out, key planning deadlines might have been missed, but our ACoS seamlessly stepped in for Beth to research and coordinate the logistics of the retreat. We decided that the content could wait for Beth’s return.
In addition to leading these special projects, our ACoS also took over some of my marketing responsibilities, including content review and research into prospecting platforms.
One large initiative that I decided to put on hold was a strategic evaluation of our marketing team’s structure. We have recently added several members to the marketing team, and I wanted to take a step back and ask whether we had the right people in the right roles. While this project had the potential to make our marketing efforts more effective, it wasn’t urgent. And because it required thoughtful consideration of each person’s strengths and our long-term goals, it wasn’t a project I could easily delegate to a fractional executive.
Beating Our Sales Goals During an Executive Leave of Absence
Our hybrid approach to backfilling Beth’s role with both a temporary promotion and fractional support was a huge success. Our ACoS successfully completed each of the critical projects we delegated to her, allowing us to maintain momentum on our quarterly priorities and meet our goals. During Beth’s absence, we not only kept the business going but actually achieved tremendous growth. In April 2024, during Beth’s leave, we signed the most new contracts in any month since February 2023, leading to one of our highest ever revenue months in June.
Since Beth’s absence was on short notice, we had not budgeted for adding another team member. We had to shift some expenses around to make the investment, but we saw an immediate return. Our Q2 revenue increased 22 percent over the previous quarter, something we could not have achieved during Beth’s absence without augmenting our capacity with a fractional executive.
We found the support of an ACoS to be so valuable and flexible that we decided to keep her on at 10 hours per week after Beth returned from leave. Her skills are a great compliment to our team, and we saw many opportunities across the organization for her to help us streamline our processes and improve cross-departmental collaboration.
We were thrilled to welcome Beth back into the office in May 2024 knowing that not only did we turn what could have been a stressful time into a strong month, but that we are also more prepared for similar challenges in the future. If something unexpected happens in leadership, we have a proven plan for moving forward.
Keep Your Operations Moving Forward During an Executive Absence
At vChief, we place talented change-makers in fractional roles such as Associate Chief of Staff, Chief of Staff, Chief Operating Officer, and Human Resources Business Partner. Our talented team can help you determine what kind of fractional executive would be the best fit to fill the gaps left by your absent leader.
We’ll match you with two to five candidates from our diverse talent pool of nearly 500 highly qualified executives within three days. You’ll have the opportunity to interview your top two or three candidates with no obligation to sign a contract. If you find a good match, your candidate can start in as little as two weeks. Schedule a call with our team to discuss the right fit for you.
