The wedge in one sentence: strategy consultants ship decks. Fractional ships production AI and the strategy that defends it. Both are legitimate. The right one depends on whether your strategy needs to be sharpened or built and shipped.
Same dimensions on both sides. The third column names what to look for when you're scoring vendors against either model.
Deliverable: Production AI shipped, eval bar live, team trained, org redesigned.
Engagement: 6-month minimum, $12-20k per month, 1 to 3 days per week.
Frameworks: Bain headcount-output, Anthropic manager-IC, McKinsey Three-Horizon, Mollick Leadership-Lab-Crowd.
Sits where: Inside the exec staff. Reports into CEO, CTO, or COO.
Handoff: Team owns the runbook, eval suite, and named patterns after I leave.
Deliverable: Strategy deck, roadmap, board memo, sometimes a workshop.
Engagement: 1 to 6 weeks. Project fee, often $15-50k per engagement.
Frameworks: Varies. Many consultants use generic AI maturity models or repurposed digital transformation frames.
Sits where: External advisor. Presents to exec staff, doesn't sit in it.
Handoff: Deck and recommendations. Execution is your team's problem.
Has the firm or operator shipped production AI in the last 12 months? If no, the strategy will be theoretical.
Are the frameworks named and sourced? Generic "AI maturity model" is a yellow flag.
What does the team own after? If the answer is "the deck," you bought a workshop, not a transformation.
Does the operator have Director-altitude org-design background? AI transformation is org redesign before it's tech.
Honest framing first. If your room looks like this, hire a consultant, not a Fractional.
Director-altitude AI lead, an engineering team that ships, and a working eval bar. You just want an outside frame to sharpen the next strategy cycle or run a board-prep session.
Board is asking for a strategy. The team can execute it once it's written. The bottleneck is articulation, not implementation.
McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte. If the board memo needs to land with the brand of a top-tier consultancy on the cover, that's a real reason to hire one. Fractional doesn't compete on logo.
The cheapest consultant engagement is faster and cheaper than the cheapest Fractional. If the spend won't survive a 6-month commitment, consultant first, Fractional later.
If two or more of these show up, the strategy-only model leaves work on the floor.
You don't have a Director-altitude AI leader. Hiring one is a 6 to 9 month ramp at $300-500k base. Fractional is the bridge: same altitude, same week.
You bought tools, ran pilots, hit a 20% adoption ceiling. A strategy deck won't fix it. Fractional rebuilds the operating model so AI gets used.
One or more AI capabilities have to ship to production this quarter. Fractional includes hands-on contribution on the highest-stakes builds, not just oversight.
Spend is up. Throughput isn't obvious. Fractional defends the allocation in writing using Three-Horizon and Leadership-Lab-Crowd, with a quarterly kill list.
Quoted in writing within 48 hours. Honest framing on which model fits, even when it isn't Fractional.