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, both sides. Third column names what to look for when scoring vendors.
Deliverable: Production AI shipped, eval bar live, team trained, org redesigned.
Engagement: 6-month minimum, 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 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.
If your room looks like this, hire a consultant, not a Fractional.
Director-altitude AI lead, an engineering team that ships, a working eval bar. You want an outside frame to sharpen the strategy or run a board-prep session.
Board is asking for a strategy. Team can execute once it's written. Bottleneck is articulation, not implementation.
McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte. If the board memo needs a top-tier logo on the cover, hire one. Fractional doesn't compete on logo.
Cheapest consultant beats cheapest Fractional on speed and price. If the spend can't survive 6 months, consultant first, Fractional later.
If two or more show up, the strategy-only model leaves work on the floor.
No Director-altitude AI leader. Hiring one is a 6 to 9 month ramp at senior-exec comp. 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.
One or more capabilities have to ship 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.