This story is part of our November 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.

With only one lens, you may be able to see what’s directly in front of you; however, you are missing the clarity and perspective needed to see the entire picture and what’s on the horizon.  

In today’s fast-paced, high-stakes world of leadership, we cannot afford to operate with a missing lens. The decisions we make today shape tomorrow’s reality. 

The Federal Reserve Banks’ 2026 report on employer firms, based on the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, found that expectations for future revenue and employment growth have declined to their lowest levels since 2020. Business leaders continue to contend with rising costs and the challenges of finding and retaining qualified people.

Here in our region, leaders are not only facing competition within their industry but also contending with elevated borrowing costs, increasingly value-conscious consumers and continued uncertainty. Many of us wrestle with similar questions: Can we afford this investment? What happens if revenue falls 10 percent? And are we even asking the right questions?

Like you, I was faced with time-sensitive and pivotal decisions at the onset of the global pandemic. Leading a Sacramento-based social enterprise with just over 100 employees and four revenue units, the amount of data to analyze and the velocity at which it flowed was intense. 

As the questions about how this disruption would impact our business evolved from generalized to more specific, I began to ponder whether we’d identified the right problems. That’s when we decided to bring in a fractional CFO — an experienced executive who provides part-time strategic leadership and hands-on execution to strengthen financial operations. 

This higher-level expertise, thinking and skill set elevated our analysis, which prompted new questions, which led to opportunities and strategy for greater financial leverage. The fractional CFO was the missing lens. 

Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy explore a similar leadership principle in their book, “Who Not How.”

“How are we going to solve this?” is the default question leaders naturally ask. Sullivan and Hardy challenge us to ask a different question: “Who has the expertise to help us solve the problem and accomplish what we envision?”  

“How?” can cause leaders to immediately focus on their existing capacity, knowledge and resources, while “who?” removes the “lid” and allows us to think more creatively.

For many, engaging a fractional CFO is a strategy worth considering to secure the right financial lens, not just for the significant cost savings, but to ensure the level of expertise needed is accessible and engaged.   

Finding the right ‘who’

“You don’t want someone practicing on your business. You need a gold medalist.” My friend Chris Johnson, founder of Talent Flow, shared this analogy, and I’ve never again thought twice about ensuring I had the right level of expertise to help me guide the business. 

If you were the coach entering the NBA Finals, I’m sure you would rather have Michael Jordan for two-and-a-half quarters of the game than me for the entire game. A gold medalist has won in the environment you are operating in, has been where you are trying to go and often knows what it will take to sustain success when you arrive at the next level. 

If you are experiencing a decline in revenue and cash constraints, there is value in having a financial partner who has operated in this environment many times and lived to tell the tale. This is the perfect scenario where I believe a fractional executive may be very effective for a small or medium-sized business. 

Fractional leadership allows for an organization to right-size the engagement to fit their budget and fill experience gaps without unnecessarily creating another full-time executive position. Fifteen to 20 hours per week of a highly experienced fractional executive can create more value for a leadership team than someone working full-time who does not yet have the breadth of expertise needed to effectively navigate the challenges on the horizon. 

The right (and wrong) time to hire a fractional CFO

If the books aren’t accurate, transactions aren’t being recorded correctly, billing processes are broken or financial information can’t be trusted, the first priority may be strengthening the accounting infrastructure.

In addition, if the organization’s scale and complexity require a CFO to be actively engaged for 40 hours each week, the most appropriate strategy would be to hire a full-time CFO.  

The questions at the crux of the analysis are: What does the organization need at this time, and what can we afford? Can we afford not to have access to the expertise needed for the organization to arrive at the desired destination? 

An experienced CFO once told me something that I now reflect on daily. The profit and loss statement tells you where you are, while cash flow tells you where you can go. A business can show revenue growth and still experience cash constraints. 

A CFO will assume the role of the financial coach and do more than just show you the film of the last game, which is equivalent to sharing the financial statements and telling you what already happened. The right CFO helps develop strategy for what comes next, including capital allocation, liquidity goals, levers to increase margins and identification of critical risks that influence operating decisions.

For me, these are some of the most significant differences between accounting information and executive financial leadership. 

Adding the lens of a fractional CFO during one of the most challenging periods of my leadership career did more than strengthen our financial operations. It helped us navigate uncertainty, identify opportunities and make decisions with greater clarity and confidence.

Just five years after the onset of the pandemic, we celebrated the most profitable year in the organization’s history while being recognized as one of the region’s best places to work by the Sacramento Business Journal. 

Darrell Teat is president and CEO of CxORE, a national fractional executive leadership and back-office services firm. An award-winning CEO, corporate board director and executive coach, he has led organizations across multiple industries, helping them navigate growth, strengthen financial and operational performance, and build high-performing cultures. A recipient of the Sacramento Business Journal’s Most Admired CEOs award, he also serves as an outside director for Environmental Science Associates and on Comstock’s editorial advisory board.

–

Never miss a story: Get Comstock’s weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox.