How To Use Fractional Resources For Your Business Effectively With Suraya Yahaya

Fractional resources are people who are often freelancers, consultants and contractors whose involvement with a company falls outside the standard 9 to 5 or 40-hour a week setup. Through her company, Khazana Inc., Suraya Yahaya provides fractional resources at the executive level for companies looking to scale their businesses up. Suraya allows founders/ CEOs to focus on growth and investment while she runs the day-to-day operations using the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). In this conversation with Stephen Jaye, Suraya discusses fractional resources, as well as other aspects of work culture important towards achieving employee satisfaction and growth. --- Listen to the podcast here How To Use Fractional Resources For Your Business Effectively With Suraya Yahaya I am a big fan of the idea of fractional resources. In our work culture, we oftentimes assume that every single job needs to follow the same format and what people call the 9:00 to 5:00, 40 hours a week when not every need matches that exact paradigm and not every person necessarily wants to work in the same way. My guest has started a business that has a new feel to the idea of a fractional resource. I tend to think of the fractional resource as your freelancer who does twenty hours a week digital design. My guest, Suraya Yahaya, started a business where she acts as a Fractional Chief Operating Officer. Her business is Khazana Incorporated. --- Suraya, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I appreciate it. This is an amazing idea. You are a Fractional Chief Operations Officer. Tell us about how that works? It's a little bit of a niche business now. Typically, you see chief operating officers in a company on a full-time basis because the chief operating officer is effectively running the company while the CEO is off doing market impact, talking to investors, large customers and the board is the face of the company. A fractional chief operating officer is to serve businesses that are pivoting, transforming, going through a ton of change and/or growing really fast so they need immediate support but not in a full-time scenario yet. There’s so much change, transformation and growth happening that they don't quite have a niche carved out for a full-time person for a variety of reasons. There are cashflow issues and a lack of clarity on what a full-time person would do as the business continues to change, grow and transform fast. There are also a lot of transformation that needs to happen with a growing team. The idea is bringing someone on a fractional basis, still have them do all the work that a full-time COO would do, and help the company grow, transform, scale and work very closely with the CEO on the timing of when the business is at an inflection point to take the next step. Am I correct in characterizing this as people will talk about the entrepreneurial experience in starting a business? The common phrase you hear is that people are “wearing many hats,” or if it's individual, it’s you starting the business. As you build it out, you are maturing and eventually, if you build it up to a large business, all your C-Suite leadership is going to be full-time people but there's a period of transition in between when you are growing from 1 to 300 people. Is that the correct understanding of how this works? I came from a very diverse background myself. I started as an attorney, went into operations strategy and ran big P&Ls. I had GM responsibilities growing and scaling a variety of different functions. The benefit of having someone come into a company that is itself growing and scaling so quickly is someone like myself can wear multiple hats. That's a great benefit of other fractional resources. That person is not coming in and saying, “Stephen, you hired me to be an accountant. That's all I'm going to do.” That person coming in is going to be like, “How can I help you with whatever you need?” With the legal background, I'm able to look at things like mergers and acquisitions, deals, write policies, procedures, and support the members of the organization that need that help. Being honest and authentic about what you can do for the organization, but also who you are. There are going to be tons of opportunities that pass you by... but it's a better thing for you long term. And then there will be that right match out there. With the operations and the strategy background, I'm able to create scale plans, roadmaps, growth plans and help the organization do that. I also am a specialized COO in that I am an integrator for companies running the EOS model. I have been working with a lot of companies who are running the Entrepreneurial Operating System models called EOS. I'm an integrator, which means COO in EOS language. I'm able to help companies who are running EOS in their organization. I merge and run the company according to the EOS rules. Those are a lot of moving parts that need to be coordinated. Tell us a little bit about the EOS system. Is it a system or a paradigm? It is. It was started by a gentleman named Gino Wickman. He has written a large number of books about the topic. They are very interesting. I encourage a lot of entrepreneurs who are interested in running their business in a scalable, systemic, organized fashion, who wants to cut the swirl that's going on in the company and wants to be on a path to create traction for the organization to move forward, to read those books. The first book is called Traction, which explains the EOS model and how organizations and entrepreneurial companies can gain traction in their company. There are coaches in the EOS system. They are called implementers. They come in and they teach the operating model to the leadership team. The integrator/COO is the person who ensures that the organization keeps marching down the path of the EOS model. That's through managing their resources, holding people accountable and making sure that the plan that has been set quarterly gets executed. Let's say someone reading is starting up a company now. Is this something that should be implemented right from the get-go or the seed stage? I think so. It's easy in the seed stage to get lost with funding, growing the team, scaling the business. One of the fundamental things that the EOS model has people do is figure out the right seats that you need to build and scale your business. That's very helpful for companies in the seed stage. “What are the right seats that I need in the organization?” You figure out, “Do you have the right people to sit in those right seats?” If you don't, you start to prioritize and figure out, “Maybe Stephen can do the seat.” As I need to scale, I need to figure out the right person in the other seats so Stephen can move back to what he's traditionally good at. One of the things that I have always wondered about in putting together a team is how people go about putting the team, thinking about the different personality types, personality traits and how they fit in together? We often hear about people who are naturally idea starters and people that are good at operationalizing an idea. Does that factor into putting together these seats in the EOS model? The CEO in an EOS company is called the visionary. We talked about the big picture, ideas, I want to go this way or I want to take the company this way. The integrator, which is the COO of the company, helps put together the execution of the big ideas. All the operating functions report to the integrator, which is the COO so that those operating functions are working on their pieces. We are not going to expect a person who's in the seat of marketing to pivot and be very detail-oriented when it comes to looking at budgeting and financing. They have to be accountable to their own marketing budget but you are not going to expect the marketing person in that seat to be sitting in the CFO seat as an example. Those are totally different skillsets. What I like about the EOS model is the right person, right seat and make sure that you are putting together a team where people are aligned with the role. Everyone has a skillset that's perfect for the role that they are going to be in. You put together a diverse team and they execute the company's vision. How often is the makeup of the team, whether you are looking for the right diversity of different backgrounds or personality traits? How the personality traits and the skillsets fit in together? How often should that be re-evaluated under the EOS system? Fractional Resources: The world of trying to find people the right employment should not just be about finding a job. You do a quarterly check-in to make sure that people are aligned with their role accountability, values of the company and rocks. Rocks are initiatives that have to be done in a 90-day timeframe, much traditional or non-EOS companies. You do an end-of-year check-in to make sure that all the quarterly rocks have been accomplished and that the company's one-year plan has been executed. It is a very scheduled check-in that you do against your rocks, which are your quarterly initiatives. You are also checking in to make sure that people are still aligned with the company values. The idea in EOS is you have core values. You hire, fire, promote according to your core values. People have to be a fit with the company culture. One of the things that I often wonder for people who are looking at this whole thing from a high level and EOS system, what do you think is the biggest difference between the organization implementing EOS and a standard organization that you would see out there? One is the alignment with the core values. Two is the alignment with role accountability. If you are an accountant, it’s very clear what you are responsible for. There's constant check-in with your role accountability. Three is your accountability towards the execution of your rocks....