For fractional executives & consulting practices

Bill the thinking.Automate the artifacts.

Your judgment is the product. The artifacts around it — diagnostics, proposals, retainer pricing, 90-day plans, board updates — eat the evenings nobody bills. Generic AI doesn’t fix it because client-facing work has a standard: decision-first, evidence-tied, defensible. A chatbot hands you a confident draft you quietly fix before anyone senior sees it.

The Fractional Executive & Consultant Skills Pack is six Claude skills engineered to a client-ready standard — not draft-ready. Install once; the right skill fires when the work calls for it. Refine a strong draft instead of rebuilding from a blank page, and bill the thinking. One-time $99.

Get the Pack — $99one-time · instant delivery · 30-day refund
Six skills · One engagement lifecycle
Client Diagnostic
scoping
Engagement Architect
proposal
Retainer Pricing
defensible fee
90-Day Plan
execution
Board-Ready Update
monthly cadence
Executive Brief
decisions
Works alongside
Notion · Linear · Asana · Excel · your CRM · whatever the client already runs
01.The Problem

The first deliverable sets the tone for the whole engagement.

Senior clients pay fractional executives for judgment they can’t buy in-house — the operator who’s seen the shape of the problem before, knows which lever to pull first, and refuses to accept the CEO’s framing when the evidence says something else. That work happens upstream of any specific deliverable, and it lives or dies on the first memo, the first board update, the first 90-day plan.

The trap is that the work scales badly. Every new engagement is messy intake, a CEO complaint that doesn’t match the actual problem, half the metrics missing. The temptation is to accept the framing, smooth over the gaps, and ship something that reads competent. That works once. By engagement three the quality compounds the wrong direction — and senior clients notice the moment the diagnostic restates the complaint instead of naming the cause.

Restated complaints

"We need more leads" when conversion is the leak. "Cash is tight" when working-capital timing is the binding constraint. A diagnostic that accepts the framing is a report; one that names the upstream cause is a diagnostic.

Confident guesses

Filling thin evidence with plausible-sounding numbers is the fastest way to destroy a memo in front of a board. The diagnostic skill explicitly refuses to state any metric not in the provided evidence — assumptions get flagged, not asserted.

Observations vs priorities

A list of problems is a report. A ranked set of what to do first and why is a diagnostic. The Priorities section is what justifies the engagement — and the part that most diagnostics treat as an afterthought.

02.What This Is — And Isn't

Clear about the lane. No inflated promises.

What this is
  • Six Claude skills calibrated for fractional CFO / CMO / COO / CRO / CPO-CTO / CHRO engagements and consulting practices.
  • Eight function lenses (Operator's General + 7 function-specific) that adapt the diagnostic per engagement.
  • Three operating laws (symptom vs cause / evidence-tied / end in priorities) enforced at the skill level.
  • Diagnostic memo template with a worked memo at delivery quality — model new diagnostics against the depth and tone.
  • Built on June 2026 Anthropic Agent Skills format; ports to Claude Code, Claude Pro projects, OpenAI Codex CLI, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot.
  • Designed for engagement cadence — diagnostic → architect → price → plan → update → brief.
What this isn't
  • An in-house executive operating system. Skill cadence is fractional-engagement-shaped, not always-on.
  • A client-facing chatbot. The skills are the operator's working layer, not a deliverable sold to the client.
  • A practice management platform. Notion / Linear / your CRM still own the engagement records.
  • A fine-tuned model. Standard Claude Pro / Max / Team / Enterprise.
  • A subscription. One-time $99 with 12 months of skill updates.
  • A replacement for partner-level judgment. The skills are designed to raise your floor, not replace your ceiling.
03.The Six Skills

One pack. The full engagement lifecycle.

Each skill handles one stage of a fractional engagement. The skills compose — the diagnostic feeds the architect; the architect feeds the pricing; the 90-day plan inherits the priorities; the board update reconciles to the same numbers month after month.

01 · First two weeks of an engagement, in an afternoon
Client Diagnostic
client-diagnostic
Triggers

“Diagnose this client,” “turn my intake notes into a findings memo,” “the CEO says X is the problem — is it?”

Turn a messy intake into a structured assessment — situation, root causes (not just symptoms), priorities, quick wins, and risks. Reads the matching function lens. Refuses to accept the CEO's framing when the evidence says something else. Ships with a worked memo at delivery quality.

02 · Outcome-framed scope · proposal that wins
Engagement Architect
engagement-architect
Triggers

“Write a proposal for this client,” “scope this engagement,” “turn my diagnostic into an engagement,” “draft an SOW”

Scope, deliverables, milestones, and a proposal that frames the engagement around outcomes — not hours. Built to win the work and prevent scope creep before it starts. Names what's explicitly out of scope, because unscoped expectations are where margin and goodwill die.

03 · Value-based price · rationale that holds up
Retainer Pricing
retainer-pricing
Triggers

“How should I price this,” “what should I charge for this retainer,” “build my pricing tiers,” “anchor this proposal's price”

Price the engagement on value, not your hourly rate. Structures retainers and three tiers (Essential / Core / Embedded), models the anchor, writes the pricing rationale that holds up in the room. Value figures explicitly flagged as estimates. Not financial advice; the operator owns the number.

04 · Sequenced · owned · justifies the retainer
90-Day Plan
ninety-day-plan
Triggers

“Build a 90-day plan,” “turn the diagnostic into a roadmap,” “sequence these priorities,” “the CEO wants to see my plan”

Turn a diagnosis into a plan a client can believe in — sequenced, owned, building toward outcomes the client will feel. Every item has a why, a when, and a who. Calibrated to function (finance, marketing, operations, revenue, product, people) and to whether you're a single operator or a team.

05 · Trust-building cadence · bad news first
Board-Ready Update
board-ready-update
Triggers

“Write my board update,” “draft the monthly update for the CEO,” “investor update for this month,” “summarize progress for the board”

The recurring CEO/board update in the format senior audiences expect — TL;DR, progress against the plan, honest lowlights and risks named first, the metrics that matter, clear asks. Reconciled to actual numbers, no spin. Built on the principle that boards trust the operator who names problems before being asked.

06 · One screen · two-minute decision
Executive Brief
executive-brief
Triggers

“Write an executive brief,” “draft a decision memo,” “the CEO needs a one-pager on X,” “summarize the options for the board”

Turn a question, an analysis, or a tangle of considerations into a one-screen decision memo a busy executive can act on in two minutes. Recommendation first, options with honest trade-offs, what would change it. The document that makes the operator look like the most prepared person in the room.

04.The Three Laws

What separates a diagnostic from a report.

The six skills are the surface. The three laws are the IP — pasted into every skill, enforced on every output, and the difference between work that justifies a $20K/month retainer and work that reads like a checklist.

#01
Separate symptom from root cause

The presenting complaint (“we're not getting leads,” “cash is tight,” “the team is slow”) is rarely the real problem. The diagnostic always asks what's upstream of the stated issue and names the cause, not the symptom. A diagnostic that just restates the complaint is worthless.

#02
Tie every finding to evidence; flag every assumption

A claim grounded in the client's own data is defensible in the room; a confident guess is a liability. The skill states only metrics present in the evidence provided — never illustrates a point with an invented figure. A fabricated number is the fastest way to destroy credibility in front of a board.

#03
End in priorities, not observations

A list of problems is a report. A ranked set of what to do first and why is a diagnostic. The deliverable must tell the client where to point their limited attention and money. The Priorities section is what justifies the engagement.

05.The Diagnostic Memo

The structure senior clients expect.

The Diagnostic Memo is the anchor deliverable — the first thing a senior client sees, the format that sets the tone for the whole engagement. Seven sections, decision-led, designed to be actionable from the TL;DR alone.

client-diagnostic/ memo structure
worked example included
01TL;DR

3-4 lines: the situation, the single most important finding, the headline recommendation. A busy CEO who reads only this knows what to do.

02Situation

2-3 sentences of grounding context. What the engagement is, what was assessed, what evidence was available.

03Findings (F1, F2 …)

Ordered by importance. Each with: symptom-vs-cause / evidence / confidence (HIGH/MED/LOW + why) / ⚠ assumption to confirm if any.

04Priorities

Ranked. What to do first and why. Not a list of problems — a sequenced action plan the client can act on from this section alone.

05Quick wins (≤30 days)

Low-effort, visible moves that build trust early in the engagement. The credibility down-payment.

06Risks & watch-items

What could bite. What to monitor. The honest second-order thinking that separates partner-level work from a checklist.

07What I'd need to go deeper

The specific data, access, or interviews that would raise confidence on the LOW/MED findings. Turns the gap into the next-step ask.

The pack ships with a worked memo for a fictional Northwind Tools engagement (Finance, $6M industrial tooling distributor) — a complete delivery-quality reference to model new diagnostics against.

06.The Eight Function Lenses

One library. Eight engagements’ worth of senior-operator pattern recognition.

Each lens is a focused list of questions to interrogate the situation through, the telltale signs the problem lives there, and the metrics that reveal the real story. The diagnostic skill reads the lens matching the engagement and uses only those questions — which is the difference between a tight diagnostic and a watery one.

Operator's General Lens
Cross-functional / whole-company

Where's the binding constraint? What changed when the problem started? What has the client already tried, and why didn't it work?

Finance
Fractional CFO

Cash vs profit. Margin integrity by segment. Concentration risk. Unit economics fully loaded. Burn multiple. AR/AP timing.

Marketing
Fractional CMO

Volume vs qualified leads. Funnel-step truth. Channel revenue (not traffic) at fully-loaded CAC. Message-market fit. CAC payback.

Operations
Fractional COO

Where work queues (not just where time is spent). Process vs heroics. On-time + error distribution (not averages). Capacity reality.

Revenue / Sales
Fractional CRO

Win rate trend. Stage-by-stage conversion. Lead source quality (not just count). Discount discipline. Pipeline coverage.

Product / Tech
Fractional CPO / CTO

Velocity vs throughput. Bug-vs-build mix. Tech-debt burden. Activation friction. Reliability cost. Build-vs-buy honesty.

People / HR
Fractional CHRO

Regrettable attrition vs total. Onboarding effectiveness. Manager-tier health. Comp-band integrity. Performance-distribution honesty.

Customer Success / Retention
Renewals & expansion

NRR / GRR distribution. Churn-cause clustering. Onboarding → activation drop-off. Expansion concentration. Health-score honesty.

07.What's In / What's Out

The integrity moat.

Exactly what you get for $99, and what you don’t.

In scope
  • Six production-grade Claude skills (client-diagnostic, engagement-architect, retainer-pricing, ninety-day-plan, board-ready-update, executive-brief).
  • Eight-lens function library (Operator's General + Finance + Marketing + Operations + Revenue + Product + People + Customer Success).
  • Diagnostic memo template + a worked memo at delivery quality.
  • Three operating laws enforced at the skill level.
  • 12 months of skill updates as the catalog evolves.
  • Setup + pro-moves guidance for solo operators and consulting shops.
Out of scope
  • A Claude subscription. You need Claude Pro / Max / Team / Enterprise separately.
  • Practice management. Notion / Airtable / your CRM still own the engagement records.
  • Client-facing AI tooling. This is the operator's layer; what you sell to the client is your judgment.
  • Methodology-specific frameworks (Lean / Six Sigma / EOS). The pack is methodology-agnostic — pair with what you already use.
  • Legal, tax, accounting, or licensure-specific advice. Always pair with the appropriate professional.
  • A subscription. One-time $99 with 12 months of updates.

Pairs naturally with the Solo Founder Skills Pack ($79) — fractional executives often sit alongside the founder they serve. The Solo Founder pack handles the founder’s operating cadence (investor updates, runway, weekly priorities); this pack handles the fractional executive’s engagement cadence on top.

For consulting practices that also run multi-engagement operations, pair with the Agency Operators Skills Pack ($89) — that pack handles client onboarding, status reports, scope creep, kickoff decks, invoice reconciliation, renewals; this pack handles the senior-operator deliverables that justify the premium rate.

For fractional CFO engagements specifically, pair with the Investor-Ready Metrics Pack ($89) — the Finance lens here flags the diagnostic; the Metrics Pack handles the diligence-grade calculations and stage-aware benchmarks that go into the board memo.

08.Common Questions

The questions fractional operators actually ask before deploying.

Six Claude skills built for the recurring, high-stakes deliverables of fractional and advisory work: a client diagnostic, an engagement architect (scope + proposal), a retainer-pricing builder, a board-ready update, a 90-day plan builder, and an executive brief writer. Each installs as a SKILL.md folder that Claude loads automatically when the work calls for it, and each is engineered to a client-ready standard — structured, evidence-based, decision-first. Plus an 8-lens function library (Operator's General + Finance / Marketing / Operations / Revenue / Product / People / Customer Success) that adapts the diagnostic per engagement.

Partner-level standard · six skills · $99

Ship the diagnostic by Friday.
Name the cause, not the complaint.

Six skills calibrated for fractional CFO / CMO / COO / CRO / CPO / CHRO engagements and consulting practices. Three laws + eight function lenses + the diagnostic memo template with a worked example. One-time $99.

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