Seven days of work after the September 18 session. Private working document.
Prepared for Ken Crafford, Lars Rabbe, Joseph Frascati, Maureen Vavra and Greg Higham. Please do not forward.
You gave us ninety minutes and a wall of stickies on Friday. Everything on this page is what we built from it in the week since: the search data behind the lane you picked, and nine first screens of a site written in your words. All of it is a draft to react to, and nothing is locked.
Companion to the September 18 readout, which holds the wall, the votes and the four headlines. What is done and what is left lives on the portal home.
Not on this list because it is not ours to claim: the Fractional 360 domain and placeholder site are in progress on the IG side, and the outreach test starts the day the lane has an owner.
We ran the head terms through Google Trends for the United States over the past twelve months, in two comparison sets, and put them beside the LinkedIn posting counts from the kickoff. The index is Google's own relative measure, where the most searched term in the set is 100. It is real data, and it is relative, so the absolute bands are marked as estimates until Keyword Planner confirms them.
| Term | Google interest, US, 12 mo | Est. monthly searches | LinkedIn postings, US | Page that owns it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ai governance | 10,000 to 50,000 | n/a | New: AI governance page. Joseph's lane. See the finding below. | |
| fractional cto | 1,000 to 3,000 | on the board | Lane page, in the title. Currently absent from your site's language. | |
| virtual cio | 1,000 to 3,000 | n/a | Lane page. This is the buyer's word for what you call fractional. | |
| fractional cio | 300 to 800 | 6,000+ | Lane page. Keep it, it is your word and the industry's. | |
| it due diligence | 300 to 800 | n/a | Private equity page. Greg's guide already exists and is the asset. | |
| fractional ciso | 100 to 300 | 2,000+ | Security page. Henry's lane. | |
| interim cio | under 200 | 6,000+ | Lane page, secondary. See finding two. | |
| interim cto · cio advisory | under 100 | n/a | Lane page, tertiary. |
"Virtual CIO" draws about four times the search interest of "fractional CIO." "Fractional CTO" draws about five times. Your site's own language is "Interim and Fractional leadership (CIO, CISO, CTO)," which is accurate, though buyers search with different words.
What changes. The lane page title carries all three: interim, fractional and virtual. The CTO seat gets equal billing with CIO in the page copy, because the bench has CTOs and the search demand is there. Nothing about the offer changes. The words on the door do.
"Interim CIO" barely registers in Google search, index 2, and has six thousand open postings on LinkedIn. "Virtual CIO" is the reverse: strong in search, rare as a posting. Companies that need an interim executive post a job. Companies that need a fractional one search for a firm.
What changes. The interim story is an outreach and LinkedIn motion, which is what the Fractional 360 outreach kit is for. The fractional and virtual story is a search motion, which is what the website is for. Same offer, two doors, and now we know which door each buyer uses.
Even after falling steeply from a spring peak, it sits at roughly ten times the next term in the set. AI has an owner. You said on Friday that you do not deliver AI, you bring judgment, governance, cost discipline and organizational change. That is precisely what this search is asking for, and almost nobody credible is answering it.
What changes. An AI governance page, written as judgment rather than delivery, becomes the highest-demand page on the site. The first Point of View, the headcount gap piece from Friday's discussion, is the content behind it. This one came from the search data.
"IT due diligence" sits at index 5, comparable to the fractional head terms once the AI outlier is set aside. Greg's carve-out guide is already the best-written asset on your site.
What changes. Nothing about the order. PE stays fifth, matching your own site. But its page gets the same search treatment as the lane page, because the demand is there and the asset already exists.
These are above-the-fold and key-module screens rather than full pages, drawn in your palette, with real copy from the readout. Each direction is a different answer to the same question. Tell us what lands. The notes on the right say what each one is betting on.
Former CIOs, CISOs and CTOs who have already solved this. Candid assessments, no vendor bias.
Start a conversationHow we workMost firms sell you a plan and leave. We have run the execution, at companies you know, and we know where the time actually goes.
"Knowing I had a world-class partner handling the IT portfolio was reassuring, and the results did not disappoint."
The bet: every word of the headline and subhead already has three stars, so nobody has to defend it. Lowest risk of the three.
What it does: leads with who you are, then who it is for, then the belief, then one proof told in full, then your existing Assessment, Mobilize, Shift as How We Work.
The trade: it describes rather than provokes. Direction B fixes that at the cost of clarity.
Senior operators who have run technology at companies you know, called in when the stakes are highest, with nothing to sell you but the right answer.
Start a conversationRead why we think soA carve-out with a clock on it. A board asking harder questions about AI than anyone in the room can answer. A CIO who just left. A platform decision that will outlast the person making it.
"Knowing I had a world-class partner handling the IT portfolio was reassuring."
The bet: a CFO holding the bag recognizes their situation in the headline before they know who you are. It names the problem without blaming anyone, because execution is a capability gap rather than a judgment failure.
What it does: the line built together on the call becomes the door. The three-star cards become the strip underneath. Light hero, because a belief reads better on white than on navy.
The trade: a stranger learns what you think before what you do. Answer engines prefer A. Humans may prefer B.
People, process, technology and risk, assessed without an agenda, by operators who have held the seat. Then we help your team fix it, and learn to.
Start with an assessment"Knowing I had a world-class partner handling the IT portfolio was reassuring."
The bet: Maureen's umbrella. A buyer in trouble does not know yet whether they need an interim CIO. They know they need someone to look. So the door is the assessment, and the seats come after.
What it does: promotes your own Assessment, Mobilize, Shift to the hero, with timeframes. Addresses three buyers by title with the sentence each one is actually thinking.
The trade: the assessment is a smaller commitment than a seat, which lowers the barrier and may lower the price anchor. Worth discussing with Norm.
Interim when the chair is empty and the clock is running. Fractional when you need the judgment without the headcount. Either way, you get the partner.
Start a conversationThe bet: the buyer knows which kind of leader they need and wants to see you know the difference. Interim, fractional and virtual each get a card with the situation that calls for it.
What it does: gives CTO equal billing with CIO, which the search data demands and your current site does not do. Carries the Fractional 360 bridge as a module, because this is the one page where the bench is a direct answer to the buyer's question.
The trade: the title is a sentence, not a search term. Direction B fixes that.
Not a managed service provider with a CIO title on the invoice. A dozen partners who have run technology at companies you know, available by the quarter.
Talk to a partnerOurs have no stack. No platform to push, no implementation arm to feed, no reseller margin. The recommendation is the only product. That is what candid means.
The bet: the buyer typed "virtual CIO" into Google, landed on a page of managed service providers, and is looking for the one that is not an MSP. This page is that one.
What it does: puts the highest-interest terms in the title and the URL. Draws the contrast with MSPs directly, because that is who ranks for this term today. Includes "when not to," which is the candor claim made real.
The trade: reads more like a search page than a firm page. Probably right for this URL and wrong for the home page.
Almost every engagement starts with an assessment, because we have never once found that the problem was exactly what the brief said it was.
Two to three weeks. We talk to the people doing the work, not just the people who hired us. You get a written read that is yours whether or not we continue, and it fits on a few pages because a finding that needs forty is not a finding.
Not a binder. The three to five decisions that matter, in the order they have to be made, with a name against each one. If one of them is a person, we say which seat and for how long.
We leave the organization better than we found it, which means the people who were there before us can run what we built. That is the part most firms skip, because it is the part that ends the engagement.
The bet: the big-firm story from the call, and the question of how to say it without saying it bluntly, have the same answer. Describe your process so specifically that the contrast is obvious.
What it does: keeps Assessment, Mobilize, Shift as the spine, because it is already yours. Adds timeframes and what the client keeps. Ends with three things you will not do, which is the candor claim in practice.
Source lines, all from the 18th: "almost every assignment starts with an assessment." "People, process, technology, in that order," from the wall. "A condensed, applicable package." "Help you learn to fix your own problems."
Ran technology at Skype and Yahoo. Enterprise change management through the web, SaaS and cloud transitions. Interim and fractional seats for companies at inflection points.
The chair I hold, the chair I do not, and the situations that call for one. Same structure as Greg's page: what is owned, what is deliberately not, and one specific engagement.
[One engagement, told in full. What he walked into, what he did, one number, where it is now.]
The bet: every outreach note ends by linking to a page like this. Greg's is built. The structure works for anyone who has held the seat, which is the whole bench.
What it does: shows the shape with Lars as the example. Headline and subtitle are drawn from his public roles and his own stickies: enterprise change management, companies at inflection points. Body copy waits for his interview.
Three fixes carried over from Greg's page: the placeholder stat counters come out, the footer reads Innovative Group rather than a tool name, and the whole page is in first person.
Not on this page: a rate. Whether the profile pages carry pricing is a decision for you and Norm, not a default.
One piece a month. Written by the partner who has lived it, edited so it fits on a screen.
Sixteen earlier pieces on strategy, security and infrastructure, kept and dated. Nothing is deleted. Everything is labeled with when it was written, because a 2022 read on zero-day chaining is still useful and a reader deserves to know it is from 2022.
The bet: Someone on the call asked an AI assistant about the library and got "it's all old stuff." The fix is not deleting it. It is dating it and putting three current pieces ahead of it.
What it does: the three POVs from the readout, each with an owner and a month. The two existing pieces worth keeping in front, dated. The rest as a library with years on it.
The line at the top is "yes, we are old" from the wall, turned into a strength without saying the word, and it is the candor claim applied to the content itself.
We do not build AI. We help you decide what should be running, what it should cost, who owns it, and what to do about the tools your teams already installed without asking.
Start with an inventoryThe gap between the plan and the result is an organizational problem, not a technology one. It is the problem we have solved through the web, SaaS and cloud transitions, and it is the same problem again.
The bet: "AI governance" draws roughly twenty times the search interest of every fractional and interim term combined, and almost every result is either a vendor or a law firm. A former CIO saying "we do not build it, we help you govern it" is the answer that is not there.
What it does: leads with the framing from Friday, the board said go and nobody said where. Puts the headcount gap number on the page as the hook. Says "we do not" in the same breath as "we do," because the room was explicit on Friday that you do not do delivery.
Source: Friday's discussion: token usage, tools brought in too soon and allowed to run away, the headcount expectation nobody is thinking through organizationally. Every line here is that argument with the data attached.
Both firms want the StrataFusion site and Fractional 360 to tell one consistent story, and the synergy is real: same partners, same principles, same seats. Consistent does not mean everywhere. It means the same words in the same places, and absent where a buyer did not ask.
On the interim and fractional page, after the seats, a module that says the CIO you are hiring works alongside a CFO, CMO and CHRO who have also held the seat. This is the one place where the bench is a direct answer to the buyer's question, so it earns a full module.
Same module, same words, on fractional360's site, pointing back at the StrataFusion partners for the technology seats.
"Part of the Fractional 360 bench with Innovative Group," in the footer of every StrataFusion page. Present, findable, never in the way. On innovativegroup.io, the reciprocal: a partner card for StrataFusion on the partners page, with the technology seats named.
Each partner profile lives on stratafusion.com. The identical page, same words and same proof, lives on the Fractional 360 site as that partner's chair. One source, two doors, no drift. Built once.
The first thirty seconds are about their problem and your seat. Fractional 360 is a discovery on the way down the page, not a pitch at the top. Putting it in the hero dilutes the headline you just voted for.
A buyer with a breach or a deal closing does not need to hear about a coordinated C-suite. The footer line is enough. The lane page is where the bench is relevant.
The Fractional 360 principles and your starred lines matched six for six. Those six sentences appear on both sites in the same words. That is the consistency both sides are after, and it costs nothing because you already agree.
Or a combination. "A's headline with C's process block" is a perfectly good answer. We are looking for a direction, not a design review. Say which one felt right in the first five seconds.
This one has a real trade in it. Direction B ranks and reads like a search page. Direction A reads like your firm and ranks less. We lean B for this URL and A for everywhere else, and we want your read.
The search data says it is the highest-demand page you could publish. Joseph owns the lane. If the answer is yes, it and the headcount POV go first in the build order.
Two asks from the readout still stand alongside these: mark up the four headlines, and a name on the lane. The full list, with what is done crossed out, is on the portal home. Mark up any page, or reply to the email. Either works.
Sources for section 02: Google Trends, United States, past twelve months, two comparison sets, run September 25, 2026. LinkedIn posting counts are live searches linked from the kickoff page. Headcount figures: CIO.com 2025 AI Priorities Study (53 percent), McKinsey 2026 and EY 2025 (14 to 17 percent). Monthly search bands are estimates pending Keyword Planner access and are labeled as such above.