Yes, if the recurring problem is how decisions get made and work moves between people. A fractional operations leader can take responsibility for fixing that process while your team keeps delivering. First, establish why the work keeps coming back.
I was reviewing an operator's work on project ownership and timelines. My question was simple: what was the benefit?
A clearer process needs to do something useful for the business. Otherwise, you've bought a nicer description of the same problem.
The part I wanted to get concrete was coordination waste:
“Can we cut meetings? Can we get people information they need so decisions don't reopen? Can we involve the right people early in projects so we're not fixing things downstream?”
Find the decision that keeps coming back
Imagine your team agrees on a project, starts the work, then discovers that the person responsible for delivering it couldn't meet the promised timeline. Now everyone has to go back and agree again.
Putting another status meeting on the calendar doesn't resolve how that promise got made without the right input.
Look at the last project where this happened. What decision got reopened? What information was missing the first time? Who needed to be involved, and when did they actually get involved?
Those answers give an operator something specific to change. They can define what has to be known before work starts, who makes the decision, and which changes genuinely justify reopening it.
You aren't trying to prevent people from changing their minds when new facts appear. You're trying to stop paying for the same avoidable misunderstanding twice.
Test the change on real work
In that review, I wanted the operator to connect the work to throughput and productive employee hours.
For your business, start with a baseline you can check: how often decisions reopen because required input arrived late, how much work gets redone, and what that does to delivery dates. Then test the revised process on actual projects.
Fractional fits when this is a recurring problem across the work, your team can handle delivery, and you need experienced leadership to put a better process into use. If one project simply needs another pair of hands, buy that instead.
Ask the candidate to walk you through one project before and after their proposed changes. Where does the repeated work disappear?
That's a more useful answer than “we'll improve collaboration.”