The Fractional IG Experience: What the First 90 Days Actually Looks Like
- Steve Golden
- Apr 22
- 3 min read
The question I hear most often after someone decides to engage fractional IG isn't "when do we start?" It's "what exactly are you going to be doing?"
That's a fair question. The fractional model is still new enough that most organizations don't have a mental picture of what it looks like in practice. They understand the concept — senior IG expertise without a full-time hire. What they don't know is what it actually feels like from the inside, and what they'll have at the end of ninety days.
So here’s what the first 90 days might look like:
Days 1–30: Understand Before You Act
The first thirty days are diagnostic. Not because I don't know what to do — but because every organization's information problem is different, and the worst thing I could do is arrive with a predetermined playbook.
In month one, I'm doing three things simultaneously.
I'm interviewing your key stakeholders. Legal, IT, HR, compliance, operations — whoever generates, manages, or relies on information. I'm asking them what they do, what systems they use, what keeps them up at night, and — critically — what they've been told to ignore.
I'm inventorying your information environment. Where do your records actually live? SharePoint, Google Drive, an on-premise server nobody remembers setting up, email archives that stretch back twelve years? Most organizations are surprised by what this surfaces.
I'm reading the regulatory landscape. What compliance obligations apply to your industry and your data? Does a records retention schedule exist — and if it does, when was it last reviewed?
At the end of thirty days, you have a clear picture of where you stand, assessed against ARMA's Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles®. Not a vague sense of "we need to do better." A specific, prioritized inventory of gaps — with the regulatory and business rationale for addressing each one.
Days 31–60: Build the Foundation
With the assessment in hand, month two is about building. The specific deliverables depend on what the assessment found, but the work typically falls into three areas.
Policy infrastructure. If your records management policy is missing, outdated, or aspirational — written once and never adopted — we fix that. Policies nobody follows are worse than no policy at all. They create a paper trail of non-compliance. What I build is policy your people can actually use.
Retention schedule development. This is the most technically demanding work, and the most consequential. A legally defensible retention schedule maps every record series your organization creates or receives to a retention period, the legal authority behind it, and a disposition action. Done right, it's the document that lets you destroy records confidently — and defend that decision — when the time comes.
Governance structure. Someone has to own this after I'm gone. In month two, we identify who that is, clarify their role, and start building the habits and decision-making touchpoints that make IG sustainable.
Days 61–90: Implement and Embed
Policy documents and retention schedules are only valuable if people use them. Month three is where we move from building to embedding.
That means targeted, role-specific training for the people who manage records daily — not a one-hour compliance webinar that nobody remembers next week. It means working with your IT team to configure your systems to reflect the policies we've built. It means establishing the governance cadence: how often you review the retention schedule, who handles legal holds, how new record types get added to the framework.
By day ninety, your organization has something most mid-market companies don't: a documented, implemented, defensible IG program — with an owner, a process for keeping it current, and a clear record of how decisions were made.
What You Actually Have at the End
Three months of fractional IG executive engagement doesn't just give you deliverables. It gives you a foundation — the kind that makes the next regulatory inquiry survivable, the next litigation hold manageable, and the next system migration something you can approach with confidence instead of dread.
And if you need ongoing support after the initial engagement — quarterly retention schedule reviews, guidance on new regulatory developments, someone to call when something complicated comes up — the relationship continues at whatever level makes sense for your organization.
This is what senior IG leadership actually looks like. Not a binder on a shelf. Not a vendor relationship. An embedded, working partnership that leaves your organization genuinely better at governing its information.
Call to Action:
Ready to see what this looks like for your organization? Let's talk. No obligation — just a straight conversation about where you are and what it would take to get where you need to be.
Comments