Steady the company first. Then decide what the company should become.
A company in trouble needs one person who sees the whole picture and acts. Time is what runs out first.
The warning signs of a business under pressure
The warning signs usually show well before the crisis:
Less cash than the accounts suggest
Profit on paper, yet a bank balance that cannot meet payroll and SARS together.
Lenders and suppliers want answers
The bank, the landlord and a critical supplier all want a straight answer, and management is not agreed on what to say.
Business rescue is on the table
A formal rescue is one option, and the decision to use it or avoid it has to be made quickly and well.
Nobody believes the plan any more
The best people go first, and that makes any plan harder to deliver.
An interim executive takes charge of cash, speaks to those who need a credible voice and writes the plan. They work with your lawyers and rescue practitioners and, where the company can be saved, help you save it.
Who this is for, and who it is not
Best for
- A cash crisis that needs visibility and control now
- A business in operational or financial distress
- Lender or investor pressure that needs a credible plan
- A leadership vacuum that has stalled key decisions
- Stabilising the business before planning recovery
Not for
- A business that only needs advice or a written report
- A situation whose primary need is a formal insolvency practitioner
- A stable business planning improvements at its own pace
- A one-off review with no mandate to act
What a company under strain gets
Interim leadership in a crisis is familiar to South African lenders and boards. We choose an operator who can take in the whole picture, and keep governance around the work.
Governance under pressure
The board hears from us at fixed points, and we say early when cash and plan pull apart.
Specialists behind the operator
Lenders, SARS or a rescue practitioner: the operator can call on others in the collective who have dealt with each.
Continuity if the operator changes
Should the operator have to leave, we run a fresh search from what we already know and brief the board throughout.
Matched for steadiness
In a crisis, staff, lenders and suppliers read the operator first. We match for calm authority.
The turnaround engagement
Each engagement moves from crisis to recovery with structured urgency.
Rapid assessment (week 1)
Financial position, operational status, commercial pipeline and team capability, mapped with a structured diagnostic framework.
Priority triage (week 2)
The 3–5 interventions that will have the most impact on stabilisation are identified and begun. Ruthless prioritisation.
Stabilisation (weeks 3–8)
Cash flow is visible and managed. Acute operational failures resolved. Lenders or investors briefed with a credible recovery narrative.
Recovery (month 2 onwards)
Processes rebuilt. Commercial momentum recovered. Financial infrastructure strengthened. Business guided from crisis to sustainable operation.
Turnaround triage
The leadership a situation calls for depends on where the business is breaking.
The roles a turnaround usually calls for.
For a complex turnaround, we can deploy more than one operator at once and layer in further specialists as recovery progresses.
Restructuring experience from
The questions buyers ask first
Fractional Johannesburg provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.
