Cash first. Then the plan.
Costs are high and tolerance is short. When a business is slipping, the weeks lost deciding who should lead the fix are weeks it cannot spare.
What the pressure looks like
The warning signs are usually visible before the crisis:
Tax and super arrears are building
Overdue obligations pile up quietly, and every week they run narrows the options open to the business.
Cash is a guess
Nobody knows next month's balance, and decisions are made on what the bank shows today.
Directors need a plan they can stand behind
Directors of a business under strain carry real personal risk, and every decision they take needs a credible plan behind it.
Creditors are running out of patience
Every conversation is a negotiation, and the business has no credible plan to put on the table.
A fractional executive takes control of cash early in the engagement. They build the weekly forecast, open the conversations with lenders and suppliers, and write the plan your advisers and directors need. If the answer is a formal process, they say so early.
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 boards under pressure get from us
A turnaround needs one operator in charge of cash and a steady structure around them. We supply both.
Governance under pressure
We check in with the directors and the executive on a tight, regular rhythm, and say plainly when the plan is slipping.
Specialists when the problem widens
Your executive can draw on our collective of 800+ when a lender negotiation, a supplier dispute or a people restructure needs another experienced head.
Continuity through the process
A change of executive mid-plan is handled by us: we run the replacement search from the brief on file and manage the handover, so the plan keeps moving.
Matched for pressure
We look for operators who have run cash through a crisis before and can stay calm in front of lenders.
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 Sydney provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.
