Fractional Executive Search

When the business needs more than advice. It needs someone in the seat.

A business in difficulty does not need a diagnosis. It usually already has one. It needs an experienced operator with the authority to act, and it needs them this month.

A senior executive at a high-rise window above the city skyline at dusk, composed under pressure
The situation

What a business in difficulty is usually facing

Rarely one thing. Almost always several at once:

01

Cash visibility measured in days

Nobody can say with confidence what the position is in six weeks, which makes every decision a gamble.

02

Lenders and creditors losing patience

Banks and family shareholders want a credible plan, and the last one did not hold.

03

The team knows and nobody is saying it

Uncertainty is more corrosive than bad news, and the best people leave first.

04

The founder is too close to it

Which is not a criticism. It is why an outside operator is the right answer.

We place operators who have run a business through this before. They take the seat, get cash under control, rebuild the plan and have the conversations the founder cannot have alone. On a company-to-company services contract, so the arrangement ends cleanly when the business is stable.

Is it the right fit?

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
A low-key boardroom with a single shaft of light, the city skyline at night

Decisions made early, while they still change the outcome.

Why Fractional Jeddah

What makes the model different here

Most fractional executives work alone. We are a vetted collective, and we stay with the engagement rather than stepping away after the introduction.

1 monthNotice, either way
350+Curated and vetted executives
2–3 weeksBrief to deployment
30–60%Less than a full-time hire, on our engagements

We do not introduce and leave

Support, structure and governance stay around the placement for as long as it runs. If the engagement drifts, that is our problem to fix, not yours to discover.

The collective behind one placement

Your executive draws on the whole collective of 350+. A finance question that turns out to be an operations question gets the right answer either way.

Continuity is designed in

If your executive has to step away, we hand over to another vetted operator already briefed on your business. Momentum is protected by design rather than by luck.

Matched on judgement, not on a CV

We match on stage, sector and temperament. In Jeddah in particular, an operator who cannot read the room will cost you more than the one you did not hire.

How it works

The turnaround engagement

Each engagement moves from crisis to recovery with structured urgency.

01

Rapid assessment (week 1)

Financial position, operational status, commercial pipeline and team capability, mapped with a structured diagnostic framework.

02

Priority triage (week 2)

The 3–5 interventions that will have the most impact on stabilisation are identified and begun. Ruthless prioritisation.

03

Stabilisation (weeks 3–8)

Cash flow is visible and managed. Acute operational failures resolved. Lenders or investors briefed with a credible recovery narrative.

04

Recovery (month 2 onwards)

Processes rebuilt. Commercial momentum recovered. Financial infrastructure strengthened. Business guided from crisis to sustainable operation.

Match the symptom to the operator

Turnaround triage

The leadership a situation calls for depends on where the business is breaking.

The symptom
The leadership need
The symptomCash flow crisis
The leadership needFractional CFO
The symptomDelivery failure
The leadership needFractional COO
The symptomRevenue decline
The leadership needFractional CRO
The symptomTeam instability
The leadership needFractional CHRO
The symptomTechnology failure or systems risk
The leadership needFractional CTO
The symptomLender or investor pressure
The leadership needA fractional CFO and COO together
Our fractional services

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.

Proven leadership

Restructuring experience from

Alvarez & Marsal
AlixPartners
FTI Consulting
McKinsey & Company
Deloitte
PwC
KPMG
Houlihan Lokey
Common questions

The questions buyers ask first

For a genuine turnaround we move faster than our normal two to three weeks. Tell us the position honestly and we will tell you plainly whether we can help and how quickly.

No. The engagement is a retainer, invoiced company to company. Our incentive is to fix the business and leave, not to hold a position in it.

Only as you choose. Many businesses present the appointment as strengthening the leadership team, which is exactly what it is. Lenders in particular usually take it as a positive signal.

Related

Other moments we cover

Fractional Jeddah provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.

Get started

Move at the speed the situation demands.

Tell us what is happening. We will match a turnaround-experienced operator and have them moving within days, not after a recruitment process.

Book an urgent turnaround call