Advisory for boards and founders · Brisbane
Growth stalls when a commercial promise, a product roadmap, and an engineering reality run on different clocks. We are retained to put them on one - uncommon depth across Product, Technology, and Commerce in a single executive seat, so the board, the build, and the P&L finally tell the same story.
We take the seat
Boards, founders, and executive teams when the commercial story, the product, and the stack have stopped agreeing - or never did. The strategy is clear enough to be expensive if it fails. You need a partner in the chairs, not a report about them.
We do not
Theatre. Slide-deck strategy that cannot survive contact with production. Extra hands. Advice from the hallway. If the work is a research project, or a board pack in search of a decision, we are the wrong firm.
01 - The practice
Most advisory can speak Product, or Technology, or Commerce. Almost none can hold all three with enough depth that the argument stops. That is the seat we take - and the reason we are retained.
01
P&L · Contracts · Go-to-market
Not a growth story operations cannot deliver. We sit with the P&L, the partner contracts, and the operating model until commercial intent and operational reality are the same document - stakeholders aligned, channels earning, turnarounds that hold.
02
Roadmap · Cadence · Adoption
Roadmaps that exist to hit a number, not to decorate a quarter. We tighten delivery until time-to-value is real (fourteen weeks to four), put OKRs on the work that matters, and take product into new markets without a launch that is only a launch on slides.
03
Architecture · Teams · Diligence
The stack and the team have to make the promise deliverable. Silos become cross-functional squads. Payment systems stay up. Diligence tells the board the truth before the deal does - including when the honest answer is no.
How the work runs
We are not a bench, and we are not a retainer that forgets why it started. Three ways in - then we step back when the seat is no longer the constraint.
01
The first conversation is the work, not a pitch. You bring what is stuck - growth, stack, delivery, or the idea that has to become real. We leave with a clear read on whether Aktuell is the right seat.
02
When the organisation needs the chairs occupied: commercial, product, technology - or the join between them - without hiring a permanent three-headed committee.
03
A launch, a restructure, a migration, a diligence. A defined outcome and a defined clock. Then the practice steps back.
02 - Proof in the work
Selected results. Same pattern each time: commercial, product, and technology moving as one - so the organisation could grow instead of arguing with itself.
01
A multi-channel payments operation was running fragmented teams, contracts, and P&Ls. One commercial vision. Teams restructured. Partner contracts renegotiated. $10M off annual operating expense. Growth held.
02
Product, engineering, and business systems needed a single cloud SaaS - not a portfolio of exceptions. The migration held every quarterly commitment. The platform took 16.6% of the market: more than 2,500 clients.
03
An experimental financial product existed as a blank canvas and a clock. Architecture, integration, and commercial launch in one motion. Eighty days later it was live and generating revenue - not a pilot slide.
03 - Who does the work
Jason Turnbull
Aktuell is a practice, not a slide shop. The work is done by Jason Turnbull - one of a small number of operators who have held Product, Technology, and Commerce with enough depth to be accountable in all three, not merely fluent in the vocabulary.
That is not a positioning line. It is a set of seats: EGM of Payments AU/NZ, Chief Product Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and CIO. The P&L, the roadmap, and the architecture had to agree because he was on the hook for them at the same time.
He is people-first and outcome-driven. He would rather restructure the team, renegotiate the contract, and ship the system than decorate a board pack. Boards and founders retain Aktuell for that reason - to grow the business, and to make an idea real, without theatre standing in for the work.
04 - The first conversation
The first conversation is a working session, not a pitch. Bring the growth target, the stack, the delivery risk, or the idea that has to become real. If we are the right seat, we will say so. If we are not, we will say that too.
Brisbane, QLD, Australia