Businesses do not need more ideas: they need movement. Grant Webster is a fractional CEO and COO based in Cape Town. He joins leadership teams to set priorities, lead people and take accountability for performance and delivery, without the business having to make a permanent C-suite appointment. He works with founders, CEOs and boards who are navigating growth, complexity and change, and he is also a global executive coach and non-executive director.
He has built, scaled and turned around businesses from the inside. Before founding Gralen Consulting, he was a founding executive at a major South African ecommerce retailer. He has held C-suite leadership roles in national retail, ecommerce and tech businesses. In a career spanning more than 20 years, he has worked with businesses in a wide range of sectors, including retail, ecommerce, FMCG, technology, media, healthcare, and food and packaging. In 2014, he founded Gralen Consulting to work with founders and leadership teams through growth, turnaround and scale.
Today, he steps in as fractional CEO or COO when a business needs experienced executive leadership and accountability for delivery. He also coaches and mentors founders, CEOs and senior leadership teams, and has coached and mentored hundreds of founders and executives across South Africa, the UK, Europe, the US, Asia and Africa. He serves boards and shareholders as a non-executive director, chair, shareholder representative and adviser, bringing governance, strategic oversight and independent commercial perspective. He advises founders and shareholders through capital raises, transactions and exits, and advises global investors on the South African retail and ecommerce market.
His results come from the operator’s seat, not the sidelines. As an executive in South African retail and ecommerce, he helped to scale one business 20x to more than R1bn in revenue and another 10x to over R700m. As a fractional CEO and COO, he transformed a R54m business from negative EBITDA to a R165m exit within three years, delivering 45% compound annual growth. In a separate engagement, he scaled a R120m business to R300m in two years. He has also led turnarounds, restructures and acquisitions, returning loss-making operations to stability and delivering shareholder returns of more than 10x EBITDA.
His MOVE framework (Motivate, Opportunity, Value, Evolve) rests on a simple belief: clarity creates momentum. He is a member of Civitas, Fractionals United and Suits & Sneakers. He is also the founder of Fractionation and of Fractionals SA, the country’s only fractional executive community. Through both, he gives clients access to hundreds of experienced C-suite executives when a business needs more than one leader can bring.
Grant is not interested in being a passive adviser. He asks hard questions, holds leaders to what they commit to and leaves every decision with them. If you are ready to move, so is he.
