MARKHAM
About Markham

Built for the space between the boardroom and the operation.

Markham is a strategy, transformation and implementation consultancy for organisations between $50M and $500M — the segment the industry advises and then abandons.

2022Founded, after fifteen years inside the problem
214Programmes in the outcome dataset we publish from
60+Applications of Draw · Hold · Release since 2023
84%Median value retained under our implementation oversight
01 — Why Markham exists

Advice that ends at the recommendation is not advice.

Mid-market organisations are offered either the strategy house that leaves before implementation, or the systems integrator that implements without strategy. The value dies in the handoff between them.

Markham holds the whole arc — diagnosis, strategy, architecture and implementation oversight — and publishes the evidence base it works from, so the thinking can be audited before it is paid for.

02 — Philosophy

Six principles, held in writing

Every engagement letter cites them. Clients are invited to hold us to the text.

ITake a position

We are paid for judgment, not for options papers. Every engagement ends with what we would do, and why.

IIQuantify everything

A recommendation without a number and a baseline is an opinion. Ours come priced and verifiable.

IIIFewer, held commitments

Three commitments or fewer per phase. Sequenced, not shrunk. The stop list is part of the strategy.

IVStay until it is verified

An outcome is delivered when it passes audit against the month-0 baseline — not when the deck says so.

VPublish the method

Our frameworks and research are public. A method that only works when we are in the room is not a method.

VISmall teams, senior people

No leverage pyramid. The people who diagnose are the people who deliver.

03 — How we work

Draw. Hold. Release.

Every engagement runs on the operating model we publish: a controlled draw (diagnosis and loading), a deliberate hold (testing under review), and a full-force release (execution with oversight). Weekly outcome reviews, verified baselines, and a stop list maintained as carefully as the commitment list.

The operating model
Draw
Hold
Release
04 — The partnership

Senior people, small teams

The partners spent their careers inside the problem — leading operations in mid-market groups and running transformation programmes as clients of the major consultancies. The firm is built on what those years taught: the recommendation was rarely the constraint; the follow-through was.

A partner leads every diagnostic and chairs the outcome review of every active engagement. No work is handed down a pyramid.

100%of diagnostics led at partner level
≤ 5people on a typical engagement team
0layers between the team and the decision
05 — Structure

One group, two disciplines

Markham owns strategy, architecture and oversight. HolisticAutomation, the group's engineering arm, owns systems delivery. One accountable partner from first diagnosis to running system — no handoff, no arbitration between advisor and integrator.

MARKHAMStrategy · Architecture · Oversight
Single accountability
HolisticAutomationEngineering · Systems · Delivery
06 — The long term

The ambition is not scale. It is authority.

Over the next decade Markham intends to hold the definitive outcome dataset for mid-market transformation — and to keep publishing it, so the standard of evidence in this industry rises whether or not we are hired.

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