THE LEDGER
MKM-R-2026-014New edition: The State of Mid-Market Transformation 2026
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MARKHAMConsultation
CapabilitiesCapability 01

Strategy

Direction-setting grounded in evidence. We help leadership decide where the organisation will compete and what it will stop doing, and we price both sides of that decision in numbers a board can hold us to afterwards. The stopping is the harder half. It is also the half most strategy work quietly leaves out.

Practice reference MKM-C-01Established 2022Led at partner levelGoverned by MKM-F-004 · MKM-F-003
01 — Problems we solve

When direction is contested, stale, or unpriced.

a

Growth has stalled and the honest explanation is structural, not commercial.

b

The portfolio has accumulated businesses, products or regions no one would choose today.

c

The leadership team holds three different strategies, each of them unwritten.

d

A major bet is coming, whether an acquisition, a market entry or a technology platform, and it needs a case that will survive contact with reality rather than merely surviving the board meeting.

02 — Deliverables
Position & portfolio assessment

Where the economics actually are, business by business. Revenue is the easy part. The work is in allocating cost and capital honestly down to the unit that earns it, which is where most portfolio reviews stop, because the allocation is contested, the contest is political, and the number that survives the argument is the only one a board will act on.

Strategy on a page

The choices, the logic and the numbers, signed by the executive team. If they will not sign it, it is not yet the strategy.

Quantified value case

Each choice priced, with the baseline it will be verified against. We build the pricing from the client’s own ledgers rather than from the plan.

Sequenced execution path

Drawn phases, three commitments or fewer per phase. That ceiling is what clients push back on hardest, and we keep it, because a phase carrying twice that number has no spare capacity for the one thing that always goes wrong.

03 — Process
Wk 1–3
Diagnosis

Primary data, unit economics, structured interviews. No workshops yet. What we need from the client in the first week is access to the transaction data and the finance model behind it, and that is the item that slips most often, because the data usually sits with several people who each believe someone else owns it.

Wk 4–6
Options

Three genuinely different paths, each priced, each with a kill test. None of them is the status quo dressed up.

Wk 7–8
Decision

A working session with the executive team. We take a position; the team decides.

Wk 9+
Draw

The first phase is loaded and the strategy moves to execution.

04 — Evidence & standards

The practice is governed, not improvised.

Standards appliedEvery recommendation carries a verified baseline (Verification Standard, MKM-F-003) and moves to execution through Draw · Hold · Release (MKM-F-004).
Outcome evidence2.1× median return on redeployed capital across strategy engagements, 2024–2026, audited at month 24. A median means half of those engagements returned less than that. We quote the median because the best case is not what a board is buying.
ReferencesNamed client references for this practice are available on request, subject to clearance.
DocumentationDiagnostic instruments and workshop formats are published in the framework library. Nothing proprietary is needed to audit our logic.