Home/About Taidou
Who we are
We do the hard part alongside you, and we stay until it holds.
A management consulting firm built deliberately small and senior — so the person who understands your problem is the person doing the work, from the first conversation to the last.
The firm
Built around one structural decision.
Most consulting firms are pyramids: partners sell, managers translate, analysts produce. It is an efficient way to run a large firm and a poor way to serve a client, because by the time the work reaches you the person who understood the problem best is three layers away from it.
Taidou is built flat, on purpose. There is no bench, no junior intake and no handoff between the team that wins the work and the team that does it. That constrains how much we take on at once, which we treat as a feature — and it is why every practice page on this site names the work we decline before it names the work we want.
We work with organizations in complex, regulated industries on the problems that sit between strategy and operations: too operational for a strategy house, too consequential for a staffing firm.
Three practices
One firm, three ways in.
Taidou
The consulting practice — eight service lines across eleven industries, for organizations in complex, regulated sectors.
02Taidou Atlas
The startup practice. Founders, investors and service providers, run through the Exchange.
03Taidou Government & Public Services
Public-sector delivery, held to procurement, oversight and the public record rather than around them.
Where we are
Six offices, three countries.
Engagements run wherever the work is. Where presence is genuinely required, we are on site — a scheduling question rather than a question of where we keep a lease.
Delivery is not restricted to these locations. Client teams travel, and remote delivery is the default where being on site would add cost without adding judgement.
What sets us apart
Three decisions most firms do not make.
Senior expertise
No junior analysts, no handoffs. The people in the first meeting are the people doing the work. The rest of the firm is designed around that constraint.
Industry focus
Eleven industries, chosen because we can argue with your own team about them. Where we would be learning on your budget, we say so and point elsewhere.
Results focus
We measure success by implementation, not deliverables. Engagements are structured around adoption — which is why we hand over later than is commercially convenient.
Who you would be working with
Ken Thompson
Managing Partner
Twenty-eight years in program management consulting, specialising in the strategic planning and execution of PMOs, complex program management and program delivery. On a Taidou engagement the Managing Partner is in the first conversation and the last one — that is the structure, not a courtesy extended to large accounts.
Our commitments and objectives
Six commitments, each with the objective that tests it.
A commitment nobody can be caught failing is a slogan. Each of these is paired with a measurable objective, so there is something to hold us to rather than something to admire.
Senior-led delivery
The people in the first conversation are the people doing the work. No junior intake, no bench, no handoff between the team that wins the work and the team that runs it.
No engagement is staffed below senior level, and a named senior is present in every client meeting.
Named scope, named exclusions
Every engagement begins with what we are deliberately not doing, written down. It makes the first conversation harder and every conversation after it easier.
Every statement of work carries an explicit out-of-scope list, agreed before work starts.
Handover after adoption
We hand over once the change is running, to named owners inside your organization — not at the point the design is agreed and nothing has been absorbed.
No engagement closes at design. Each closes with named owners and a follow-up review we schedule ourselves.
Independence from vendors
We take no referral fees, reseller margins or commissions from any platform, provider or investor. It is what lets us tell you the answer is not to buy anything.
Zero third-party fee income, disclosed in every proposal.
Decline what we would learn on
We work in eleven industries because those are the ones where we can argue with your own team. Elsewhere we say so.
When we decline, we name the firms better suited to it.
Publish what we cannot do
Restricted and specialist work — statutory audit, legal advice, clinical judgement — is named at the top of each practice page, not in a footer.
Every service and industry page carries a published does-not-cover list.
How we are organized
One entity. Plainly stated.
Taidou LLC is a management consulting firm headquartered in Plano, Texas, with offices in Chicago, Boston, Albuquerque, London and Manila. Services are delivered by Taidou LLC. Taidou Atlas and Taidou Government & Public Services are practices of Taidou LLC, not separate companies.
We do not provide legal, tax or attest services, and nothing on this site constitutes legal, tax, investment, accounting or other professional advice. We are not a member of an international network, we do not operate franchised offices, and no other firm delivers work under the Taidou name. If you are dealing with someone who says otherwise, tell us.
Taidou Answer
Start from the problem.
Describe it in your own words and we will route it to the person who has handled it before.