01Cost Transformation
Structural versus discretionary, separated properly, so the saving is still there in eighteen months.
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Transformation Consulting
We stay until the business runs the new way.
Cost, growth and operating model change — scoped with your leaders, handed to your leaders, and measured after we have gone.
The practice
We change how a business runs — cost structure, operating model, the way work moves through it — and we stay until it is running that way.
Most transformation programmes are handed over at the point of maximum fragility: the design is agreed, the change has been announced, nothing has been absorbed. We hand over later than that, to named owners, and we measure afterwards. It is the least commercially convenient way to structure this work and the only version that holds.
Start here
We hand over later than is commercially convenient.
Most transformation programmes are handed over at the point of maximum fragility: the design is agreed, the change has been announced, and nothing has been absorbed. The consultants leave, the organization reverts, and everyone involved describes the programme as a success.
We hand over after it is running, to named owners, and we come back to look at whether it held. It is the least commercially convenient way to structure this work. It is also the only version that survives a year.
- Cost transformation
Core - Separating structural cost from discretionary so the reduction survives the next budget.
- Operating model
Core - How work moves, who owns it, and what the organization stops doing.
- Growth & commercial
Core - Where the next increment of revenue comes from and what has to change to serve it.
- Integration
Core - Post-merger operating model and the decisions that cannot be deferred.
- Strategy decks
Not us - We do not produce a recommendation without a delivery plan attached.
- Benchmarking
Not us - Benchmarks are an input. We do not sell them as a deliverable.
What we are actually solving
Programmes do not fail at the end. They fail at month nine.
Two things get called “progress” and they are not the same thing. One is how much has been built. The other is how many people have changed how they work. They track together for about eight months, and then they stop — and almost no reporting pack is set up to show it.
- Reported progress — milestones, RAG status
- Adopted change — people working the new way
Months 1–3
Everything is green, and it is true.
Workstreams stand up, the steering committee meets, milestones land on time. Reported progress and real change are still the same number — because at this stage the work is design, and there is nothing to adopt yet.
Nothing to see. This phase is genuinely fine, which is exactly why nobody instruments it.
We take the adoption baseline now, while it is cheap and nobody is defensive about the answer.
Runs on its own. Click any phase to hold it there.
What we do
Four ways this practice is bought.
Most engagements start as one of these and grow into a second. None of them are productised — the shape is set in the first two weeks.
02Operating Model
How work moves through the business, and what it stops doing.
03Growth & Commercial
Where the next increment comes from and what has to change to serve it.
04Delivery & Handover
Running the change to adoption and handing it to your leaders rather than your consultants.
Our thinking
What we pride ourselves on.
Three of these are true of every Taidou engagement regardless of practice. They are also the three things we are most often told are unusual — which says more about the industry than about us.
The person who scopes it runs it.
There is no handoff between the team that wins the work and the team that does it. If you met someone in the first conversation, you will still be dealing with them in the last one. This is the single thing clients tell us they notice first.
We write down what we are not doing.
Every engagement starts with a scope that names the things we have deliberately excluded and why. It makes the first conversation harder and every conversation after it easier.
We stay past the point it is comfortable.
Most firms hand over when the design is agreed and the change has been announced — the moment of maximum fragility. We hand over to named owners after it is running, and we come back to check.
Where this lands
The industries we bring Transformation Consulting to.
Related thinking
What we have published on this.
Research
Interoperability isn't a compliance deadline. It's a business model.
CMS-0057-F is being treated as a date to survive. The organizations treating it as an operating decision are the ones still compounding on it in three years.
ResearchWhy transformation programmes stall at month nine
WorkBack-office migration across three delivery centres
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