Kindred has been named Best New Consultancy at the 2026 Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Awards, recognising the strength of our client relationships, the quality of our work and the distinctive way we’ve built our business.
The award was presented on 12 October at Grosvenor House in London, at a ceremony attended by more than 1,000 people from across the consulting industry, business and government.
For a small, specialist organisation design consultancy founded just six years ago, it was quite a moment.
Recognition from the industry
The MCA is the representative body for the UK’s leading management consulting firms, and its annual awards recognise outstanding work across the profession.
The awards are independently judged, with a rigorous process involving written submissions, structured assessment and interviews with finalists. In 2026, judges from business, academia, government and the media spent more than 200 hours interviewing finalists across the awards.
It’s this independent scrutiny that makes the recognition particularly meaningful.
In announcing Kindred’s win, the MCA highlighted our strong client relationships, investment in our people, commitment to learning and development, and sustainable growth since launching in 2020.
A different approach to consulting
We founded Kindred on a simple belief: that a small, senior consultancy could deliver work usually entrusted to much larger firms, without adopting the traditional consulting model.
That means staying deliberately specialist, working directly alongside clients and bringing senior experience to every engagement. Rather than arriving with ready-made answers, we help leadership teams work through difficult organisational choices, building the understanding and capability to make change stick.
Our award submission demonstrated how that approach works in practice.
We shared examples of our work helping leadership teams address complex challenges around operating models, organisation design, accountability and delivery.
We also explained how we’ve built Kindred itself: maintaining direct partner involvement in client work, investing in our team’s development, and growing primarily through repeat business and referrals.
The MCA’s published case study of Kindred explores our approach and client work in more detail.
A night to remember
The award was presented by broadcaster Amol Rajan and MCA Chief Executive Tamzen Isacsson, who hosted a fantastic evening celebrating the achievements of consulting firms and individuals from across the UK.
For Kindred’s co-founders, Michael Docherty and Rebecca Ferguson, hearing our name announced as the winner was a wonderful moment – and a chance to reflect on how far the business has come.
But this achievement belongs to more than the two of us. It’s a reflection of the brilliant people who’ve worked at Kindred over the years, and the clients who’ve trusted us to help them tackle some of their most difficult problems.
We’re enormously grateful to everyone who’s played a part.
Six years after starting Kindred, it’s particularly satisfying to see the approach we believed in recognised by the industry itself.
And we’re looking forward to what comes next.
Read the MCA’s official announcement of the 2026 award winners or follow Kindred on LinkedIn for more news and insights.
