what Marcus is doing now

I started Salamander 360 in early 2019, after eight years at a consultancy in Bristol where I learned a lot about how organisations work and a fair amount about how consultancies don't. The name came from a conversation about peripheral vision. Salamanders have nearly 360-degree sight. They see what's coming from the side. That felt right for what I wanted to do: help organisations see the things they're too close to notice.

The first two years were genuinely difficult. I had one anchor client, a housing association in the Midlands, and I spent a lot of time wondering if I'd made a mistake. The pandemic turned out to be, oddly, the thing that clarified the work. Organisations suddenly needed to think clearly under pressure, and they needed someone who wasn't inside the building. By late 2020 I had more work than I could take on, and I had to make a decision about whether to grow or stay small. I stayed small. I think that was right.