Skip to content
Fathom PracticeFathom Practice

Wellington · Aotearoa New Zealand based | Working Trans Tasman and internationally

Decide and respond with confidence when the regulatory context won’t hold still.

I work with regulators, government leaders, boards and executives on the questions where the evidence no longer settles the answer.

Core offerings

  • Strategy
  • Applied foresight
  • Sense-making
  • Workshop facilitation
  • Advisory
  • Regulatory leaders
  • Government leaders
  • Boards and executives
  • Front line decision makers
  • Functional teams
  • Cross-sector groups
Request an initial soundingSee how Fathom works

Thirty minutes. No charge. Send the form and I’ll reply by email to arrange a time.

What Fathom does

Fathom helps organisations and individuals explore, expand and surface options in a white water world.

  • Explore

    Look past the option in front of you to the futures that would change it.

  • Expand

    Widen the set beyond the two or three choices already on the table.

  • Surface

    Bring what the situation is already asking for into view.

When to call

When the usual pattern stops working.

This work usually begins with a quiet signal, not a crisis. The same issue keeps returning to the agenda. Assurance is green and the room is still uneasy. The strategy is agreed and the practice underneath it has not moved.

What I bring to that signal is a set of core offerings, set out beside.

Core offerings

  • Strategy. Development, review and measurement. I help boards and executives test the direction, settle the choices and carry them into delivery.

  • Applied foresight. I explore the futures that would change the plan, and what to watch so the plan holds longer. Practitioner trained, not speculative.

  • Sense-making. I bring conflicting readings of a situation into one picture a group can act on, with the assumptions written down.

  • Workshop facilitation. I design and lead rooms where decision makers do the thinking together, and leave with a record they can use.

  • Advisory. I stand alongside senior leaders and advisory teams as the decisions arrive, not only in the workshop.

The proposition

Regulation is the stewardship of constraints in an uncertain world.

Regulators can’t govern for a future. We steward our way through uncertain futures. That starts with a reliable reading of the situation before choosing a response.

Fathom 2 · The work

Bring the question that will not settle

The work starts with a reading.

Three services, built on the same core offerings: sense-making, strategy development and review, applied foresight, and workshop facilitation. Each service is delivered as a workshop, a curated conversation or project, or focused advisory.

  • HIFO

    Sense-making for decision makers: reads what is happening across conflicting views and what action it calls for.

    Co-developed with Dr Grant Pink, published through the Australia and New Zealand School of Government.

  • Strategic Framing and Delivery

    Strategy development and delivery: shapes the choices, tests them against the futures that would change them, and carries them into practice. Includes Estuarine Mapping.

    Estuarine Mapping is the work of Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Co.

  • Rx

    The regulated experience: reads how your settings land on the people working under them.

    Co-developed with Dr Grant Pink. Policy Quarterly, Vol. 21(4), November 2025.

The four situations below show where I might begin with you.

01

The room cannot agree what is happening

Likely work

HIFO · Sense-making and a stewardship read

I bring the different readings into one place, test where confidence is running ahead of evidence, and put the system as it is being experienced into a form the group can use.

What it settles

Where the readings differ and which question needs an answer first.

What you leave with

A written reading of the situation with the assumptions it rests on.

Half a day to two days · Board, executive or leadership team

Ask about an initial sounding

02

The strategy no longer fits the conditions

Likely work

Strategic Framing and Delivery · Foresight and strategy development

I help the people responsible test what has changed, explore the futures that would matter, and turn the strategy into choices that can be revisited as the evidence moves.

What it settles

Which conditions would change the strategy and what to watch for.

What you leave with

A set of choices with stated assumptions and a point to take another sounding.

A day or a defined project of two to six weeks · Board or executive team

Ask about an initial sounding

03

The decision matters, but the evidence is incomplete

Likely work

Strategic Framing and Delivery · Decision framing and facilitation

I frame the question and hold the room so the people who must carry the answer can examine the evidence, the values in play and the consequences of choosing.

What it settles

Where disagreement sits and what the group can responsibly decide.

What you leave with

A record of the reasoning and named next moves.

Ninety minutes to two days · Board, executive or cross-sector group

Ask about an initial sounding

04

The regulator relationship is not working

Likely work

Rx · Regulatory experience

I examine the law and settings as the people working under them actually meet them, including where a regulator and an organisation have formed different readings of the same relationship.

What it settles

How the settings land and where the relationship becomes difficult.

What you leave with

An account of the regulated experience and choices for what happens next.

One to three sessions · Board and executive · Rx with Dr Grant Pink

Ask about an initial sounding

How the work runs

Workshop

Your people in a room, drawing on the diversity already in it to widen the perspectives and options in front of decision makers. Half a day to two days. Right when the thinking has to be owned widely enough to survive the next restructure.

Curated Conversation or Project

A carefully convened conversation, or a defined question with a written output and end. A project might run two to six weeks. The right shape when the answer must stand up outside the room it was made in.

Focused Advisory

Me alongside you over a set period, on call as the decisions arrive. Sized by the month. The right shape when the pressure is continuous rather than concentrated.

You keep the reading, the assumptions underneath it, the signals worth watching and the next moves with a name and a date on each.

Fixed price, agreed in writing before I start, with a defined question, output and end.

Request an initial sounding

Thirty minutes. No charge. Send the form and I’ll reply by email to arrange a time.

Rob Warner working with participants seated around tables during a regulatory workshop.
The work happens with the people who have to carry the answer. Rob leads the room and leaves a record they can use.

Fathom 5 · Why Fathom

Why Fathom

Rob Warner, principal of Fathom Practice, in Wellington.
PrincipalRob Warner

Three decades navigating deep water.

Thirty years in the New Zealand public sector, including around a decade as Chief Advisor Strategy at Maritime New Zealand. I have sat on the inside of a regulator when the answer was not obvious, and I have carried the view the room did not want to hear. I work with boards and chief executives, with regulatory managers and advisory teams, and with cross-sector groups including industry and NGOs, in New Zealand, Australia and internationally.

Maritime New Zealand service message beside a carved manaia presented to Rob Warner
A record of service at Maritime New Zealand.
  • HIFO-enabled sense-making to drive regulatory action-taking, with Dr Grant Pink.
  • Guest faculty, Australia and New Zealand School of Government.
  • Certified Foresight Practitioner, The Futures School. Trained in the Oxford Scenarios Programme at Saïd Business School. Trained in Cynefin through The Cynefin Co; Cynefin is the work of Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Co. Trained in coaching through the NeuroLeadership Institute.
  • Member, Institute of Regulation, United Kingdom. Contributor, The Modern Regulator.

Fathom 8 · How I think

Four sights. One decision.

Hindsight learns from the past. Insight reads the patterns now. Foresight explores possible futures. Oversight stewards what matters.

The first three build understanding. Oversight is where leadership begins.

What earlier cases, reviews and near misses taught, and whether the next decision changed.

The distinction

Oversight is where foresight becomes a responsibility.

Foresight expands what could happen. Oversight decides what should happen. It weighs evidence alongside values, and it lets a leader hold a position in complexity.

The Fathom practice

FATHOM is the practice of sounding a problem before acting on it. A fathom measures depth. These six movements help me read the situation before choosing a response.

  1. Frame. See the system before the fix.
  2. Anticipate. Read the signals and the futures.
  3. Translate. Carry theory into practice, and back.
  4. Hold. Steady nerve, and space for others to think.
  5. Orient. Judge what matters now.
  6. Move. Turn judgement into proportionate action.

Fathom 10 · Beneath the surface

The four depths

One system, four readings. Each depth takes a different kind of evidence.

  1. 1fm

    What we report

    Compliance rates, case volumes, resolution times. The published surface of the system.

  2. 5fm

    What we assume

    The beliefs the system runs on. Who the regulated party is, what moves them, what counts as evidence.

  3. 10fm

    What is practised

    What frontline staff actually do when the rule is ambiguous, and what the regulated party has learned to expect.

  4. 20fm

    What it favours

    The behaviour the settings reward over time, including the behaviour nobody intended to reward.

The four depths, read as marks on a descending sounding line.

You cannot read depth from the surface. You take soundings.

Two panels. The chart, studying the water from above. The sounding, taken from within the water you are studying.
The chart and the sounding

The water is your regulatory context: the law, the market, the people you regulate, the politics, the technology and public expectations. It does not hold still while you study it.

The chart is the system as understood from above, which is what most reviews produce. The sounding is the system as experienced from within, measured here and now.

The chart tells you what the system is supposed to be. The sounding tells you what it is doing today, and what that means for the decision in front of you. My work is to take the sounding and put the reading in writing.

Where change is possible

Shift the system, don’t chase the target.

  • Fixed for now

    Statute, mandate, machinery of government. Work with it.

  • Movable, not by you alone

    Funding, ministerial appetite, industry norms. Your real leverage.

  • Moves too easily

    Sentiment, one loud voice. A warning, not a win.

This is Estuarine Mapping, used within Strategic Framing and Delivery. SenseMaker is a licensed product that Fathom does not supply.

Rob Warner facilitating a working session with regulatory practitioners.
A live question, worked in the room. The record comes from the thinking, not from a deck prepared afterwards.

Fathom 15 · Evidence

The thinking behind the practice

Each of these came out of the work and goes back into it. Rx sits under sense-making, the four sights and HIFO under how a decision gets read across time, and the capability and diplomacy pieces under a stewardship read.

  • Peer-reviewed journal article

    The regulated experience (Rx): describing it, distinguishing it, defining it

    Rx, co-developed with Dr Grant Pink, reads regulation from the receiving end. Warner and Pink, Policy Quarterly, volume 21, issue 4, November 2025.

    Read it

  • Australia and New Zealand School of Government editorial

    Navigating regulatory landscapes: four sights to advance regulatory practice and governance

    Hindsight, insight, foresight and oversight, set out in full. The mechanism behind the foresight work.

    Read it

  • ANZSOG editorial

    Recognising, responding, readying, building: uncertainty-based regulatory capability

    How an agency builds capability for conditions that will not hold still.

    Read it

  • ANZSOG editorial

    Regulatory diplomacy: the practitioner's path to agility and foresight

    For agencies whose harm crosses a border and whose counterpart sits in another jurisdiction.

    Read it

Fathom 17 · The Regulatory Clinic

A collaboration

The Regulatory Clinic

Think. Challenge. Share. Learn. Act.

A high-trust space for people carrying regulatory responsibility. You bring a live question, test it against three practitioner lenses and the experience of your peers, and leave with clearer choices and a next move. Two days, eighteen people, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, under the Chatham House Rule, with a group check-in six weeks later.

An independent collaboration between Fathom Practice, RECAP Consultants and With Purpose Solutions. Each remains an independent practice.

  • Portrait of Dr Grant Pink
    RECAP Consultants logo

    Dr Grant Pink

    RECAP Consultants

    Regulatory practice, capability and evaluation across Australia and internationally. Grant and I deliver seminars, webinars and applied work together, including Rx and HIFO.

    recapconsultants.com.au
  • Portrait of Adam Beaumont
    With Purpose Solutions logo

    Adam Beaumont

    With Purpose Solutions

    Work with leadership teams on direction and culture. Together we look at how organisations hold a course while the conditions keep moving.

    withpurpose.solutions
regulatoryclinic.com

Fathom 20 · Start

Start with an initial sounding.

Bring the thing that is not sitting right. Thirty minutes is usually enough to decide whether it needs a sounding, a piece of work, or no work at all.

If the regulatory context is settled and performing, I’ll say so.

Request an initial sounding

What happens next

  1. 01

    Bring the issue, the decision date and what has already been tried.

  2. 02

    I work out whether Fathom can help, and what form the work might take.

  3. 03

    If there is work to do, I set out the question, people, output, end point and fixed price in writing.

Write to Rob

To arrange an initial sounding, tell me what is not sitting right. Three lines is enough. The form records your enquiry so I can reply by email. You can also write to rob@fathompractice.com.

Jurisdiction

Only I read what you send. A line or two is enough; keep anything sensitive for the conversation.