Fathom Practice
FATHOMPRACTICESound judgement in deep water

Wellington · Aotearoa New Zealand

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

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

  • Regulatory leaders
  • Government leaders
  • Boards and executives
  • Cross-sector groups
Book an initial soundingSee how Fathom works

Thirty minutes. No charge. Bring the thing that isn’t sitting right. We work out whether Fathom can help.

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 in a slightly different form.

  • Assurance is green and the room is still uneasy.

  • A decision will bind successors, and nobody can say what it assumes.

  • The strategy is agreed and the practice underneath it has not moved.

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

Start with the situation, not a service list.

The work usually starts in one of four places. Choose the closest one. The exact shape is something we settle together.

01

We can’t agree what is really happening

Likely work

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

What is happening, what is assumed, what remains uncertain, and which question needs an answer first.

What you leave with

A written reading of the situation, the assumptions underneath it, and the next questions to settle.

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

Discuss this in an initial sounding

02

The strategy no longer fits the conditions

Likely work

Strategic 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

What the strategy is really answering, what would break it, and which signals are worth watching.

What you leave with

Explicit assumptions, choices, signals, owners, dates and a point at which to take another sounding.

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

Discuss this in an initial sounding

03

The decision matters, but the evidence is incomplete

Likely work

Decision framing and senior 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

What is being decided, where disagreement sits, and what the group can responsibly do next.

What you leave with

A decision the group can explain, a record of the reasoning, and next moves with names and dates.

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

Discuss this in an initial sounding

04

The regulator relationship is not working

Likely work

Regulatory experience and Rx

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

Where compliance is being won or lost, how the settings are landing, and what might change the relationship.

What you leave with

A clearer account of the regulated experience, the points of friction, and choices for what happens next.

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

Discuss this in 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.

Project

A defined question, a defined output and a defined end. Two to six weeks. The right shape when the answer must stand up outside the room it was made in.

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.

Book an initial sounding

Thirty minutes. No charge. Bring the thing that isn’t sitting right. We work out whether Fathom can help.

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.

More than thirty years in the New Zealand public service, including nearly a decade as Chief Advisor Strategy and Foresight 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.

  • Strategic foresight
  • Cynefin practitioner
  • Oxford Scenarios Programme
  • Regulation
  • Governance advisory
  • Executive facilitation

Practice brought to the work

  • Strategic foresight

  • Regulatory strategy

  • Governance advisory

  • Executive facilitation

  • Evaluation

  • Complexity practice

  • Workshops

  • Coaching

  • HIFO enabled sense-making to drive regulatory action-taking, developed 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. Cynefin trained through The Cynefin Co, the work of Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Co. NeuroLeadership Institute trained in coaching.
  • Member, Institute of Regulation, United Kingdom. Contributor, The Modern Regulator.

Fathom 8 · How we 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

Most organisations have an oversight problem, not a foresight problem.

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 move

Frame which water we are in. Anticipate how it will move. Translate the complexity into decisions people can act on. Hold the uncertainty without collapsing it too soon. Orient the response to the situation rather than to habit. Move. Then keep taking soundings, because the situation will not stay where we left it.

The four sights. Warner and Pink, published through the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, 2023.

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.

Constraint mapping here draws on Estuarine mapping, the work of Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Co.

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

    What regulation feels like from the receiving end, and why that experience decides compliance long before enforcement does. Warner and Pink, Policy Quarterly, volume 21, issue 4, November 2025.

    Read it

  • ANZSOG 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.

  • 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
  • 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.

Book an initial sounding

What happens next

  1. 01

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

  2. 02

    We 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

Three lines about what is not sitting right is enough. This comes straight to me. Nothing goes to a list.

Jurisdiction