Fathom Practice
Fathom Practice helps regulators and public bodies see what lies beneath the surface, and act well when the situation is complex and the stakes are high.
Wellington, New Zealand. Working across New Zealand and Australia.
The Practice
Most engagements combine a few of these. All of them start with the problem you actually have.
Temporal intelligence for regulating under uncertainty. An honest read on where your attention actually goes across hindsight, insight, foresight and oversight, and what the thin parts are costing you. Developed with Dr Grant Pink and published in Policy Quarterly.
Reading what is forming while there is still time to act on it. Horizon scanning and scenario work built to change a decision.
Working out what is genuinely going on in a complex and uncertain operating environment, and what is worth trying next. Grounded in Cynefin practice.
Coherent outcomes, with next right moves aligned behind them. Strategy that survives contact with a constrained budget and a select committee.
What a regime feels like from the outside, where compliance is actually decided. Developed with Dr Grant Pink.
The Approach
The work happens inside your context, with your people, on your live problems. Workshops, not lectures. Drafting alongside the team that will own the result.
The aim is anticipatory, agile and adaptive capability that stays with the agency long after the engagement ends.
Anticipatory
Reading what is coming while there is still room to move.
Agile
Mobilising and redeploying without waiting for the next cycle.
Adaptive
Changing practice as the ground changes, on purpose.
The frame
The first decision
The first regulatory decision is not what to do. It is what kind of situation this actually is.
Take a sounding
Decompose, assign
The fog. We cannot yet tell what kind of problem this is.
Sense, categorise, respond
The shallows. Routine compliance. Best practice works.
Sense, analyse, respond
Deep, but charted by instrument. Knowable with expertise.
Probe, sense, respond
Deep water. Novel harms. Probe, do not prescribe.
Act, sense, respond
The storm. Crisis. Stabilise first, analyse later.
Situations do not stay still
Enter
Fog lifts
Emerge
Novelty in the deep
Mature
Expertise forms
Settle
Into the charts
The catastrophic fold
What looks stable can collapse when a shock hits and the old certainties fail.
Pattern entrainment
Rules built for the old world ossify. The map no longer matches the water.
The question is not only which situation we are regulating. It is how it is moving, and what we should do before we push it too far.
Where change is possible
Counter-factualFixed for now
Statute, mandate, machinery of government. Work with it.
LiminalMovable, not by you alone
Funding, ministerial appetite, industry norms. Your real leverage.
VolatileMoves too easily
Sentiment, one loud voice. A warning, not a win.
The move
Change the constraints so that good conduct becomes the easy, likely path.
From reading to acting
Which water is this, and do we agree before we act?
Look for how it will move.
Turn complexity into decisions people can act on.
Carry uncertainty without collapsing it too soon.
Match the response to the domain, not to habit.
Act, then keep taking soundings.
About
Rob has spent more than thirty years in the New Zealand public sector, the last ten at Maritime New Zealand, most recently as Chief Advisor. He is a regulatory pracademic, part practitioner and part scholar.
He is a guest faculty member at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG), and collaborates with the Institute of Regulation (UK) and the ANZSOG National Regulators Community of Practice. He is a Cynefin practitioner, an Oxford-trained scenario planner through the Oxford Scenarios Programme, and a NeuroLeadership-trained coach.
He has delivered seminars and webinars on regulatory practice across New Zealand, Australia and internationally, both on his own and with Dr Grant Pink.
He is interested in resilient decision making, and in the judgement that good regulation asks of the people who carry it.
Selected thinking
Hindsight, insight, foresight and oversight, and why regulators need all four. Warner and Pink, ANZSOG.
Read itRecognising, responding and readying: building regulatory capability for conditions that will not hold still. Warner and Pink, ANZSOG.
Read itWhat regulation feels like from the receiving end. Warner and Pink, Policy Quarterly.
Read it
If you are holding a mandate the future will not sit still for, write to Rob.