We left the
global machine.
Then we built the firm we always wanted to work in. Senior on every project. Honest on every page. Allergic to junior-leverage models and run-of-the-mill consulting theatre.
Hard problems. Senior people.
No mediocrity.
The three of us spent the better part of a decade at one of the world's largest professional services firms. We learned a lot. We delivered work we're proud of. We also watched what happens when scale starts running the show — the politics, the pyramids, the room-after-room of partners who haven't touched a deliverable in years.
Our conviction wasn't subtle: bigger doesn't actually reduce risk. That's just the story the industry has trained the market to believe. Boutiques routinely deliver better outcomes — they just keep getting squeezed out by procurement's status-quo bias.
So in 2024 we set up Co.Lab Partners. Three directors, one trust, no inherited org chart. We pick the projects. We staff them ourselves. We don't ship junior leverage in a suit and call it consulting.
Our vision is richness — in health, in the families we go home to, in the communities we live in, and in the nation we're proud to work for. Wealth and career show up in the picture, sure. But they're not the picture.
Internally, we call this GR*OFT. There's a story behind it. Ask us over coffee.
To try what
everyone else
is afraid to do.
The reason we exist beyond making money. The reason we built the firm this way. The reason our project list looks the way it does.
Richness
that lasts.
Health. Family. Community. Nation.
A shared picture of mission success — and not the one consultancies usually pin on the wall. We don't measure it in revenue. We measure it in the lives our work touches: the families behind every person on every project, the communities our clients serve, and the national capability we're contributing to by doing the work well.
That's the kind of richness we mean. The kind that compounds quietly, over years, in the places you actually live.
A master plan for creating value.
We all face hard problems and even heroes can fail. We believe all solutions require a hero's journey of transformation, growth, and learning.
We'll explore different approaches with humility and objectivity — to help you think laterally and boldly, and claim deliver outcomes that last.
How we shape our culture
and behave in the world.
These aren't poster-talk. They're how we hire, who we fire, and which projects we turn down. Six rules. Verbatim from the day we wrote them.
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01 — Lean in to the hero's journey.
Every project worth doing has a learning-montage in the middle. We treat it like the favourite-movie that it is, not a setback to be explained away in a steering committee.
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02 — Beware Russell's chicken.
The chicken assumes the farmer is its friend because it gets fed every day. Right up until Sunday lunch. Pattern-matching kills you. Think outside the box, always.
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03 — Don't be a cat with your ideas.
Cats hoard. They half-swallow the prize and walk off. Bring us the whole bird. We want all your bold and ambitious ideas — that's the job, that's the point.
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04 — We don't do donkeys or mediocrity.
Humility and performance. Neither a**holes nor average work have a place at this firm. We will choose neither over headcount, every time.
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05 — Teach a person to fish.
Generous with time, generous with knowledge. We leave the client's team better than we found it — or we shouldn't have been there.
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06 — When everyone else falls over, be the Bradbury.
Block out the white noise. Stay the course. Cross the line while the field is on the ice behind you. Perseverance is a strategy.
How it should feel.
What you walk away with.
Like you nailed it.
On the call that mattered, the day it mattered.
Refreshed.
Because, for once, it wasn't a rerun.
Sharper.
You'll know things you didn't know last quarter.
Backed.
By a team that actually has your back.
Safer.
From the risks you understood. Honest about the ones you didn't.
Quietly proud of what got shipped.
By the work, of the work.
Something solid that outlasts us.
Not a deliverable. An asset.
You'll come back.
And we'll pick up the phone.
You'll trust the approach.
Because it's not the one you already had.
You'll crack the unsolvable.
Or fail in interesting ways trying.
You'll know the people.
The people, not the org chart.
You'll send other people our way.
The compliment we trust most.
Done reading?
Let's do.
Tell us about the problem. We'll tell you whether we're the right team to solve it. We promise not to talk about ourselves for the first 30 minutes.
Start a conversation →