Sixteen years ago, something unusual happened – a consultancy built on curiosity and purpose was born, challenging the notion that public sector change is slow or silent. 

RedQuadrant is 16! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_redquadrant-is-16-sixteen-years-ago-something-activity-7345802670504378368-36IN?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho Join the conversation on LinkedIn!

RedQuadrant is 16!

Sixteen years ago, something unusual happened – a consultancy built on curiosity and purpose was born, challenging the notion that public sector change is slow or silent. And a nice schtick – ‘the campaign against consultancy’. We knew – and we still know – that our job is to do ourselves out of a job.

Dennis Vergne and I spent a year building up to it – and John Mallaghan joined our discussions, leaving early and dramatically but then coming back to do some amazing work. Dennis consciously decoupled in 2016 (can it be that long ago?!)

We set out to create an organisation that wasn’t quite a consultancy, wasn’t quite a network, but something more interesting, and more challenging.
We wanted to do work that mattered, turning complexity and uncertainty into clarity, practical action, and human-scale results. We’ve never been about standard recipes or off-the-shelf solutions, land-and-expand or productised offers. Instead, we form teams of experts with deep experience and expertise, and try to have honest, constructive relationships with both our consultants and our clients. Our other big tagline? ‘We believe in conversations’.

So, we engage with the messiness of real life, building capability, weaving relationships, and helping public services adapt and thrive through change. From an ‘Uber consulting’ experiment, we’ve grown into something different.

We’ve learned a lot about public services, outcomes, methods, change, organisation, practical strategies that shift power, drive value and nurture relational working. 97.2% of our clients have come back for more.

We’re clearer than ever: our job isn’t just solving problems, it’s opening up possibilities, working ourselves out of a job, helping people see the systems they’re part of, and shape them for good.

It hasn’t all been ‘sweet’, these sixteen years – lots of tough situations, overwork, and a tough environment. But it has been fulfilling – and rich with learning.
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What’s the ‘red’ quadrant?

> If you’re passionate about what public services can do, you belong at the top.

> If you want to work in a setting that tries to stick to honest, adult-to-adult conversations, you below over to the right.

If both – you belong in the red quadrant!
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So, here’s to staying restless, human, and purposeful.

THANK YOU to every public servant, community leader and colleague who’s shared that journey – if RedQuadrant has touched your working life, I’d love to know about it!

What do you think the public sector needs from people like us, right now?li