About
A principal-led practice.
Engagements are led rather than delegated. The practice therefore takes on a limited number at a time.
Principal
Rick Colbourne
Institutional strategist and corporate director with twenty-five years across strategy, governance, enterprise, executive education and organisational change, in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australasia, Europe, Africa and the United States.
Doctorate from Cambridge Judge Business School, where he was a member of St Catharine's College, an MBA in management of technology, and the ICD.D corporate director designation. Honorary Research Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School and Associate Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation. Former Fulbright Visiting Research Chair and former Visiting Professor in Germany. Indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom.
In governance, founding director of a community-owned corporate group through growth from approximately $1 million to $40 million in annual revenue, chairing its CEO compensation committee, alongside a directorship in reforestation and living infrastructure.
Currently leads an institution-wide strategy renewal at a Canadian university. Earlier work ran a university executive education business with full profit and loss accountability, built a province-wide education network across more than twenty-five institutions, directed a postgraduate programme in London, and led global music industry work at Accenture.
Research concerns how individuals and communities use venture creation to change the institutional and economic conditions that shape their lives, with current work on generative artificial intelligence in entrepreneurial practice.
Associates
The practice works with associates rather than maintaining a permanent team. Specialist capability in areas such as technology, facilitation, design and production is brought into an engagement where the scope requires it. The expertise required, who will provide it and their role are identified before the work begins.
Praxis Global does not resell technology.
Alongside a mandate, the practice runs no more than two concurrent engagements.
Availability and independence
Photograph Wayne Hoecherl
The practice is open to interim and fractional executive mandates and to non-executive and board appointments, alongside a small number of defined engagements. Mandates are taken from Canada and from the United Kingdom, where indefinite leave to remain permits work without sponsorship.
Two concurrent mandates is the realistic limit. Current availability and start dates are discussed at first contact.
Independence and confidentiality
Work undertaken through one appointment, board role or engagement is kept separate from another.
Confidentiality
What is learned through one appointment, board seat or engagement does not travel into another. That covers institutional position, financial condition, and any matter before a board, and it continues to apply after the relationship ends. Where the practice cannot take an engagement without breaching this, it declines and says why.
Separation
The practice runs on its own systems and correspondence, independently of any institution. Board seats are held at the Halfway River Group of Companies and the Brinkman group; work carried out as a director is board work and is not presented as a practice engagement. Interests are disclosed in writing before a scope is agreed, the practice does not advise on technology selection where a held interest sits among the options, and it does not resell technology.
Starting a conversation
Most conversations begin with an hour, at no cost, establishing whether the practice fits the decision being faced. Where it does not, that is said, with a suggestion of where to look instead.
For a mandate, what follows is a description of the role, its authority, its reporting line, its duration and the terms. For an engagement, a written scope covering the question, the evidence required, the phases proposed, the artefacts produced and the fee basis. Work begins once either is agreed.
Reports separate evidence from interpretation and state confidence. Clients receive the reasoning as well as the conclusion, so a decision can be revisited later on its own terms.
Community consultation session, round-table format.