Serious analysis. Plain answers. A process built to be trusted.
Pūtake Labs turns a major decision into a modelled, evidence-weighted answer you can act on. Here’s how the work actually happens — the process, the tools behind it, and the discipline that makes the findings hold up.
You work directly with the two principals — decades of business and consulting experience. No juniors, no subcontractors, no account managers.
Our own forecasting and scenario-analysis tools, built for this work, do the heavy modelling behind every engagement.
The same disciplined sequence every time, so nothing important gets skipped and every finding can be traced back to its evidence.
How we work through a decision.
Every engagement follows the same sequence. Where the pressure sits determines how much weight each step carries — but the discipline doesn’t change.
Understand the decision
We start with the decision itself — what’s actually being decided, the pressure behind it, the timeline, and what’s already known. We map how things really work now, not how they’re documented, and separate the facts from the assumptions the case is resting on.
Gather the evidence
We assemble everything that bears on the decision — your own operation, the industry, the wider forces acting on it, and where the trends are heading. Every piece is checked and tagged for how strong it is, so you can see what’s solid and what’s a working assumption.
Model and forecast the scenarios
Our tools digest and quantify all of it, then build and test multiple scenarios and forward forecasts — not a single projection, but a range of realistic futures. This is where “what if the good years don’t last” stops being a worry and becomes a number.
Test the risk and the alternatives
We track how the risk moves over time — where it transfers, what compounds, who ends up carrying it — and we test the alternatives: the other routes, the safeguards, the staging that could protect the return. One plan is never the only plan.
Deliver a clear answer
You get a straight, defensible answer in plain language — capacity, return, risks, alternatives, who really decides, and what the change asks of your people. Every recommendation carries the evidence behind it, so you can explain and defend the decision, not just make it.
Support the implementation
Optional, and only if you want it. Once you’ve decided, we can help make it land — roadmaps, process design, governance and change support, scoped to what was agreed. The advice stays grounded in the evidence, and no ongoing dependency is created.
The proprietary tools behind the work.
What makes Pūtake Labs different from a consultant with a spreadsheet — and different from a piece of software you’d have to run yourself.
We’ve built our own forecasting and scenario-analysis tools specifically for this work. In plain terms, they do four things: they digest everything relevant to the decision, quantify it, model multiple scenarios, and forecast how each plays out over time.
That means we’re not offering one person’s opinion, and we’re not handing you a tool to figure out yourself. The tools do the heavy modelling; experienced people interpret what it means and turn it into a decision you can act on.
AI helps us see further and faster. But it runs behind the work, not in front of it — the judgement, the context and the accountability stay human.
Pull together your operation, the industry, and the wider economic, regulatory and social forces into one evidence base.
Turn that into numbers that can be tested — with each input weighted for how reliable it actually is.
Build and test multiple scenarios, not a single projection — including the ones you’d rather not think about.
Project how each scenario plays out over the life of the decision, so the risk and return are visible across time.
Not a tool. Not just an opinion. You’re getting modelled, evidence-weighted scenarios that senior people interpret into a decision you can act on — the rigour of serious analysis with the judgement of experienced advisors behind it.
Eight angles we can examine a decision from.
A decision can go wrong from any direction, so we’re built to test it from all of them. We call these our Labs — the distinct angles we bring to an engagement, selected based on where the decision pressure actually sits. You don’t pick between them; we bring the ones the decision needs.
The real operational picture — how things work in practice, not how they’re documented. The ground truth a decision has to survive.
What past decisions assumed, what actually happened, and the lessons that bear on the choice in front of you now.
The core pre-commitment test — evidence, assumptions and the business case examined before money, people or reputation are on the line.
Modelling how the decision plays out across a range of realistic futures — and where each one leads over time.
For decisions with public or community consequence — the scrutiny, trust and legitimacy questions that can stall or reshape them.
Who’s affected, where the power and trust sit, and where resistance or missing voices could undo an otherwise sound decision.
Adoption realism — whether the decision can survive contact with capability gaps, behaviour change and how the organisation really operates.
A sharper second set of eyes — independent review and challenge of the thinking before the next step is taken.
Not a separate step but a lens running through all of the above — surfacing where decision-making power actually sits, who’s affected, what cultural conditions shape the outcome, and where systems or AI may shift accountability away from people. Where an engagement involves Māori communities or data, this is where kaupapa Māori and data sovereignty are carried through the work.
What makes the findings hold up.
Anyone can produce a report. These are the disciplines that make ours defensible when the decision comes under scrutiny.
Known facts on one side, working assumptions on the other, named explicitly. You always see what the decision is actually resting on.
Each finding carries a strength tag — how confident you can be in it. Nothing gets dressed up as certain when it isn’t.
We don’t capture risk at a single point. We map how it evolves, where it transfers, and what compounds as the decision plays out.
External claims are checked before they go into the analysis. No fabrication, no unverified numbers carried through as fact.
Every recommendation inherits its evidence and carries its strength forward — so you can see exactly why we reached it.
Plain language, not jargon. A decision you can explain and defend to a board, a bank or your people without a translator.
The cultural analysis is built in, not bolted on.
Where an engagement involves Māori communities, Māori data, Te Tiriti obligations, or decisions with consequences for Māori, the cultural analysis is part of the method from the start — not a review added at the end.
It shapes how the questions are framed, who participates, what counts as evidence, and how a good outcome is judged. Māori data sovereignty and control sit alongside the commercial case, drawing on established Te Mana Raraunga principles.
Our honest position: competence and respect, not cultural authority. As a 50/50 Māori-Pākehā partnership, we bring this capability where it genuinely applies — and we’re clear about where it does and doesn’t.
The decision, modelled. In plain language.
Whatever the sector, every engagement answers the same six questions — the ones that decide whether a move works.
Capacity
Whether you can absorb the change, or it stretches you past the point of return.
Return
Likely cost, likely return, and how much confidence to put on the numbers.
Risks
What could go wrong, how likely, how it shifts over time, and who carries it.
Alternatives
The other routes, and the safeguards that improve your chances and protect the return.
Decision visibility
Who really holds the decision, who’s affected, and where the blind spots are.
People & consequence
What the change asks of the people who live with it, and the wider consequence it carries.
Have a decision that needs testing?
The first conversation costs nothing and commits nothing. It’ll tell us both whether we can help.