Senior Boutique Advisory · Johannesburg
Conation is a senior advisory firm for complex business problems. We bring analytical rigour to the decisions that matter, and we stay until they are made and carried out. The consultant you meet on day one is the consultant who does the work.
Why boutique
Large firms sell you a partner and staff you with a bench. We do not keep a bench. The principal is in the room, every time.
Services
Every engagement is scoped tightly, staffed senior, and judged by one measure: did the client make a better decision, faster, than they would have without us.
Executive-level consulting on strategy and the change programmes that follow it. We test the assumptions a strategy rests on before the board commits capital to it. Engagements end with choices made, not options listed.
Regulatory analysis and risk architecture for directors who carry the liability personally. We translate POPIA, PAIA and sector regulation into frameworks your people can actually run. Governance that stands up to scrutiny, not paperwork that simulates it.
Independent counsel on digital infrastructure, AI readiness and technology transformation. We hold no reseller agreements and take no vendor commissions, so the advice serves one interest: yours. Technology decisions made for business reasons, in business language.
About
Conation was built on a simple observation: most large consulting engagements are priced for partners and delivered by juniors. We inverted the model. The firm stays deliberately small so that experience, not headcount, is what you buy.
We take fewer engagements and go deeper on each one. If a problem does not need us, we say so in the first meeting.
The firm is led by its founder, Nick Lamb, whose fifteen years in digital forensics, corporate investigation and technology advisory shape how Conation works: evidence first, conclusions second, and nothing in a report that cannot be defended line by line. He holds a BCom in Entrepreneurship Management, is an Associate Member of the ACFE, and is an EnCase Certified Examiner.
That background matters. A consultant trained to find what companies hide is hard to impress with what companies present. Clients get the same scepticism applied on their behalf: to vendor claims, to internal narratives, and to our own recommendations.
How an engagement runs
Weeks one and two are spent on evidence: data, documents and the people closest to the problem. No recommendations yet.
Findings are pressure-tested with you, in person. The output is a decision the executive can defend, not a deck to file.
We stay through implementation until the change holds. The engagement ends when the result does not need us anymore.
Contact
Most engagements begin with a one-hour conversation about the problem. No deck, no proposal, no obligation. If we are not the right firm for it, we will say so and point you to who is.
Email the principalLocation
Johannesburg, South Africa
Availability
Engagements across South Africa and the wider SADC region.