Behind the Scenes: What Is Colectivo Up To Right Now?
The consulting landscape often suffers from an excess of polished, theoretical presentations, where companies receive decks that describe what transformation should look like in a perfect corporate environment. However, business leaders operating on the ground quickly realise that real-world change is inherently iterative, hands-on, and occasionally complex. To build genuine trust, consultancies must be willing to step out of the boardroom and share their active operational realities transparently.
At Colectivo, we prioritise open dialogue and ecosystem collaboration as core drivers of our organisational DNA. We believe that sharing our current focus areas, active challenges, and client collaborations helps demystify the transformation process for other organisations. Today, we are looking at a recent conversation featuring Colectivo CEO Laura McDermott on the Materials Deep Dive podcast, hosted by Carolina.
The brief conversation provides a clear, behind-the-scenes look at how our team is currently partnering with forward-looking enterprises to turn long-term sustainability ambitions into structured operational realities.
The Accelerating Momentum for Core Redesign Projects
When questioned during the podcast interview about Colectivo’s immediate project priorities, Laura highlighted a noticeable shift in how progressive enterprises are allocating their transformation capital. While baseline carbon footprinting and materiality roadmaps remain essential entry coordinates, an increasing number of medium-sized enterprises and multinationals are aggressively moving into deeper operational territory: business model redesign.
This evolution forms the core of our Redesign service pillar. Rather than treating sustainability as a peripheral compliance layer designed to protect legacy processes, organisations are actively auditing their physical product lifecycles, supply chain equity, and technical workflows.
In sectors ranging from heavy manufacturing and mechanical engineering to digital technology services, leaders are recognising that circularity is a vital mechanism for commercial risk reduction and long-term cost insulation. Whether re-engineering component retrieval streams, eliminating high-liability electronic waste, or optimising material handling, these active projects represent the functional engineering of a more resilient economy.
Making the Invisible Visible: The Client Video Series
Another significant initiative Laura highlighted on the podcast is Colectivo’s upcoming client video series. Over the past two quarters, our project teams have been collaborating with a diverse group of organisation to document their active sustainability transitions through authentic, in-person dialogues.
This series deliberately avoids highly polished, generic corporate marketing scripts. Hosted by Laura McDermott, the videos utilise a relaxed, conversational format to explore what is genuinely occurring inside organisations as they evolve. By focusing heavily on the compound effect, the series captures how minor, daily adjustments to internal behaviour, leadership mindsets, and operational processes accumulate over time to deliver profound change.
The upcoming rollout features unvarnished, data-backed insights from four distinct client ecosystems:
Dogs Trust Ireland: Exploring the cultural and structural shift required by executive leadership to transition away from passive, "tick-box" compliance toward deeply embedded, long-term operational values.
CJK: Detailing the commercial advantages of starting simple, focusing on frontline team visibility to operationalise circular principles directly across construction environments.
The Royal Dublin Society (RDS): Demonstrating how large-scale, historic institutions can leverage continuous, multi-level co-creation to drive circular venue operations and community alignment.
Progress Systems: Analysing the critical intersection of digital transformation and the Social pillar of ESG through human-centered, inclusive software design.
Cultivating an Open, Shared Intelligence
The strategic rationale behind participating in external media dialogues like the Materials Deep Dive podcast is to foster a more connected, collaborative business ecosystem. We believe that the organisations capable of surviving the ongoing economic transition will be those that abandon insular, competitive mindsets in favour of open source learning and shared operational blueprints.
As we prepare to officially launch each client video capsule over the coming months, we invite business leaders to utilise these resources as a practical reference database. True responsibility requires moving past isolated actions to embrace systemic alignment. By pulling back the curtain on active corporate transformations, we aim to demonstrate that building a sustainable, resilient enterprise is not an unattainable ideal: it is a practical, achievable path that is already well underway.
To listen to Laura’s complete conversation on material circularity, access the full episode of the Materials Deep Dive podcast and ensure you are subscribed to our communication channels to receive immediate access to our client video case studies upon release.
