Mission and Purpose

Co-designing a wiser world

Fractal Minds exists to help raise the collective level of our thinking and nurture our wisdom to better understand, and co-design ways to address, the complex issues and challenges facing all creatures inhabiting our shared home, the Earth.

We urgently need a wiser world — the complex nature of the threats facing us all (pandemics, global warming, increasing inequality, geopolitical instability) cannot be addressed with short-term, simplistic, reductionist thinking. Furthermore, the fourth industrial revolution with advanced digitisation and automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and cyber-physical systems (CPS) promise to further radically transform all aspects of our lives.

 

A Narrative based on Connection

To help make a wiser world, we need a new narrative to engage the hearts and minds of people around the world — a narrative based on connection. This narrative recognises and celebrates the connections and inter-dependencies between humans, and all other species on this planet, and acknowledges our shared responsibility to maintain and support the health of our collective home — the Earth. It simultaneously values our commonalities whilst respecting and celebrating our diversity. It also emphasises collaboration over competition, and (internal, shared) responsibility over (external, individual) accountability…

 

Our Approach: How We Work

Fractal Minds combines expertise and at least a decade of experience in the following three areas:

  1. Culture, Leadership & Strategy (CuLeSt - pronounced ‘coolest’): research shows that most strategies fail and that ‘culture trumps strategy’, so leadership strategy should focus on improving organisational culture. However, culture is an emergent phenomenon — it isn’t something that can be targeted directly. Instead, the focus should be on ways to improve the quality of relationships and connections between all staff, clients and other stakeholders, and the broader community. I am also comfortable at the interface between different cultures (organisational, industry, and ethnic), and believe there is much that we can learn from and with the oldest continuous cultures on Earth — the First Australians.

  2. Systems, Agile, Design (SAD) Thinking: These three ways of thinking are perhaps best understood as different sides of the same triangle. There is growing recognition of value of systems thinking, which is perhaps the most aligned paradigm to one of connectedness in Western societies. Complex systems are inherently unpredictable, and Agile approaches are best suited in such environments to manage risk and maximise autonomy and alignment in cross-functional teams. Design thinking helps ensure diverse perspectives are leveraged to better understand an issue/scenario and to maximise creativity and innovation when designing interventions. 

  3. Digital Strategy & Transformation (DST) - especially those involving AI & other emerging technologies: Most digital strategies and transformations consider three key dimensions: people, process and technology, and sometimes also data or information as a fourth dimension. There are different views on which of these is the most important, but if you subscribe to the narrative of connection, then the most important considerations are the interactions between each of these dimensions, regardless of how many there are. By focusing on the interactions between these dimensions, people are encouraged to take a more holistic view of their operations and the value they provide, which is needed to ensure the strategy or transformation has the greatest chance of success.

Read more to find out what services lie at the intersection of each of these…

 

Services

Fractal Minds offers a broad range of services, such as:

  • (Co-)Designing Responsible AI

  • Indigenous Systems Design to build organisational trust

  • (Co-)Designing, leading and implementing complex, transdisciplinary programs

  • Understanding complex systems/situations and designing interventions to guide development

  • (Responsible) AI strategy and implementation

  • Leading Agile transformations

  • Natural Language Processing (NLP - a type of AI) solutions to (semi-)automate the analysis and processing of text/unstructured data

  • Leadership for digital ‘learning organisations’

  • Building trust in your digital transformation

  • Workshop design and facilitation — especially for diverse groups in complex contexts