About foxwizard & dr.fox

Behold: foxwizard is the enigmatic pseudo-pseudonymous moonlight façade of Dr. Jason Fox, “Archwizard of Ambiguity” (most fantastic).

Well—that’s how it started. I had an exoteric ‘work’ aspect (Dr. Jason Fox), and then a rather more esoteric ‘wyrd’ aspect (foxwizard; whomst speaks to you now).

As Dr. Fox I masquerade—quite convincingly—as a keynote speaker and leadership advisor (with many happy clients). Much of the work I do in this role is in helping clever teams find meaningful progress amidst complexity, ambiguity and change.

We do this by questing.

Questing Amidst

To quest is to orientate towards relevance-realisation—that alluring and elusive quality wherein who we are and what we do makes sense and is congruent and coherent to our unfurling context.

Once upon a time I wrote a book called How to Lead a Quest. It became a bestseller and remains a bit of a ‘cult-classic’ amongst construct-aware enterprise leaders. I didn’t know it at the time, but in writing this book I summoned a wondrously subversive question that has since come to both haunt and enliven me. It’s a question all effective leaders must ask:

Is this meaningful progress?
Or—are we perpetuating a rich delusion of progress?

Meaningful progress is that which brings us closer to future relevance.

The delusion of progress is where default thinking—the comfortable, familiar, expedient, easy-to-measure, habituated patterns—gets in the way of meaningful progress. And the pathway to irrelevance is littered with safe, prudent, reasonable decisions. Decisions with well-established precedence. Efficient, optimised, and doomed to fail.

This is the default state The Machine optimises for.

But “Only that which can change can continue: this is the principle by which infinite players live.”[^ This is from Finite and Infinite Games by the philosopher James P. Carse.]

And such is my work. Momentum inhibits reinvention, and meaningful progress is often antithetical to the delusion of progress we maintain. Hence there’s some wiliness that’s needed. To quest amidst means to have wisdom and wit enough to hold to the bearing of meaningful progress whilst also dancing through the necessary pantomimes of a world enamoured within its delusions of progress. It’s subtle, meta-rational deftwerk that must be done (with a trickster’s glint).

And so here we are.

The ‘official’ bio of Dr. Jason Fox (wizard)

Here is my glittered trojan horse, written in third person to sound extra impressive. Use this to help me slip past the gatekeepers of your organisation, so that we can work our magic together.

Ahem.

Dr Jason Fox is a wizard-philosopher, motivational speaker and leadership advisor. He works with clever teams and questing leaders seeking meaningful progress—beyond the default.

His many happy clients include the senior leadership teams of Fortune 500 companies around the world including Microsoft, HP, Novartis, Red Bull, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Honda, Sony, Oracle, Honeywell and Salesforce, to other multinationals such as Beam Suntory, Singtel, Tableau, Gartner, Xero, Bupa, Red Cross, Bulgari, Pandora, Porsche, Arup, Aon, PWC, Ricoh, KPMG, The World Tourism Forum and The International Institute of Research (not to mention: finance, deep tech, telcos, government, family offices, agriculture, mining, defence, and so on).

Dr. Fox has lectured at three universities (living systems) and is the bestselling author of The Game Changer and How to Lead a Quest. In addition to serving as a leadership adviser, Jason is also a globally in-demand keynote speaker who works particularly well with senior leaders and sceptical audiences who have ‘seen it all before’. Formerly named Australia’s ‘Keynote Speaker of the Year’, Dr. Fox has been inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame.

Jason lives with an illustrator-veterinarian, a chihuahua named Snorri and a cat called π in an old chocolate factory in Melbourne, Australia. When not liberating the world from the delusion of progress, Jason enjoys partaking in extreme sports such as reading, sun-avoidance and coffee snobbery.

Hoho, that’s the propaganda for Dr. Fox.
(You can learn more at drjasonfox.com)

Now, japes aside, whomst ‘foxwizard’?

Questing Betwixt

We are living in a time betwixt worlds.

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born,” as the philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote (whilst imprisoned by a fascist regime). “Now, is the time of monsters.”[^ This is Slavoj Žižek’s translation (which I have used because I like the thematic drama of it).]

Our established (default) structures can’t solve new problems—but new structures haven’t yet quite emerged. This is the liminal condition, and it’s disorienting for most.

We can’t simply fix the old system—because that paradigm is past its half-life. It’s exhausted, and failing us. But, lo—we also can’t point to any clear ‘solutions’, as nothing has yet coalesced; all is in flux.

But! There are patterns to be found, amidst it all. Potentialities in the penumbra. Glimmers to be gleaned. A way that reveals the way, too—if we know where (and how) to look.

This is where foxwizard comes in.

If Dr. Fox is my work aspect,[^ Dr. Fox is “a consummate professional”.] then foxwizard is my wyrd aspect. Or at least, that was the intent. But everything is entangled so I remain mostly an enigma, even to myself.

Anyhoo, as foxwizard we quest beyond the default. Which, in effect, means we quest beyond what is established, known, rational, reasonable and familiar. This can thus, to the untrained eye, appear irrational and baffling.

It’s wyrd work

—but someone has to do it.

In a world of frictionless access to easy answers, where algorithms glaze and domesticate us toward homogenised intelligence and machine-like compliance (oblivious to our metacrisis)—bewilderment beckons our way back to being human.

It’s as Wendell Berry writes in Our Real Work.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

—Wendell Berry, from Standing by Words.

Our real work is not in refining the systems that fail us. Nor is it to hasten our demise. Our real work calls for us to quest. To co-create a world more curious and kind (and a future less grim).

What I offer

For executive teams & event organisers—

• Keynote Speaking – Wondrously heretical keynote presentations and fireside provocations to evoke and inspire meaningful progress.
• Strategy & Leadership Development – Offsites, immersions, and guidance for teams seeking new value and enduring relevance in a changing world.

Programs include: Quest-Augmented Strategy Development, Liminal Leadership Development, and Metamodern Motivation Mastery.

For liminal leaders, questers & querents, The Cleverness is a portal to cohorts & courses supporting deeper learning.

• The School of Fox Wizardry (soon)– A year-long program to help you be an intellectually honest, memetically fit, and commercially savvy thought leader in this time betwixt worlds.
• The Ritual of Becoming – A mythopoetic developmental program to help you find your way to a new chapter in life.

For fellow infinite players, spellcasters, shapeshifters, and rogues—

• The Coterie – a gathering of supporter-subscribers and trickster-kin. A patreon-like premium membership, which includes monthly ‘sense-making skulks’ (along with secret boons).
• Musings & Museletters – thoughtful provocations for the quietly dissatisfied, along with beckonings to a world more curious and kind.
• The foxwizard podcast – Conversations and soliloquies on questing—amidst the metacrisis—in a time betwixt worlds. Includes the very fun popup podcast ‘Kindred Spirits’.

Contact

For professional inquiries (speaking/consulting), please contact my partner and business manager kim@drjasonfox.com

Otherwise: fox@foxwizard.com (Note: I can be stupendously slow to respond—if it needs swift attention, email Kim.)

If you are an event organiser looking for propaganda—my resplendent photography and various biographies are hidden away for you here.

The Museletter

...is something I send to you (via raven) every whimsday (about once or twice a month).

Some subscribers have been reading the museletter for ~15 years now. I write it as if I were writing to a friend—thus it is quite earnest and often ‘not safe for work’. (My work 😅). Yet still, the museletter seems to resonate with liminal leaders, founders, scholars, philosophers, poets, artists, questers, spellcasters, shapeshifters, druids, rogues, and the various sleeper-agents nestled within large enterprises.

I’m quite terrible at social media, which is almost deliberate. By far, the best way for us to keep in touch is via the museletter. Many fine folk subscribe, and you’d be welcome company. Together we shall foray heartily through complexity, ambiguity, paradox and doubt—so as to obtain the freshest, darkest and most dubious fruits of ‘wisdom’ for our combined edification and delight.