Wizardly Consulting

I help executives and enterprising teams rise to the complexity of our times—through catalytic leadership & strategy offsites, and deeper engagements for those ready to quest.

“He has a rare ability to distil big, complex ideas into insights that feel immediately relevant and useful. Take a moment. Step back. Let him shift your perspective on what’s really going on.” – John Halpin, CEO, WPP Media (in partnership with TikTok)

For over 15 years I’ve worked as a trusted mercenary-wizard in the cut-throat world of Enterprise Land. My clients include the senior leadership teams of Fortune 500 companies around the world including Microsoft, Novartis, DHL, Red Bull, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Honda, Porsche, Sony, Oracle and Salesforce—along with multinationals such as Beam Suntory, Vodafone, Tableau, Gartner, Xero, HP, Bupa, Red Cross, Bulgari, Pandora, Arup, Aon, PWC, Ricoh, Honeywell, KPMG, and organisations such as The World Tourism Forum and The International Institute of Research. I’ve also worked extensively across healthcare systems, research institutions, banking and financial institutions, university chancelleries, federal government, defence agencies, insurance, emergency services, and more. My favourite clients are the ones whose names you don’t even know yet.

These days I prioritise working with Public Good Organisations that generate value for people and planet (beyond profit alone). But wherever clever people are genuinely questing: I’m in.

Leadership & Strategy Offsites

Cultivating the conditions for a quickening

The opportunity to gather your senior leaders is rare, and the time you have together is precious. You don’t want a rote-trained facilitator marching the team through a templated agenda toward predetermined ‘outcomes.’ Nor do you want an unstructured talkfest that feels lovely and changes nothing.

You want both rigour and emergence. A held space in which the real conversations—the ones beneath the operational—can finally happen. Where assumptions get questioned, hidden commitments surface, genuinely new options reveal themselves, and the team leaves not merely aligned but quickened: clear on what matters, and moving.[^Quickening is often associated with the first stirring of new life. I use the term to gesture toward the moment at which something genuinely new becomes possible—when a system begins to organise at a level of complexity it couldn’t previously access. A quickening is the living opposite of entropy.]

This is how my work often begins. Strategic offsites, leadership retreats, planning days, top-100 forums—from intimate executive teams to rooms of hundreds.

How it works:

1. Orientation & Attunement ⟠ I first seek to understand your context, strategy, and the dynamics at play, so as to develop a provisional understanding as to what is actually present within the gestalt (rather than what is simply assumed). From our conversations and observations, a loose structure emerges: enough to provide us with contextual sequencing and focus whilst ensuring enough flexibility to allow for emergence.
   
2. Catalytic Facilitation ⟠ On the day(s) of the offsite itself, I hold the container of the gathering. Here my role is to serve and gently perturb; asking the questions others won’t, keeping the energy apt-to-context, and ensuring that all perspectives are heard. Occasionally it may serve to offer frameworks to guide conversations. Sometimes it will serve to draw uncomfortable incoherencies into light; surfacing hidden commitments, conflicting values, or ways in which the team might inadvertently sabotage themselves. This requires an almost magical acuity for anomaly—the ability to sense-into and detect subtle energetic shifts, so as to embeckon the unspoken. I also hold that the role of any good facilitator is to create the conditions in which they are no longer needed. My role is not to insert myself needlessly, nor create dependencies. Nothing is forced. I’m with you to ensure that your offsite is profoundly generative—something far beyond the underwhelming success many teams have become accustomed to.
   
3. The Quest ⟠ Having shared an immersive conversation with your team, I will identify what could best serve the challenges ahead. I will prepare a comprehensive debrief with reflections, and—where it serves—suggestions on how we might continue the work together. The true measure of any offsite is what happens in the months that follow—and the rituals and experiments we set in motion are designed to continue under their own momentum, with or without me.

Offsites and events are how I recommend we start our work together. In this way you and your team will have a direct experience of the value I bring, and I’ll have direct knowledge from working with and within your context.

Shall we?

“Our time is precious, and my team don’t suffer fools lightly... He was able to hold the space and facilitate a lively, rigorous yet organic conversation exploring whole new domains. Five months on, we have demonstrated new and meaningful progress with those experiments born of our conversations with Jason.” – Chris Cowley, Managing Director, Varian Medical Systems

“The result was a strategy that was refreshing, courageous and differentiated, and a leadership team that was inspired to make it happen... And it just gets better and better!” – Alli Smith, Executive General Manager, Suncorp

“He brought adventure, intrigue, innovation, whimsy, energy and clarity. As I write those words, I appreciate they are odd descriptors—but Jason absolutely nailed it. The event was a massive success, exceeding all our expectations.” – Dr. Andrew Spinks, Principal Operations Leader, Arup

How I Work (it’s different)

I am—amongst other things—a complexity practitioner. I work at the edge of that which you sense you need, but cannot quite yet articulate.

Conventional consulting is a world of pre-packaged and polished frameworks offering predetermined ‘solutions’ administered by rote-trained consultants. My work is significantly different.

I do Wyrd Work—olde fae magic that pertains to the shaping of that which is to become. It’s a complexity-congruent and gestalt-aligned disposition, wherein we work more-than-rationally with-and-within the whole system (not just its parts). In this way, change is never imposed from outside—it is cultivated, coaxed, and evoked from within.

Working in this way is the antidote to “change fatigue.” Nothing is ever forced; change is natural, enlivening—and something we can catalyse.

“Every two years our whole research division meets together for a very important strategic planning day. Over the years, you experience a heap of facilitators, and you get used to the standard thing. But this year, we engaged Dr Jason Fox, and what he provided was very different—something fresh, relevant, practical and compelling. If you're looking to develop and progress new and important strategy, I highly recommend Dr Jason Fox.” – Professor Nicholas Fisk, VP & Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, University of New South Wales

“Dr. Fox not only has an impressive beard, book, and breadth of knowledge on business strategy and motivation, but when we asked him to advise our tiny company on how to best structure and nurture our rapid growth for an intelligently designed and successful future, he delivered [...] He took time to research us thoroughly and chat to each director before the meeting to get a thorough handle on things before we kicked off, which I appreciated. Also he quite enjoys a walking meeting, which I also do, so that’s nice.” – Zoë Foster-Blake, Founder & CEO, Go-To Skincare

“I highly recommend Dr Jason Fox for any organisation wanting to progress important strategy in challenging times.” – Professor Keith McClean, Director of Manufacturing, CSIRO

Deeper Engagements

I work with clients who seek to lead amidst the liminal—the messy interlude between stable chapters. An engagement can span anywhere from 3–24 months, combining research, strategic development, catalytic facilitation, and ongoing guidance. Here are a few domains in which I assist.

፨ Strategic optionality

The world is changing, and your strategic trajectory is no longer as apt as once thought. Before leaping to a new strategy, you need viable alternative options—and the in-house intelligence to keep generating them. This calls for questing as a precursor to strategy. I offer 3–15 month engagements to partner with you in the journey to cultivate a living strategy.

⇶ Leadership alignment

You have a strategic orientation that makes sense, and you want to ensure your leadership team are aligned. But genuine alignment can’t be mandated or forced—it needs to be real. A catalytic offsite is often the first movement—an opportunity to work through the threads that matter. I can also stay with you and the team, offering ongoing coaching and guidance over 6–12 months.

𖥸 Advanced leadership development

You have recruited talented people, but much of their experience was forged in a paradigm that has since expired. The new world demands a different set of sensibilities, and the ability to rise to meet the complexity of our times. I offer advanced leadership development for already-excellent leaders. Bespoke 3–9 month leadership development programs. Timely, relevant, apt.

ཐི༏ཋྀ󠀮 ‘Performance beyond measure’

What gets measured is what gets done. But—what about the things that can’t be measured? Work that needs doing, but isn’t within anyone’s formal role description? Discretionary effort that goes above-and-beyond the default? I offer enterprise-wide masterclasses and programs to bring leaders and managers up to speed. These can be rolled out so that there is shared language and understanding across leaders and teams.

“Jason’s diverse experience and refreshing perspective evoked rich and meaningful conversations amongst our people, and continues to be talked about and referenced to in the business. Importantly, Jason brought a pragmatic focus—and as a result, we concluded our event more than just inspired. We had our sleeves rolled up, ready to lean into new behaviours to lead progress and change.” – Lizzy Geremia, Head of Internal Communications, Bupa

“We had the goal of bringing together key stakeholders and leaders from our industry to focus on prioritising long-term research for future innovation. [...] Jason’s involvement allowed us to make great progress in this new area of investment, and it really motivated people to get excited about the possibilities and future of the industry. If you’re serious about exploring new opportunities for innovation and competitive advantage, you can’t go past Jason Fox.” – Paula Jones, General Manager of R&D, Cotton Research & Development Corporation

“Jason introduced mental frameworks that helped spark creative thinking and encouraged us to a more open mindset toward transformation and change. What really impressed me was the amount of prep he put in. Through our pre-briefing sessions, he took the time to understand our team, our challenges, and where we’re trying to go [...] he was completely dialled in. He spoke directly to what our colleagues were dealing with and helped build confidence about what’s ahead, created safe space for honest reflection and fresh ideas. It was a refreshing, thought-provoking session that landed really well with the whole team. I’d happily recommend him to any team looking to transform, adapt, or challenge the status quo.” – Adip Butalia, Executive, Strategy & Transformation, National Australia Bank

ঌ I also teach “enterprise thought leadership”

“Be known for what you know.” This is a line from the Thought Leaders Business School, which I once-upon-a-time taught within. I love it.

But we now live in a world inundated with that-which-masquerades-as-thought-leadership. Thanks to large language models, it now takes significantly less time to ‘produce content’ than it takes to consume it. Where does this lead? Lemon markets saturated with homogenised slop. Brandolini’s law compounds this.

But you and your team Actually Know Things. You have knowledge, expertise, experience, insight and differentiated perspective that is of genuine value. The question is: do others know it? Do they believe it? And are they wise enough to discern true value from artificial hype?

I offer comprehensive guidance, structure and support to help your lead innovators and sales teams be known as authentic thought leaders (in this age of cheap and artificial intelligence). Or rather: to be known as wizard.[^ A wizard is, amongst other things, i) a wise person, ii) a person who produces results expediently; as if by magic, iii) a software utility that guides a user through a complex task by asking a series of questions, and iv) a person who is very skilled or knowledgeable in a particular field.]

Comprehensive 6–9 month thought leadership development programs to enterprise leaders seeking to cultivate an in-house body of work, along with the skill and savvy to bring this knowledge to life.[^ For individual practitioners, I run the elusive School of Fox Wizardry—subscribe to my museletter to know when next intakes are happening.]

What you get

There are many advantages to working with an independent advisor-accomplice you trust.

When we work together, you always work directly with me (and with the support of my partner, Dr. Kim Lam).[^ Kim is a gestalt practitioner, ethnographic researcher, veterinarian, illustrator and writer with vast and varied international experience. Kim brings meticulous insight and deep integrity to the work we do.]

You have my intellectual honesty and commitment. I am a PhD-trained scientific researcher, multiple-times bestselling author, and an experienced practitioner across countries, cultures and contexts. When needed, I bring in curated established experts from my global network—paragon-exemplars I trust.

I work with no more than five clients at this depth at any one time. I also ensure no conflict of interest: I have no ‘products’ to angle you towards, nor any vested interest beyond serving your context well.

If you hire me as your consultant and accomplice-advisor, you remain the centre of the story. I’m not here to steal the show, nor stamp my ‘brand’ across everything we conjure together. The role of any good consultant is to make themselves redundant—to create the conditions in which they are no longer needed. I do not create dependencies, and I am not a barnacle. I’m here to make you look good, and to achieve the unprecedented.

All consulting assignments are value-based. I eschew the conventional consulting model that leverages the heavily marked-up time of junior consultants. I do not charge based upon time. This means I do not fabricate protracted work hours for the sake of performing effort to justify longer timeframes. I am incentivised to deliver the value you seek (not to extend the time it takes).

I am also incredibly generous with my “intellectual property,” along with all the hidden labour and deftwerk that makes working together feel effortless.

Next steps

It all starts with a bright-minded and forward-thinking leader who reaches out. That might be you. You might not yet know precisely what you need—but you know: something needs to shift. Perhaps there’s an offsite on the horizon, and you sense it could be so much more than the usual.

I work directly with executive leaders. If you need to run this by a boss character, you may not yet be positioned to engage my services—but still: reach out. Perhaps we can plot something clever together.

The first step: email my partner kim@drjasonfox.com with a sense of what you’re looking for—or use the form below.

Kim will get back to you with calendar options for an exploratory conversation, along with a ballpark fee guide.

During out “discovery call” I’ll listen, ask questions, and together we’ll sense-into if and how we might work together. If we decide not to—I will likely have helped you realise a better pathway forward regardless. If we do, I’ll offer some initial, low-friction ways to begin (an offsite is often the perfect first movement), and we can explore deeper commitment on the other side.

That’s a lot of courtship, I know—but these engagements are relational. It’s how we find the way that has you achieve complex goals whilst saving you immense effort and time in the long run.