An Action Inquiry into Transformation
Welcome to Ozymandias Intelligence! I’m Alex Baker-Friesen, founder and CEO.
Welcome to my practice for systemic change.
Ozymandias is a culmination of insights gleaned from all the dedicated people I worked with the last 15 years, striving for sustainability transformation, climate and systemic justice.
Recognising this collective knowledge, and enshrining it into Ozymandias’ purpose, is my way of doing all the little social investments I have benefitted from justice.
My inquiry into how to transform organisations from the inside was triggered when I was a master’s student studying sustainable development in Uppsala 12 years ago.
Given the urgency of the climate crisis, I wanted to understand how to change systems to respect planetary boundaries and human wellbeing. Driven by this, I became involved with many organisations on the spectrum of activism, social movements and social enterprise, using university-innovation and sustainability ecosystems as my case studies.
Whilst on PhD case research in 2016, I confronted the magnitude of oppressive systems perpetuating harm to both people and the living systems we depend on. This difficult realisation fuelled my inquiries, with teams, and in my own research, into the how of systemic change.
For years, driven by the urgency, anxiety and anger I felt, I grappled with the question of why movements, activists, and climate organisations hadn’t achieved greater impact in their efforts for systemic change, trying to understand what critical aspects we might have overlooked and who might be actively undermining the work.
Inspired by investigative works like Carole Cadwalladr’s exposé on Cambridge Analytica, I realised the imperative to enhance our organisational and strategic capacities for transformation.
This entails harnessing diverse knowledge, and building effective intelligence networks for dismantling oppressive power systems, forensically subverting various lobbying fronts, and challenging the nexus of industry and politics that threatens our ecological balance.
I realised there was a dire need of a Cambridge Analytica for the left.
So, I founded Ozymandias Intelligence in 2018 and got straight into client work for local NGOs, government agencies and social entrepreneurs.
The name Ozymandias evokes deep resonance. Immortalised in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, and echoed in the graphic novel, Watchmen, and the viral show Breaking Bad, it evokes esoteric, haunting, and commanding layers of meaning. It became the perfect name for a company focussed on transformation for people and planet.
Why? The omnipresence and arrogance of that “sneer of cold command”. Its futility, against the decay amongst “these lifeless things”. The words jump out: ‘wake up from the illusion of the permanence of human material wealth’.
Humanity’s scream “Look on my works ye Mighty and Despair!” rings hollow unless we profoundly alter how we organise ourselves. Without whole-scale transformation, we risk leaving behind a “colossal wreck” for our progeny to inherit, as climate change propels vast swathes of our once abundant Planet towards toward inhospitability.
The reality – the boundless sands – an ecological constant of shifting interconnectivity and change.
This undeniable truth contrasts starkly with our current economic paradigm and governance structures. Once recognised, it becomes impossible to ignore. We have to transform how we operate at a species level.
Action Research Consulting | Organisational Transformation | Sustainability Science | Systems Thinking & Forensics