The Fractured Lens

Organisations aren't machines.

A way of seeing the forces that shape how organisations actually work. Essays and a free AI transition diagnostic by Rich Bennetts.

DynamicsWhere is power flowing in your organisation right now?UnknowingWhat are you certain about that you have never actually tested?MeaningWhose story is being told in your organisation?BelongingWho belongs here, and what did they give up to fit in?

Latest essays

All 28 essays

Sensemaking

On 5 August 1949, fifteen smokejumpers parachuted into Mann Gulch, Montana, to fight what they took to be a routine grass fire, the kind crews called a ten o'clock fire because it would be out by ten the next morning. Less than two hours later, thirteen of them were dead.

Unknowing, Meaning, Dynamics11 minute read

A contradiction pair from the diagnostic.

The AI Transition Diagnostic

It looks at what AI is doing to the people in your organisation: who gains power, what nobody will admit they don’t know, what happens to professional identity, and who is being left outside. Its headline result is the gap between the official story and lived experience.

Free for individuals. Your answers never leave your browser.

Rich Bennetts in a red fedora and blue-rimmed glasses

Rich Bennetts

The Fractured Lens is my practice. I hold a Masters in Psychology and draw on depth psychology, existential philosophy and organisational theory to look at what organisations would rather not see about themselves.

I work from Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.

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The next essay when it is published. Nothing else.