About brkrs.

We work with leaders in the public and private sectors on the problems that do not come with a clear answer, the ones tangled up with other people’s problems, the ones that are impossible to solve alone.

We are not here to hand over a method and leave. We are here to help leaders collaborate, to bring human judgement to bear on decisions that technology alone cannot make well, and to keep the people on the receiving end of those decisions firmly in view.

What we believe

The future is ambiguous. It always is. The work of leadership is not to walk into the room with certainty, but to explore, to prototype, to hold a question open long enough to learn something before you commit.

Most organisations are not short on data. They are short on understanding of what it really means. And the distance between the people who decide and the people who live with those decisions is too wide. That distance is where good intentions turn into poor outcomes. We work to bridge it before the decisions are made, not after.

The journey matters as much as the outcome. Often more. A solution you have to sell is weaker than one people helped shape. When more people understand it, believe in it, own it, it holds. Not consensus for its own sake, but decisions that last because the people they affect had a hand in them.

The value is in judgement. Applied to your people, your history, your constraints. It cannot be bought in a box.

The pressure now is to adopt, quickly, because everyone else is. But following is not a strategy. The question is not what the technology can do. It is what is right for you, your people, your way of working. That takes understanding and intent, not reflex. “Me too” was never an advantage.

Loosely held, playful exploration will reveal preferable futures.

brkrs. is led by Iain Barker

Iain has spent more than thirty years in human-centred design, across the United Kingdom and Australia. He co-founded Meld Studios:

He went on to be Director of Customer Experience Design at Transport for NSW, running a large multidisciplinary team through one of the most complex change environments in the country.

He holds a company directorship qualification (GAICD) and nowadays spends as much time with leaders as in the design studio.

His experience spans transport, health, education, built environment, media, banking and government, among others.

We often work at the interesting intersections between organisations, jurisdictions and funding mechanisms where the meatier systemic problems lie.

We say we because the practice is more than one person. For work that calls for it, we assemble a network of trusted, like-minded practitioners, chosen for the problem rather than kept on a payroll. You get senior people, and only senior people.

How we work

We start by understanding real needs rather than assumed ones. We think in systems rather than silos. We hold data lightly and stay useful company in the uncomfortable, unresolved middle of a hard problem, where the answer is still forming.

We are based in Sydney but we work wherever the problem is.