The Mycelium Group is an AI security and governance practice for Australian boards and regulated industries. The firm is grounded in three decades of work on a deeper question — why capable organisations fracture under change. The structure is intact. The network beneath it is not.
Thirty years of observation across senior leadership teams, strategy rooms, and operational realities revealed a consistent pattern. The organisations that struggle are not lacking in talent, intent, or investment.
They are operating in networks that cannot carry the change they are attempting. The org chart provides order. But order without connection is brittle. When the network beneath the hierarchy is weak, even the best structure cannot carry strategy, sustain culture, or absorb disruption.
The Mycelium Group was built to address that specifically — to diagnose the network beneath the structure, restore the conditions that determine whether change holds, and lead programs into an environment that is actually ready to carry them.
of corporate AI pilots fail to create measurable value
MIT, 2025
of large transformation programs fail to achieve stated objectives
McKinsey
The failure rate has not improved in two decades. The problem is not the strategy. It is the network the strategy was asked to travel through.
People feel safe to experiment, fail, and report honestly.
What works in one team reaches other teams.
Frontline teams can adapt tools to how they actually work.
People are rewarded for genuine use, not reported activity.
Leadership receives accurate data on what is and is not working.
Every transformation must travel through the same organisational network. The health of that network determines whether change lands or stalls.
The Organisational Ecology Model identifies five measurable conditions that predict transformation outcomes. These conditions are not cultural attitudes — they are structural realities. Each one is observable, assessable, and directly linked to whether a program produces genuine embedded use or a deployment statistic.
The model is the foundation of every engagement we lead. It is the methodology under both Mycelium practices today — AI Security and AI Agents — and will be applied to whatever high-stakes change category comes next. The methodology is the constant. The application evolves with the market.
Most consulting advice is applied too late — after the program is designed, before the conditions are assessed. The result is a well-designed program running through a network that was never ready to carry it.
Our engagements are hands-on and inside the organisation. We reassign decision rights, restructure accountability, redefine what gets measured, and re-score the conditions before rollout proceeds. Engagement closes when exit conditions are confirmed — not at a calendar date.
If diagnostic findings do not support further investment, we say so before a proposal is written.
Every engagement begins with a diagnostic — AI Security Health Check or AI Agent Discovery. Findings determine scope; we do not work from a preset engagement structure.
Where the diagnostic identifies remediation, we scope and quote it explicitly. We do not run broad change-management programs. We address the specific conditions that block the outcome.
Build engagements (AI Agents) follow Discovery only when mission alignment is confirmed. No build proceeds without a diagnostic foundation.
Engagements close when their exit conditions are confirmed — board-ready output for diagnostics, executive sign-off for agent builds. Optional retainer for ongoing oversight.
Founder & Principal, The Mycelium Group
Sara Shakib established The Mycelium Group to bring deep delivery experience to the diagnostic work that precedes it. Her career has been spent at the intersection of executive intent and operational reality — across Big 4 banking, utilities, education, government, and health — in the exact gap where most transformations fail.
Her experience spans programme governance, executive delivery oversight, and the design of frameworks built to operate under regulatory and operational constraint — including critical infrastructure, operational technology, and enterprise-scale transformation across regulated sectors.
The conviction behind the firm was formed through direct observation: most transformation advice is applied after the program is designed and before the conditions are assessed. Capable organisations fail not because of poor strategy but because the network beneath the strategy was never diagnosed.
Her current Diploma in Artificial Intelligence at the Australian Institute of Management reflects a deliberate focus on understanding the technology that organisations are now being asked to carry — and the network conditions that determine whether they can.
"Your structure isn't the problem. It's what's missing beneath it. We help you build the network that makes everything else work."
Decades at the intersection of executive intent and operational reality — in the exact gap where most transformations fail. We have sat in the room where the strategy is designed and in the room where it stops travelling.
After 30 years observing the same fractures across industries, we recognise what is happening before we read the org chart. We do not apply a standard methodology. We apply accumulated pattern recognition.
The first conversation is diagnostic. The proposal — if one is warranted — follows the findings. We will not recommend further work the diagnostic does not support. Every Mycelium engagement begins with one of two diagnostics: AI Security Health Check or AI Agent Discovery. Build and remediation work follows only when the diagnostic foundation supports it.
No pitch. Sixty minutes to assess the presenting problem, determine the right entry point, and establish whether we are the right firm for your situation.
If we are not, we will say so.
Request a Diagnostic Conversationcontact us · +61 401 844 836 · Melbourne, Australia