About Missing Bricks
Many organizations want to create cultures of trust, belonging, and inclusion. Yet even with good intentions, meaningful change can feel difficult to sustain.
Often the challenge is not resistance or lack of effort. It is that the systems organizations rely on were built without the full range of perspectives, experiences, and cultural knowledge of the communities they now serve.
These gaps are what we call Missing Bricks.
What Missing Bricks Means
When a building is missing bricks in its foundation or walls, the structure may still stand, but stress begins to appear over time. Small cracks grow into larger problems.
Organizations operate in much the same way. When leadership practices, decision-making structures, or cultural understanding leave out important voices and experiences, trust erodes and progress becomes harder to sustain.
Missing Bricks Consulting focuses on helping organizations identify those gaps and rebuild stronger foundations.
Where the Idea Comes From
The Missing Bricks concept is informed by more than two decades of work in community engagement, leadership development, and equity-focused organizational change.
Raised in the Frogtown neighborhood of Saint Paul, Arnoldo Curiel learned early how communities build resilience through relationships, shared responsibility, and cultural understanding.
Those experiences, combined with academic research and years of work with public institutions, nonprofits, and healthcare organizations, shaped the development of the Missing Bricks Framework.
The Philosophy Behind the Work
The goal of this work is not to assign blame or focus only on what is broken. Instead, Missing Bricks Consulting uses a strength-based and culturally responsive approach to help organizations build on their existing strengths while addressing the gaps that limit growth.
Meaningful change happens when organizations learn to recognize the wisdom and experiences that already exist within their people and communities.The goal of this work is not to assign blame or focus only on what is broken. Instead, Missing Bricks Consulting uses a strength-based and culturally responsive approach to help organizations build on their existing strengths while addressing the gaps that limit growth.
Meaningful change happens when organizations learn to recognize the wisdom and experiences that already exist within their people and communities.
What Missing Bricks Aims to Do
Missing Bricks Consulting works with organizations to strengthen leadership, rebuild trust, and create systems that reflect the diversity and wisdom of the communities they serve.
By identifying the gaps that often go unseen, organizations can rebuild stronger cultures and create change that lasts.
