A Greater Intelligence Across the System with Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta and Dr. Toby Newstead

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, arts critic, and researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland, Australia. He works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne, where he also founded the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab.

He carves traditional tools and weapons alongside his academic work, and his writing process draws on this practice, often beginning with images and carvings rather than words. He is best known as the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (2019), which won the Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards and the Ansari Institute's Randa and Sherif Nasr Book Prize on Religion and the World. He followed it with Right Story, Wrong Story and has a third book, Snake Talk, rounding out what he describes as a trilogy.

His work applies Indigenous systems knowledge, not just Indigenous stories or artifacts, to questions of governance, economics, and organizational design. He also co-founded the Indigenous Systems Knowledge Collective, a nonprofit that supports Indigenous systems thinkers and helps organizations apply relational, complexity-based approaches to leadership and strategy. He lives in Melbourne.

Dr. Toby Newstead is a respected leadership scholar and practitioner at the University of Tasmania, located in lutruwita on the lands of the palawa and pakana people. With a background in corporate change, leadership development, and professional communications, she brings practical expertise to her academic, coaching, and consulting work.

An internationally recognized researcher, Dr. Newstead specializes in virtues-based leadership development, leadership ethics, and leadership in the volunteer sector. Her research appears in top journals. In 2023, she published a book titled Leadership and Virtues: Understanding and Practicing Good Leadership.

Dr. Newstead is an established executive leadership coach and deeply engaged with industry and community. She regularly delivers impactful workshops, keynotes, and facilitation sessions. Dr Newstead’s research, teaching, coaching and facilitation has local and international impact, shaping the leaders of today and tomorrow.

A Few Quotes From This Episode

• "We don't say, 'I think, therefore I am,' but we say, 'I am located, therefore I am.'"
• "Increase isn't about the quantitative growth of the system... Increase is about the growth of complexity and the growth of interconnectedness and interdependencies in the system."
• "Innovation doesn't come from a singular genius. It comes from the most diverse community possible that you can create, the most diverse networks."

Resources

• Book: Sand Talk
• Book: Right Story, Wrong Story
• Book: Snake Talk

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Attend The Global Conference in Toronto, October 28-31.

About  Scott J. Allen

• Website
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My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

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Transcript

Dr. Scott Allen: [00:00:00] Okay, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Tonight I have a co-host, and that is Dr. Toby Newstead, and she is a senior lecturer in management and leadership at the Tasmanian School of Business and Economics. And our guest this evening is Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, senior lecturer, Indigenous Knowledges, Deakin University.

Now, Tyson, as I said to you before we jumped on the podcast this evening, about three or four years ago, I was excited to jump in the car, and I was excited to jump in the car because I was learning from you, and I was listening to you, and this book Sand Talk caught my attention in very beautiful ways.

And so you have been on my list of guests to ask to be on this podcast for a few years now. So we are so thankful that you would spend some time with us, share your wisdom, share your knowledge, share your perspectives Thank you. How are you, sir? 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Oh, pretty good. I hope it's the content of the [00:01:00] stuff rather than my sexy and compelling voice.

Dr. Scott Allen: It's a both and. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Yeah. It's funny, like thinking of leadership, you know, we often attach, you know, leadership skills to skills in other areas. So if, you know, if you're a good speaker, there's that assumption that you'll be a good leader as well, 'cause people wanna follow your voice, but you better have some damn good ideas and practice too.

Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Well, you are an incredible storyteller. And Toby, how are you? Thank you so much for joining us this evening. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Thanks for joining us, Tyson. 

Dr. Scott Allen: So Tyson, I'm gonna go through a couple themes. Toby's gonna jump in as well, and I think I want listeners to have this book on their radar, Sand Talk. I'm super excited, but there's this kind of theme here of everything exists in relationship.

How would leadership change if leaders focus less on isolated problems and more on understanding relationships and patterns across the system? How do you think [00:02:00] about that question? Everything exists in relationship. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Well, all those... all relationships start in land. So my home is 3,500 kilometers to the north.

Right now I'm right down south Melbourne, south of the continent, very close to Antarctica, so it's a bit cold. And yeah, this is Bunurong country. So first coming into relation that way, and then understanding all the signals, because all land, all life, all complex systems, including economic systems and, you know, the culture of a workplace, everything, it's all signals that are happening all the time, like largely not perceived.

And, you know, we understand these as spirit of place, spirit of a group even, that just kind of binds everything. Yeah. And, and yeah, massive complexity. So here now, you know, all the magpie geese and a lot of other large birds, like the [00:03:00] cranes, the brolgas, they've all flown north So they're back in my home now, like, you know, laying their eggs.

Down here, the eagles are laying their eggs, and the turkeys and, and the lyrebirds, you know. And I guess a lot of people think, oh, spring, birds and the bees. You know, winter is just death. Everything goes to sleep. And, but no, there is so much, you know, reproduction, regeneration happening right now.

Different plants are flowering, and then those colors signal, you know, not just the insects, the birds and the flowers and the bees. No. Yeah, they signal everything. They've signaled recently in the, what you would call an Indian summer, just a warm, humid few days of... They signal all the ants to mate and grow wings and fly and start new.

So they're all there now laying their eggs and, and making new colonies under the ground. You know, the actions of the ants, how the ants move and forage and the scent trails they leave, it's a big, complex system. And it's exactly the same. [00:04:00] You know, in an organization, you can understand the system in, like, four layers that we have built into our languages of different kinds of relationships.

So we have them in our pronouns, you know, in most Aboriginal languages. In many indigenous languages around the world, you know, there is that individual, but the individual is defined as a unique set of relationships. So you're not just a node or alone. You know, your being is a very particular and unique web of relations And that's your signature.

You know, then you have pairs, so you belong to many pairs. And same in the ecosystem, there are, you know, individual actors and communities, but then there are, you know, there are unique pairings that you might not notice, like the ants I mentioned. You know, the crustaceans in the freshwater, the freshwater crayfish.

But the job of the ants on the riverbank is the same as the job of the yabbies down below. And if you look at them, they're very similar. [00:05:00] So, you know, biology doesn't pair those. But there are unique pairs acting in tandem, you know, and then all those symbioses are in pairs. But in our way, the symbioses extend out into unique communities as well.

So that's the fourth group is like, you know, special groups of like things. So a species or communities of animals that, that act together and plants, et cetera. So they're in unique sort of totemic groups and in how they perform their biological, you know, magic. Yeah. And the last one is just the whole.

It's the entire entity, like a location, you know, a place, a bio region. It has its own spirit and its own kind of identity. And then those relations scale outwards because your whole local system becomes an individual that pairs with a neighboring system. And then a unique group of systems that form a region, like a larger region, regional entity.

And then that, of course, feeds back to systems far abroad. [00:06:00] You know, like the sandpipers that left here a, a month ago, a month and a half ago. They're, they're in Siberia right now. So there are open loops and closed loops, you know, within those systems. Your organization is like that. It's not... You know, it is a discrete entity, but it's more than that.

And it's connected infinitely out into relations at scale that go out into the world like ripples. You'll often see a, a symbol. You know, it's a sacred place or a meeting place or a water hole. It's just concentric circles in Aboriginal art. And I guess that's a way to think about it. You know, you've gotta have your attention on the local, the regional, and then the further afield to global relations.

You've always gotta situate your actions and your mission statement or whatever within that, that reach. You know, and knowing your impact and your dependence on systems near and far. You have to be situated, you have to be located So, you know, we [00:07:00] don't say, "I think, therefore I am," but we say, "I am located, therefore I am."

So place and time is everything. Time and place actually is usually the same word in our languages, because the place where you are is imp- is always shifting because of time. You know, where the, where the sun is, the angles. So season is, season is place. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: The, the inseparability of, of what we are and who we are and what we're trying to do as, as humans, and the places that we are trying to do them.

And, and I, I think it leads very beautifully to the next question, Tyson, that, that we had, which is around this modern approaches, Western sort of colonial approaches to leadership tend to preference e- e- extraction. That's sort of our approach to doing business, and then therefore leadership. And I'm wondering if you could share your thoughts or story with us around what might happen if we shifted [00:08:00] from sort of an extractive mind- mindset approach to more of a stewardship, and what you were talking about with all this interrelatedness of so many overlapping webs and systems.

And when we take more of a stewardship lens, what might that allow us to see or do in leadership? 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Well, I guess you would just expand your idea of vertical integration You know, so often, you know, you can strengthen an organization by getting a stake, having a stake in the supply chain. You know, so if you're making this widget, then you might also acquire the company that makes the parts for that widget and, you know, the mine that produces the metals for that and the transport company that moves these things.

You vert- vertically integrate like that. And so I guess that, that understanding of, of that kind of complex system and actually supporting that and strengthening that, that's already there in most decent leadership. But if you expand that to the things that are [00:09:00] kind of unseen, then you can vertically integrate like your investments where there may not be immediate return on the balance sheet, but there will be long-term sort of health.

And so this is investing in infrastructure. I- if you just try to acquire as much of the visible supply chain as you can, you end up with a fragile... You know, those supply chains become fragile because it's all dependent on a single entity and, you know, you get something like a pandemic and you're stuffed.

You get something like super storms and, you know, effects of climate change and effects of biodiversity loss all along their supply chain. This will impact everything that happens. So you have to go into the unseen things, the infrastructure that you usually would assume the government and philanthropics are taking care of.

You know, your social infrastructures and your environmental in- infrastructures as well. And you need to invest in that beyond carbon credits and biodiversity [00:10:00] credit trading and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, you, you have to invest in your... the communities that provide the workforce along that supply chain as well.

Make sure that they have legal... You know, you invest in legal firms that advocate for migrant labor rights if that system's depending on, you know, migrant labor, which many of them are at various points on the supply chain. Yeah, you invest in environmental restoration and, and basically care that sort of stewardship for the environment all, all along, you know, everywhere where your network of relations touches.

Some stuff that, I mean, would normally be seen as charity or, you know, tax-deductible donations or things like that. Yeah, you kind of invest more heavily in that. And going out in those spheres of influence from the, you know, local to non-local spheres of regional and even international kind of influence there.

Yeah. [00:11:00] And that, that requi- that's actual out of the box thinking. That's actual, like, innovative thinking. You know, if you're thinking along those lines and, and, you know, looking at the unexpected and usually unnoticed sort of connections o- of your system's health. And you're gonna want diversity in there as well.

And when you're vertically integrating these, you're making sure you're bringing in not just owning and taking over the entities to make it one monopoly, but actually building it out of interdependent relationships there. Because then that makes your, that makes your supply chains extremely anti-fragile, you know, in terms of business and everything else.

But then also if you're caring for the, the, the societies, communities, and environments along that supply chain, then you're stabilizing it and you're making it... It's a long-term investment, but it pays off long term. You know, that's just how you do your portfolio, eh? You know, you do your certain percentage [00:12:00] for day trading and higher risk investments, but you have to have your long-term investments in there.

You know, you gotta have your gold and your art and your real estate and all that as well. Mm-hmm. And, and then you can do your, your high-risk stuff like- 

Dr. Scott Allen: Crypto ... startups. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Yeah. Oh. Yeah, crypto. Oh, my God. 

Dr. Scott Allen: High risk. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: We're actually starting up a, a crypto now. It's a, it's a... It's like a protest coin, and so we're calling it DOSH.

So it's a backlash against the Doge, you know that Dogecoin? Oh, yeah. Oh, 

Dr. Scott Allen: yeah. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: And we've got one of our own dogs there that's, you know, based on dog sculptures that the traditional ones from my people. Yeah, so it's DOSH instead of Doge. So it's the Department of Social Health and Equity. Yeah, so we're doing this one, and then starting up we wanna try and fund all the, a, a lot of the stuff in Africa.

We're starting in Uganda, the stuff that USAID shut, shut down. [00:13:00] Yeah, it got shut down when USAID got, got dumped. And you sort of wonder why there's Indigenous Australians doing that when, you know, we've got our own problems. And it's- Mm ... well, you know, this impacts us. Yeah. You know, there are open loops that go out, you know, and we get feedback, cause and effect happening internationally like that.

Yeah. So these are things that we can affect and ripples, you know, of change that we can make that also signals our, like, our, our commitment to values that are sustainable in the long term. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Well, there's a mindset and a stewardship mindset or a perspective on- 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Mm ... 

Dr. Scott Allen: the work we're doing that is critical, and it's important.

Yeah. And if, if- 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Yeah ... 

Dr. Scott Allen: if we are a mindset of extract and move on, that's- Yeah ... a certain mindset that I think can do great damage. Well, 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: that's just it. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Most organizations in the system we're in, you know, they regard Africa as a point of e- extraction, so they don't make [00:14:00] relationships there. And we're making relationships and investing There and you think of that as just charity or just lost wasted money, but the relationships we're forming are incredibly productive 'cause, you know, some of your most amazing and innovative, you know, tech people are in Africa 'cause they're in places with You know, where they're putting together their own devices, you know, from old phones and, and bits and pieces of this and that, making them do amazing things, you know.

So we end up with a, you know, on a Zoom call with 20 different hackers in Africa, you know, and all around Nalubaale there in Uganda, you know, and we're, we're on a four-hour workshop trying to put together a, a neural net for an AI that we wanna produce, and these guys are, are jumping in because we have that relationship with them.

Yeah, the- these... Yeah, forming these relations through an economy of care that you have in parallel to your usual [00:15:00] operations. The relationships end up these being the things that produce your innovations. Well, and- Innovation doesn't come from a singular genius. It comes from, yeah, the most diverse community possible that you can create, the most diverse networks.

Dr. Scott Allen: Back to that everything exists in relationship, and then, you know, are we present and in tune with the individual, the pairs, the community, the whole, or do we have a mindset of stewardship versus simply extraction? And there's this other kind of theme in the book of knowledge is relational and emergent, that when an organizational life is just a bunch of one-way presentations, it...

Y- you lose out on dialogue. And when you're in community with 20 people from around the world and you are in dialogue, there's a difference. Through that dialogue, that knowledge and that understanding and that learning occurs. Would you talk a little bit to [00:16:00] that? 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Yeah. We... I mean, you have your knowledge production and your knowledge transmission, and there's this idea that knowledge is produced in a silo and then it's communicated to everyone else.

And yeah, that's not productive. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Your

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: knowledge transmission, you know, it should be a... It has to be a two-way, multi-way street really because then that becomes one of the, the core engine of your knowledge production. So I guess if you went into those four categories again, you know, we, we, we tend to rely on these leaders and, you know, unique silos of brilliant people or people who have a sexy and compelling voice, and th- therefore you assume their knowledge is good.

But I guess there's different levels of meaning-making, you know, that inform your decision-making and your planning and strategy and everything else. That's through lived experience, you know. We tend to elevate the lived experience of the powerful, you know, the people who are in positions of [00:17:00]leadership, and we assume that they've reached that through some kind of exceptional raft of galaxy brain, bloody genius, et cetera.

But yeah, no, they just, they just have lived experience the same as a A patient or a consumer or a worker or anything else. And, you know, we listen to the lived experience of people and-- But making decisions based on anecdotal evidence f- of the lived experience of people is, you know, that, that's not enough.

It's important to see that and to see the outliers because that informs the aggregate meaning you wanna come to. But you can't rely on that, not from your leaders, but not from people who, "Oh, well, let's center this minority voice right now, and we'll hear about their lived experience. We'll make a decision based on that."

It's like, yes, include that, but that's not where you, you know, make your meaning and make your strategy from there. And then I guess you th- you think about dialogical meaning. You know, so people in dialogue coming [00:18:00] to a, a deeper understanding together. That's good too. So that's a, a kind of, yeah, a, a dialogical experience, and that could be from opposing, like, partisan views, and then you, you develop something out of that.

A lot of people think, yep, third way, that's the best way. It'll be some kind of bloody, yeah, halfway point between them, and at the middle, the centrist sort of where everybody compromises, that's gonna be the best solution. But that's a logical fallacy. Yeah. That third way is a logical fallacy. The halfway point between two different, you know, experiences and understanding is seldom the best path forward.

Yes, that has to happen, and you have to find the meaning in that, but then you have to go further. The engineers over here or just the women's, women's group who come together over here or just the executive over here. Those are important because those people have a shared experience. You get that unique [00:19:00] understanding of people who, you know, have a shared experience.

But once again, you can't base everything on that. You, you need to have the individual lived experience stories. You know, you've gotta have the dialogical meaning, you know, from your peers, you know, those stories. You know, and that, y- yes, maybe the halfway points or the, you know, higher point that they arrive at from combining those.

And yes, you've gotta have your special interest groups, your, you know, your exclusive groups making the meaning, but you've gotta go further than that. Then all of that has to feed in to your whole Group view, basically your aggregate meaning. That includes outliers because there's usually something interesting either end of the bell curve of, of knowledge.

But you don't wanna just land on one of those extremes either, and you don't wanna just extract from the average. You need to see the, the entirety. And so your aggregate meaning, that's, that's where you go beyond meaning-making and you go [00:20:00] to sense-making, you know, change-making. You have kin-making, you know, which is building those relationships so that there is a greater intelligence across the entire system.

And then, you know, for your decision-making strategy, then you have a really broad, organic, responsive system of computation power that's... It- I guess it does what AI does. It scrapes everything and, and builds coherence from that except that it- But it doesn't take us- ... that an AI can't do. Yeah. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Doesn't take us in a nice simple line from A to B though.

Dr. Scott Allen: Tyson, can you say what your last statement and Toby... But just I wanna make sure we're not talking over each other. Can you just say your last statement again, and then Toby jump in? 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: So that aggregate meaning, you know, it, it's similar to what AI can do, like scraping the entirety to... You, you get cohesion and see the blind spots and, you know, everything else.

But, you know, if you have an organic sort of system, you know, of, of all unique [00:21:00] agents, people, and everything else around, you know, all able to contribute to that, then the signal is... You know, it's, it's very interesting, and it's in real time. You know, AI can only ever process yesterday's data. But a, a unified whole, that's where you're processing the aggregate signals of everybody, that happens in real time.

Dr. Scott Allen: Yeah, 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: and also the predictive, you know, meaning-making that, that people are doing, problems that they're seeing, which, you know, once again, that contributes to the anti-fragility of your organization, and exciting decisions and strategies come from that 

Dr. Toby Newstead: No, no simple line from A to B. Nothing, nothing linear in, in what I'm, in what I'm hearing.

Which is fantastic and I- Yeah ... and, and I 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: love it. Well, it's like, like the... It's like the strands of a spiderweb. There is linearity. Yeah. Yes. You know? Yes, there are straight lines, but they're usually intersecting and interwoven with [00:22:00] others. Yes. And there is a pattern. Yes. There's nothing wrong with linear thinking, only if you're focusing on one line, then it becomes a problem.

Dr. Toby Newstead: Yeah. I love it. It's one of the things that really sticks with me from your book, and I've heard you speak to it in other stuff I've listened to of yours as well, around listening to the margins, and I think that is so valuable and so easy to overlook and cast aside, you know, the ends of the bell curve on either side, to discard them.

And love listening to your description of what it is to create and come to knowledge relationally, and knowledge that is emergent. And I'm, I'm wondering if you can share with us some, some of the, the knowledge you have access to around this distinction between linear thinking and how it breaks down, and complex systems and how we might live and understand in them.

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Well, I guess it's, it's focused on that sort of imperative to have certainty. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Mm. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: The systems we l- live and work in, these demand [00:23:00] predictability, measurability, replicability, so you need some degree of certainty i- in order to be able to invest in, in this and that. I guess if you use the spiderweb analogy again, you might...

Maybe there's one strand of the web that's come loose, and it's just this dry sort of wisp hanging off the web and, and you think, well, that's not part of the pattern. But it is. If you pay attention to that and how it's moving, then you'll understand the air currents, how they're moving, and, you know, then, then that, that will signal to you the direction that the insects are going to be coming from as well, and then that will help you understand and, and locate where the spider is, where that's hiding.

So there's... Yeah, there's the signals to be found, you know, in, in everything, everything around, not just the obvious things. And yeah, and that, that gives you a bit of a superpower, a bit of an edge, you know, on the predictability thing. Because, you know, y- you have to be able [00:24:00] to, you know, make accurate predictions in complexity.

But if you focus on that, just that one thing, that one line- That anchor point of the web, what you see as the strongest line and you're focusing on that, then you'll, you'll miss things. And it's just... I guess it's that desire for certainty, and that's driven by the incentives, the perverse incentives of a system that demands short-term growth.

Quarterly and annually and in different periods, we expect to see growth. Say, over five years, you can-- we project that we'll have this growth, so you invest there and you'll make bloody 8% or something like that. So the focus on growth is, it's destructive. Yeah, 'cause you're focusing the... And I guess there's that linearity, that sort of combination of reductionism and linearity, where you're just looking for that line to keep growing up on the graph in predictable ways.

And even to try and nudge it so it can have spikes that will, you know, where you're [00:25:00] gonna be able to, you know, invest and short and manipulate things and control things better, et cetera. But I guess, you know, in the Indigenous world, mo- most of us have, like, increase ceremonies, and so we focus on increase rather than growth.

And that means something different to us than what increase means in financial terms, you know, financial language. The increase isn't about the quantitative growth of the system, like increasing the number of harvestable things, increasing the yield or whatever. So yeah, increase for us isn't about yield.

Increase is about the, the growth of complexity and the growth of interconnectedness and interdependencies in the system. So if you steward things so that you're increasing the number of relationships and the strength of the relationships, the quality of the relationships, then what you have in the system is increase, [00:26:00] and the yield comes after that, and your growth comes after that.

But you can't have that if you're not increasing the, the complex health of the entire system. Yeah, 'cause you have to have the, the relationships, that's your foundation, for a, a system that will enjoy some homeostasis and therefore will be predictable. If you're jumping straight to growth and you're trying to drive growth for measurability, predictability, replicability,

generalizability, et cetera, then y- you're building a house of cards And then you, you end up with, you know, you don't end up with stable investments in, you know, long-term investments in real estate, for example. You know, you end up with a housing crisis, which becomes a weakness then in that market. And, you know, becoming a stable long-term investment, it then becomes, you know, it's a bubble, you know, that, that will then impact everything from your workforce to, [00:27:00] you know, the, the stability of the economic system.

And as people get, become more precarious, they consume less and everything else. And so then you're making a toxic and hostile environment, you know, for your organization to operate in, just as an example. 

Dr. Scott Allen: It's not gonna be sustainable. It's not gonna be durable. Yeah. Um, just a, a quote that you said a few moments ago that will forever stick with me, you know, greater intelligence across the system.

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Intelligence across the system. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Yeah. That's how you create an antifragile, you know, organization is by building and investing in an antifragile network, you know, around that organization, antifragile environment system, and that means interdependencies. That means relationality. You know, you increase your foundation of relations, then you're increasing systemic health and systemic stability, and you're providing the soil for growth.

You know, when you do [00:28:00] that, relations first make your foundation relational 

Dr. Scott Allen: Toby, as we begin to wind down our time, would you close us out with a final question? Could be anything on your mind right now. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: I don't want to wind down, Scott. I wanna keep talking. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Hey. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Listening. I wanna keep... I wanna keep listening.

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Wind 

Dr. Scott Allen: down. Wind up. I'm still thinking about I'm never gonna see a spiderweb the same way. I mean, I just love- 

Dr. Toby Newstead: I've... I love... Yeah ... that 

Dr. Scott Allen: was such a good 

Dr. Toby Newstead: insight. Yeah, and that relationality is the dirt. Well, yeah. I have too many images in my head to think in words that I need to 

Dr. Scott Allen: put,

Dr. Toby Newstead: put together to Yeah

express a question. I mean, my first thought is, Tyson, what else do you want listeners to know? And, and I do have something else to follow up with, but what do you want... What else do you want to say? 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Well, if we're talking about what is there that can promote increase and system self through an engagement with First Peoples, yes, on that acknowledgement level you can [00:29:00]include staff members who are indigenous- 

Dr. Scott Allen: Mm

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: but then that puts a lot of pressure on them as individuals- Mm ... as well. And then if we're looking for indigenous knowledge, you know, usually that comes across as, you know, there are artifacts or little snippets of, you know, interesting and inspiring things from Aboriginal culture. And, yeah, I mean, if you hire consultants and inspirational speakers and all that sort of thing, or if you have interactions with community where you want to in- include, you know, a story from the community, yeah, it's usually focused on moments frozen in time.

You know, those artifacts, those, those brief performances of, of snippets of culture- Mm ... which can be inspiring, interesting, annoying for some people or just, you know, a feelgood of, "Hey, we're doing inclusion." I- 

Dr. Toby Newstead: in this local government area, in their council rooms, they've renamed all of them Aboriginal names that no one can pronounce.

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Yes. Yeah. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Just [00:30:00] part of their sense-making work they were doing, but- 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: But here's the problem. I mean, there is no story there, you know? Mm. And there needs to be a unified narrative, but also focusing on indigenous processes- Indigenous systems. So not just Indigenous knowledge systems that can be plundered for bits and pieces, and words, and objects, and acknowledgments, but Indigenous systems knowledge.

How can our understanding of systems actually help inform your work, and your change-making, and your sense-making, and even your understanding of narrative? So you see there's a pretty huge industry, you know, consulting and coaching and all the rest. You have people coming in and it's, "Oh, how do you use narrative in our organization?

What's our organization's narrative?" And there's story making consultancies around that come in and do that, and they do fireside chats. They do all different things. I... You know, you see, you see that coming out [00:31:00] in the agile sort of stuff as well, which is interesting 'cause they work across those same four things, the individuals, and then, you know.

But building the narrative is, yeah, it's usually shallow. It's not supposed to be something that just, you know, unifies people to the task or anything like that. It's gotta be something that you can grow from. Because your narrative, whether you like it or not, these emerge, and your narrative is the thing that provides your incentive structures and your permission structures.

And the permission structures, you know, are the things, you know, usually that will allow or promote or maintain the things that are actually unhelpful The permission structures are usually people's, you know, oh, their agendas. Their own agendas or their own personal interests or group interests in maintaining dominance or maintaining positional authority or increasing their power or something like that.

And the [00:32:00] stories form about that, but they're wrong story. They are-- They're, they're perverted stories, and these are the things that create perverse incentives, you know, that, that actually damage the organization, make things toxic. You know, so your stories, I, I guess they, you know, they need to build trust rather than just confidence.

You know? So w- we're in a marketplace that responds more to confidence than trust at the moment. So a person with massive confidence, you know, can go out and announce that, you know, "Hey, there's a ceasefire," and, you know, "This," you know, "supply lane will open up next week." And then, you know, everybody trusts that, like over and over.

Or a, a billionaire will, you know, announce that they're, they're buying a, a certain stock, and so then the, the price will go up because suddenly there's heaps of demand for that. And then they'll... On Monday they'll say, "No, no, I'm pulling out of that," and then it'll crash, and everyone gets [00:33:00]shorted. But people, weirdly, they follow confidence.

And the people best able to project confidence, these are the ones who end up being your leaders. And it's usually an attitude towards a narrative that promotes, you know, high-risk behavior That te-- the kind of high-risk behavior of people who can project certainty, which tends to land on a particular gendered or eth- ethnic groups, you know, that, that, that are dominant and that are known for that confidence and, you know, have that story of, you know, we had the audacity to come in and break the rules and cast aside safety and care and plow forward and boom, discovery.

Yeah, so it's that confident, that high risk sort of thing that actually makes things fragile and that actually, you know, produces net losses over time. Yeah, but the narrative, [00:34:00] you know, that, that sort of colonizing narrative, that, that narrative of, of power. There are narratives there that are running all the time, and they're implicit, you know.

But if you start to make explicit a narrative that shows how your low-risk behavior and work over time is the thing that actually stabilizes things and results in more effective long-term strategies and, you know, anti-fragility, you know, in your networks and your, your organization. If you have a story that will put low-risk stuff front and center, then you don't need to try and fix and tinker things like, you know, equal pay for women in the organization because suddenly you're rewarding the low-risk behaviors that, you know, women as a, as a precarious and vulnerable group in your workplace that they're engaged in [00:35:00] and that actually hold the place together and get you through the massive peaks and troughs that come from high-risk, more male behaviors that are rewarded.

So your organization will reward, you know, with bonuses, with promotions, with higher pay. They will reward the high-risk behaviors that actually make the organization weaker, you know, because of that underlying narrative. So like even, you know, Lyft drivers and Uber drivers, you know, there are, there is perverse incentives in there to reward high-risk behaviors.

You know, the people who make more money tend to be men who will take the high-risk jobs to the sort of dodgy part of town or at, you know, times of night and times in the week and the year, you know, where everybody's drunk and and so they tend to clean up and get paid more than female Uber drivers. But, you know, [00:36:00] what are the narratives in your organization around high, high risk and low risk?

Like I said, your incentive systems grow from your narratives, but also the permission structures, you know, for what you're allowed to do and what kind of rules you break and what kind of disruption people will call... If it's disruption, people will nine times out of 10 call it innovation, and that innovation is good.

But, you know, m- most of the time your disruption, it's a, it's a net, it's a net loss. Mm. And you have these bright shining stars coming forward and inevitably crashing and burning and taking half the place with them. So what are your narratives? 

Dr. Scott Allen: Yep.

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: And how are they linked specifically so that they are, you know, measurably building your incentive systems and your permission structures?

Dr. Scott Allen: Are they sustainable? Are they long-term? Are they regenerative? Or are they extracting [00:37:00] quick fixes- Mm ... that may ultimately do damage in the long run, short-term win, long-term loss? Yeah. And, and t- you know, you're using that language high risk and, you know, I just, I keep coming back to this quote, greater intelligence across the system.

How do we create environments and narratives that elevate that as the priority, that as the goal, that as at least a, a, a very important part of the work versus... I think the system capitalism can seduce us into a number of other behaviors that ultimately in the long run don't serve. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: I strongly believe in free markets and that, you know, that idea, the story of capital that is sold to us of, you know, the village and people are producing products and selling it, and there's, you know, a velocity of the dollar happening in that village [00:38:00] and the demand goes to the higher quality and lower price products, you know.

And so there's competition and, you know, that competition is dispersed, you know, throughout, so it's vibrant and constantly interacting, and there's signals pinging everywhere. Wow, a complex You know, self-organizing system where emergence can happen, and amazing innovations and, and growth and stability and, yeah, and, and it solves, yes, the free market solutions.

It's the rising tide that lifts all boats. You know, that story is there, and we believe it. But it's wrong story because it's false. You know, what's happening in there is actually corruption and, you know, rigging. It's, it's always, always being rigged. And yeah, it's, it's destructive. It destroys entire industries.

You know, and the, the goal is to destroy those things and, and, and then, and just sort of strip the, strip the place for parts. Extract what you [00:39:00] can as an individual, and then desert the ship with the other rats before it sinks. And this is what's happened to, to capital, and it's just a hangover from the past, all these cultures of kings and queens and nobility.

And yeah, it, uh... capital's been subverted towards that so that the stories are wrong stories. They're, they're not true. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: But yeah, imagine having a right story that wasn't trying to fool people into thinking that's the system you're in when their actual existence is increasingly precarious. What if there was one that went, "Let's actually do the village and the free market, and let's make sure, you know, we have, we have things in place in the system that will stabilize it and keep it complex and interdependent."

Yeah. Then you can have proper, a proper free market that delivers on the, the beautiful dream, the beautiful story that's actually never been achieved. Yeah. That's the sequel to Sand Talk, by the way, is Right Story, Wrong Story. Hmm. 

Dr. Scott Allen: And 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: [00:40:00] that informed the disinformation and power interests where the story is a lie, and the actual story beneath it is, you know, manipulating people and to support things that are against their best interests, and that sort of tilting of the world and tilting of the system.

So it was kind of a sobering follow-up to Sand Talk, which was all like, "Hey!" Yeah. And I don't know. Yeah, but it's a trilogy because there's a third one now, Snake Talk. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Ah. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: And you know, Snake Talk is how to foster those interdependencies. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Okay. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Indigenous processes of traditional embassy and how that happens.

Collective sense-making across different groups that sort of make sure there are flows and open loops across different systems and- tribes and organizations that these are regenerative loops. You know, where, you know, one system's waste is another system's lunch, and these things flow. Yeah, around how do you, how do you [00:41:00] foster that embassy?

What are the protocols for it? And this, this happens to exist in the, the serpent stories. So it comes back to narrative again. You look at the foundational serpent stories of your culture, any human culture that you're in, there will be snakes there. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Mm. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: And, you know, in every, every story, even sort of twisted biblical narratives that are co-opted for prosperity gospels and things like that, with the perverse incentives of all that, it's still, you know...

At Genesis, there is still an- older entity there, a serpent that is, everything's just been created, but that serpent is already the ancient enemy. Yeah, so the serpent is the thing that preexists most people's creation narratives. And yeah, if you can get to the foundational lore of your serpent, you'll find that it's the same everywhere, and has some very broad principles of right creation and right destruction.

Dr. Scott Allen: Mm. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: [00:42:00] So everything that you create must be regenerative, and every act of destruction, every disturbance you create should be a regenerative disturbance as well. So that's good disruption- Mm-hmm ... and good innovation in that way. But bad creation and bad destruction is stuff that damages the relationships and the foundations of healthy systems.

Yeah, but your serpent, who is neither good nor evil, he's creator and destroyer, and often is slain, slain by the hero. So that's all your dragon stories from everywhere in the world. You know, your serpent stories, they have a foundation of right creation, right destruction, the regenerative acts, and, you know, h- how you care for and steward the relationships between peoples and across borders and boundaries, right down to personal boundaries and family boundaries, you know, right the way up to local governance, regional governance, global governance.

Yeah. [00:43:00] So it, it's all there. So that's a trilogy. You haven't got- Great ... Snake Talk in the US yet, but you can usually find it online, like- 

Dr. Scott Allen: Okay ... 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: you can order it from another country or on eBay and stuff like that. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Okay. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Okay. I will put links in the show notes to those. Toby, would you do the honor? C- what's the practical wisdom in this conversation that we've just had?

How are you thinking about that- 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Okay ... 

Dr. Scott Allen: question? 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Way to put me on the spot, John. 

Dr. Scott Allen: The honesty is that I don't have an answer, so you go for it. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Oh, good handball. 

Dr. Scott Allen: No, I wanna hear yours. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Well, let's bu- let's build on one another. I mean, the, the things that are, yes, intelligence across the system, relationality, I think, and interdependence, and that being the basis of antifragility.

And really, you know, when we're talking about leadership, yes, leaders of systems, organizations, countries, also, like, small L leaders and leadership, when we're just trying to think about how to get our work done or, or get our sports team moving or [00:44:00] get our family unit together or whatever it might be like that, always coming back to interdependence and relationality, and beyond even just human to human- relationality, I too will forever be looking at spiderwebs differently and looking to see where I can see and what I can see about the loose strands of spiderwebs.

Dr. Scott Allen: Yep. the data that's there if we're present and if we're paying close attention and we're aware. If we're just focused on a linear, we're gonna miss very, very important data that is present- Mm-hmm ... and real in that moment, and there's- Yeah ... there's an important lesson there. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: Look, e- engaging with your outliers, yeah, you're always looking for the systems knowledge and systems insights you find there So even, you know, with Abori- Aboriginal groups.

Tasmania, there's all kinds of projects there that, and thinkers that are underfunded or unnoticed. There's the fella right now I'm working with who is-- who's built this amazing [00:45:00] bio-sentinel technology, you know, where he can install nano devices in mollu- mollusks in the waterways that track an amazing amount of data because it's based on indigenous systems knowledge, so it can derive a lot of in-incredible analysis and data, you know, just from these minute changes in the behavior of the mollusks.

You know, and that, that goes to a big sort of vault in a data center, and then there's, you know, elders who process that knowledge. But then that, that becomes valuable in itself, and it's all encrypted at the point of collection. Encryption is value now, and so you have something that's basically a, a really big sort of asset, yeah, th-that, that's created out of that, and then entire sort of systems of value and, and currency and flow that come from that.

That's just incredible. He's got the entire system mapped out, and he can scale it for 50 grand. [00:46:00]He's raising that now. That would be a good investment. That's a fella you wanna come in and, and talk to your staff. Yeah. So y- and yes, do the inspiring stuff, but when people come in and they, you know, talk, talk to you about Aboriginal knowledge in your local place, look for the stories and think about the incentives that are in the stories and the understandings that are in the narratives that they share that could actually, you know, create better permissions structures and incentive structures in your organization.

There is depth in the narratives, 'cause these are things that reflect natural and social systems and keep them on track over deep time. So your long-term interdependencies, you know, your landscape for the longevity of your organization and the health of it, you know, these are there in the stories. So it's, yeah, it's that shift between, you know, just understanding indigenous knowledge systems and, you know, being able to [00:47:00] leverage indigenous systems knowledge.

It's, yeah, different. We actually have a nonprofit now. We've set up the Indigenous Systems Knowledge Collective, and we, we network and support, you know, with a lot of indigenous systems thinkers and people doing different projects- 

Dr. Scott Allen: Hmm ... 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: putting together labs to do the research where, you know, these things can actually, you know, be used and replicated, you know, in different organizations.

So I don't know. So we've innovated a new kind of board structure that we're trialing in a few non, non-indigenous organizations now. Which has ended up just infusing right through the entire leadership and management structure of, of organizations, not just the board. That, that's pretty exciting. Yeah, we've got a thousand projects like that.

Indigenous systems thinking is... It's, it's really exciting. And you're not stealing culture. You know, if you're creating these sort of creolized systems, you know, at the interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, [00:48:00] there's gold to be found there. It's, you know- Yeah. ... there's relationships that can be made- Yeah

in that halfway space. 

Dr. Scott Allen: Tyson, Toby, I'm, I'm so thankful for the two of you, thankful for this conversation. I just, I appreciate you, sir. I appreciate the work that you're doing helping me better understand your perspectives, ways of knowing. I just, I love learning, and I feel like I learn from you every time I listen to one of your books.

I've learned in this conversation tonight. Toby, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for jumping in and co-hosting this episode of Practical Wisdom for Leaders. And to listeners, there is a lot of links in the show notes. So click on those, learn more about Toby, learn more about Tyson and his work. And as always, thanks so much for checking in wherever you are in the world.

Thanks to the two of you. Have a great day. 

Dr. Toby Newstead: Thanks, Tyson. 

Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta: [00:49:00] Thanks.