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The Work

The Work

Written by: James Allen & Angelo Saridis
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We explore the subtle forces that shape our experience of work, and the big ideas that are nudging it somewhere better.

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James Allen Economics Management Management & Leadership Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Tyson Yunkaporta on indigenous thinking and why you can't improve your "self"

    Tyson Yunkaporta on indigenous thinking and why you can't improve your "self"
    Nov 1 2021
    In this episode... 

    We speak with Tyson Yunkaporta about indigenous thinking and why paying attention to pattern and context matters. Tyson is an indigenous academic, researcher and carver of traditional tools and weapons. 

    Who is Tyson Yunkaporta?

    Tyson Yunkaporta is an indigenous academic, researcher and member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne and also carves traditional tools and weapons.  

    Tyson is the author of Sand Talk: How indigenous thinking can save the world, in which he uses sand talk, which honours the Aboriginal custom of drawing images on the ground, to bring clarity to complexity. He asks: what happens if we bring an indgenous perspective to the big picture - to history, education, money, power? Can we, in fact, have proper concepts of sustainable life without Indigenous Knowledge?

    Tyson is also the host of The Other Others podcast, in which hosts wide ranging and always paradigm-cracking yarns with a diverse bunch of thinkers and doers.

    You can also follow Tyson’s work at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyson-yunkaporta-04a9b969/

    A few things you’ll learn about in this episode
    • How humans are contextual beings and how our cognition depends on context, relationality, place and story.
    • How the best outcomes can’t be planned.
    • Why attention and responsiveness to the pattern of relations you live within is important
    • How the indigenous idea of wisdom or knowledge is so closely related to listening/observing, and what that means for those too married to a specific outcomes.
    Please follow The Work podcast

    We hope you enjoyed this episode. We'd love to hear what you think. Get in touch with us via our website, LinkedIn or Facebook, if you’d like to say hello, dish out some high praise, or suggest a guest for the show.

    Episode keywords

    Culture, complexity, leadership, sensemaking, indigenous knowledge, indigenous wisdom, systems thinking, pattern mind


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Dave Snowden on culture as emergent and why it can't be "built"

    Dave Snowden on culture as emergent and why it can't be "built"
    Aug 3 2021
    In this episode... We speak with Dave Snowden about how we can better understand organisational culture through the complexity lens. Dave is a pioneer complexity thinker, Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge, and the creator of the Cynefin Framework.Who is Dave Snowden?Dave Snowden divides his time between two roles: founder Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge and the founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at the University of Wales. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making.  He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style.He created the Cynefin Framework, which is a sensemaking and decision device that is used globally in everything from business management, military affairs, emergency management and software development. His paper on the topic (co-authored with Boone), A Leader’s Framework for Decision-Making, was the cover article for the Harvard Business Review in November 2007 and also won the Academy of Management award for the best practitioner paper in the same year.Dave’s company Cognitive Edge exists to integrate academic thinking with practice in organisations throughout the world and operates on a network model working with Academics, Government, Commercial Organisations, NGOs and Independent Consultants. He is also the main designer of the SenseMaker® software suite, originally developed in the field of counter terrorism and now being actively deployed in both Government and Industry to handle issues of impact measurement, customer/employee insight, narrative based knowledge management, strategic foresight and risk management. Dave previously worked for IBM where he was a Director of the Institution for Knowledge Management and founded the Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity. During that period he was selected by IBM as one of six on-demand thinkers for a world wide advertising campaign. If you want to get a quick idea about Dave’s approach to managing complexity, watching his hilariously smart Children’s Birthday Party story is a must.You can follow Dave’s work or get in touch with him at:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-snowden-2a93b/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/snowded Website: https://www.cognitive-edge.com/Blog: https://www.cognitive-edge.com/blog/?_author=17 A few things you’ll learn about in this episodeCulture is an emergent property of interactions over time, and how you can’t “create” an emergent propertyWhy narrative matters, and how to understand culture as a body of storiesHow engagement questionnaires are flawed, and why self-interpretation is necessaryWhy effective change depends on finding the lowest energy pathway to the “adjacent possible” stateWhy breaking rules is necessary in organisations, and how you can create enabling constraints around beneficial rule-breaking behavioursHow rituals can help more than rulesHow pushing individuals to change in organisational contexts may be unethical How you can recognise complexity in organisations, and how to best work with itPlease follow The Work podcastWe hope you enjoyed this episode. We'd love to hear what you think. Get in touch with us via our website, LinkedIn or Facebook, if you’d like to say hello, dish out some high praise, or suggest a guest for the show.Episode keywordsOrganisational culture, culture change, employee experience, employee engagement, complexity, leadership, systems thinking, narrative, narrative landscapes, cynefin, cognitive edge, emergence, adjacent possible, energy gradient, exaptative innovation, enabling constraints, ritual, sensemaking, change management, indigenous decision making, sensemaker Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    45 mins
  • Ben Smit on how tech can be a team leader's wingman

    Ben Smit on how tech can be a team leader's wingman
    Jul 13 2021
    In this episode... 

    We speak with Ben Smit about how leaders can use tech to help grow high performing teams from the bottom up.  Ben is an entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Teamgage, software that enables team collaboration, wellbeing, and continuous improvement. 

    Who is Ben Smit?

    Ben Smit is an entrepreneur and highly skilled at growing scale-up companies and leveraging technology to solve human problems, with a focus on engaging team members to own and advocate the improvement process. Ben is part of the husband and wife team responsible for founding Teamgage, software that builds employee engagement by regularly collecting workplace feedback while empowering teams to take action on their own results and select metrics that are relevant to the team at the team level. The system measures behaviours and sentiment aligned to the strategy of the organisation and drives teams and managers to action their own improvements in real-time. Ben and Teamgage are taking on the worldwide market, and it has grown to service clients across Australia, Asia Pacific and North America. Ben recently won a 40 under 40 award for his passion, vision and achievements as one of SA's finest entrepreneurs under the age of 40.on their own results and select metrics that are relevant to the team at the team level. 

    You can follow Ben or get in touch with him:

    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ben-smit-2594b321

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/ben7smit 

    Website:www.teamgage.com, www.code360.com.au

    A few things you’ll learn about in this episode:
    • Thinking about culture and employee engagement as a bottom up dynamic
    • Leadership setting principles, teams being enabled to deliver
    • Explosion of HR tech
    • Making space for failure and learning  
    • Innovation culture
    • The role of trust in team performance
    • Applying agile thinking to culture and staff engagement
    • Continuous improvement and how it can be applied to team performance
    Please follow The Work podcast

    We hope you enjoyed this episode. We'd love to hear what you think. Get in touch with us via our website, LinkedIn or Facebook if you’d like to say hello, dish out some high praise, or suggest a guest for the show.

    Episode keywords

    Organisational culture, culture change, employee experience, employee engagement, complexity, leadership, human resources, people matters, hr technology, continuous improvement, agile, teamgage, teamwork


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Show More Show Less
    44 mins
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