Matthew Wright-Simon On Storytelling and Building Culturally Connected Systems for Impact
Matthew Wright-Simon’s impact story goes back as far as the 1970s, with community activism and business adventures in childhood. Multiple social enterprises and collaborations as a grown-up show he hasn’t changed that much.
In the last decade, Matthew has been involved with Double Denim, a textiles startup that supported women experiencing homelessness; A Sign of Respect, a reconciliation project bringing culture celebration to letterboxes and fences; and Newday Leadership, an organisation dedicated to inspiring leadership for the greater good.
Two years ago, Matthew brought many of these themes together and founded Engage Change, a collaboration consultancy that connects people with impact.
Philanthropy is a joy unto its own, and as Dean of Awesome Foundation Adelaide, Matthew has helped give away more than $110,000 to people ‘doing something awesome’. Even now, Matthew doesn’t quite know what to call himself, but he has been publicly accused of being a “philanthropreneur”.
Matthew discusses how storytelling, Indigenous knowledge, regenerative thinking and creative strategy can empower changemakers, and why cross-sector collaborative leadership is essential for shaping more equitable futures.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Indio Myles] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what led you to social entrepreneurship?
[Matthew Wright-Simon] - I was a weird kid, and I think you’ve probably interviewed lots of people who were also weird kids! I existed on a form of universal basic income as a child known as “pocket money”, and back in the 1970s when I was little, you actually had to work for pocket money! One of my jobs was shovelling poo. We had chickens, the poo would accumulate, and it would become home to maggots because the flies loved the poo.
One of the jobs I had to do to get my pocket money was to shovel the poo out for the chickens. What I thought at the time was, it’s nice that the chickens love eating the maggots, so there’s a bit of circular economy happening right there. It seemed a bit wasteful to pile it all into the garden, and I got the idea that maybe, just maybe, I could mix it up with some dirt and sell it to neighbours on the street side.
I did, and that was my first social enterprise: selling a mixture of chicken manure and garden dirt to well-meaning neighbours. I was getting extra money, so at the time the social impact was focused just on me.
Entrepreneurialism was strong in me, and ever since I’ve got involved in lots of things that are looking at incorporating things that might be wasteful and finding different ways of changing the way that we relate to one another. One of those things is trade; if you’ve got something to give or to sell, you might have a need or it matches with something we both care about.
At the same sort of time in primary school, I became involved in activism. I founded a Greenpeace group when I was in primary school, and I bullied all of my friends into joining up because I was so motivated by the campaigning.
At the time (this is the late 1970s and early 1980s, well before most of your listeners were born), there was a lot of imagery around animal welfare, and I became very passionate about this and realised that community organising could be part of the way that we show up in the world.
I’ve been a weird kid forever, and I guess that explains part of why I am here on a podcast talking to you.
As the founder of Engage Change, can you share more about the organisation and how it’s supporting community organising, connecting people with impact, and driving systems change?
Engage Change is the culmination of this entrepreneurial zeal and this love of collaboration. I have worked with so many different social enterprises and communities, and what I find is everybody needs a bit of everything. That became the starting point, and I know it may sound enormously wide in scope, though we do need a strategic view on things.
Strategy is part of the work that I do, and it involves working out what it is that we need to do together. What change are we looking for? Which communities or which causes might this work serve? How does leadership development, how does co-designing programs and development fit in with that?
I’ll give you an example of the type of work that emerges, and what I’ve done recently with Engage Change. In health systems, there are so many protocols that don’t help people. Here in Australia, we have a system around screening for different health conditions when you go to your GP. Sometimes it can feel challenging to work out why you only get screened for heart disease if you’re already showing symptoms. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a standard screening earlier in your life?
I ended up working over the last couple of years with a bunch of researchers who wanted to explore this type of work. Rather than merely working within the health system, we recruited a whole range of older people from across Australian communities who were representative of every stakeholder group you can imagine. They brought their lived experience and their points of view into community juries.
I worked with researchers and community members to deliver and co-design the resources that came out of a community jury process. There’s all of this work around policy and co-design and listening to people who have lived experience of diabetes or other age-related conditions.
Rather than it being a talkfest, which community engagement is sometimes accused of being, this same group of people then helped design and write recommendations over a weekend or successive weekends.
Those recommendations were put to experts in the system and policymakers. They gave their opinions and sent them back to the same people, so they got to hear what the experts thought of this work. Then, over a period of many more months, we co-designed resources that will be used by a GP at the doctor’s office, when you turn up for an appointment, in the research sector and in policy.
To bring researchers who are deeply specialised in their work together with regular humans who are deeply generalised in their experience of life is at the heart of the type of work I love doing. That’s just one example of things that have emerged from Engage Change and our collaborative work together.
What changes have you seen in how social entrepreneurs and changemakers approach impact and collaboration?
Sometimes in this field of impact work, it can feel like you’re encountering the same problems over and over again, year after year. I have been reflecting on this a lot.
We’ve seen the rise of things many of us thought we wouldn’t have to keep fighting for, though of course the fight continues! A lot of the system change we’re seeking affects people who don’t want change and who like to keep things at the fringes.
One of the things I’ve really noticed here in Australia is this continent has a hundred thousand years’ worth of knowledge, innovation, and storytelling. I’m a non-Aboriginal person, and I grew up and went through schooling with absolutely no insight given to me or offered around where we come from as a continent and as a nation. A lot of that journey has been mine in adulthood, which I’ve absolutely relished.
In the last decade, and to a whole other level following the Voice referendum (which was such a divisive moment in our recent history), we’re seeing a much more determined collaborative approach to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal collaboration on impact work. It’s been about looking at how we learn and how we build things together, not only through the Western lens or any one particular lens.
A simple way of putting it is that it’s about sharing and caring. There’s caring for Country, and anyone involved in impact work relating to the environment is effectively talking about caring for Country.
Then there’s sharing. In Western culture, sharing can be very individualised, while in First Nations cultures, sharing is the norm. It’s the caring and the sharing we’re talking about: distribution and inclusion.
What I’m seeing now in Australia’s impact work is much more heavily integrated collaboration across many different sectors. In social enterprise and social innovation, we’re starting to lead with Aboriginal genius, or “indigenuity” as I often hear it called. That’s been a great learning journey for me and many of the people I collaborate with. All of my work in leadership or enterprise program design and development is done alongside Aboriginal leaders, and that brings a cultural delight into this work.
It’s the rich stuff people retain and bring into their own work which I think is a positive thing. I didn’t see this to this degree ten years ago, let alone twenty-five years ago. That’s something I wanted to share with you and your audience, because I’m seeing it, and I’m sure in conversations you’ve had, it also comes out.
One other point I’d like to make is that we’re living in a hybrid world. You and I are on a podcast right now; someone’s listening to this through their earbuds while they’re out for a run or whatever they’re doing. I think 80% of impact work is done in person, especially post-COVID, or during our “COVID-started-and-we’re-still-in-it” mode.
The value people get from being together in person is the impactful work. The more we do in person, the more powerful our work will be. It’s a lot harder to bring people together, but it’s worth it. The impact of in-person engagement and working together is more powerful now because of the loneliness that happens when we’re being numbed by convenience and the homogenisation of the way many of us receive our information.
How can social entrepreneurs or purpose-driven leaders better collaborate across sectors and communities to build momentum for the business-for-good movement?
Part of the answer is in the question.
Your problem may feel unique, and where the problem shows up might be, but I’m pretty confident whatever you are experiencing is being or has been experienced by somebody else. You might not be looking in the right place, because part of the problem we can have is that we often stick to our own circles and bubbles.
That might be your own age group or your industry. I find that intergenerational, intersectional and international approaches to that scanning part of the work are essential to starting well.
In regard to the whole echo chamber thing, it’s a cacophony. If you keep yelling out for help without opening the doors and walking outside, you’re going to get some industrial hearing damage, a bit like what I’ve sustained from my years of enjoying live music!
Another part of what makes this work hard, and what makes it difficult for some people to collaborate, is people think it’s going to be a lot of work. I think the more diversity we bring into our work, the more fun it is and the more we’re learning. Learning’s fun, and we are designed to learn.
Not being so hung up on being experts, and instead living in a childlike frame of mind is crucial. Being playful, playing with lots of strangers, and getting familiar with the unfamiliar absolutely helps with this work.
You’ll probably come up with something other people in a way that is a lot more enjoyable than trying to nut something out because you’re an expert or because someone said you’re an expert.
Keep in mind, I was once accused of being a “philanthropreneur”, and I still don’t quite know what that is.
How do you integrate storytelling when teaching leadership and working with social entrepreneurs, and how can changemakers harness narratives to engage, inspire and drive action?
Here we are having a yarn. We love to tell stories, and like I indicated before, this continent is built on stories. I was born here in Australia in a place where story has absolutely driven humans’ understanding of the world and their interaction with it. It’s an entirely sustainable way of being at one with nature, and it’s something most social entrepreneurs are now attempting to build our way back to.
Storytelling is the key to this change work. We dream in stories, and I think it’s hard to have a vision without dreaming. The stories might not always make sense, though there’s always a place, characters, and often, a time involved. If you can imagine your circumstances as a story, you are but one character in that story.
The way we harness storytelling is by modelling structures that make sense to us. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. Where are you? You’re probably at the beginning; you’re definitely not at the end. The reason it’s tough, and why you’re turning to storytelling, is probably because you’re somewhere in that messy middle. Even that rule of three (the beginning, middle, and the end) is a storytelling structure.
I work with storytelling a lot. I work with many different storytellers, always with First Nations storytellers. I have not met a leader or a learner (and they’re both the same thing) who doesn’t learn through stories. It’s so accessible, and it doesn’t require any specific knowledge or skills to listen to or to tell a story. I think many of us underestimate how much of our communication is storytelling.
One of the things I think about sometimes is that what sets us apart from all the other animals is that we have been able to share information in ways that extend beyond a lifetime. We do this thing called studying history. We’ve built economies and formed whole stories around pieces of metal or electrons being worth something, and here’s the story that I want you to believe so that this value exchange makes sense.
Our ability to use the things we go to for enjoyment, relaxation, and celebrating our humanity all involve stories. Without story, we’re no different to any other species. I’m not saying we are better than any other species, but we just have this sort of weird combination of abilities, and our ability to tell a story and to reference the world in that way is a power, that I think we can use in the impact world better than any other sector.
There’s a truth to storytelling that speaks to our humanity and desire to be kind to one another. When you’re sitting down to talk with a friend orsignificant other, or if you’re wanting to impart a lesson without being too much of a painful parent, you’re telling a story.
That’s the thing that’s going to hang; that’s the structure that everything else attaches to. We make sense of the world built around story, and I challenge anyone to name any successful venture, product or initiative that doesn’t have a strong story behind it.
You work with leaders who are led by their values and tackling complex social or environmental challenges. What advice do you have for aspiring leaders who are seeking to make a difference?
You’ve got to mean it, and if you are listening to this podcast, you’re at least impact curious.
The greatest power you have as an individual is to change who you are. You’ve only got one life, and how much you can change is part of how much you might be able to contribute to broader change. I’m not being flippant when I say that.
Being dedicated to growth as a human is essential to this work. More than once in this conversation we’ve referenced having been involved in this for a long time, and like I said, being a weird kid is something you take to the grave. My advice, regardless of when you started to aspire to be a changemaker, is you’ve got one precious life, and not everything is going to go the way you might hope; It just won’t. You’ve got to be honest about who you are and fly that freak flag! It’s important to celebrate how different we are from one another and all the things we have in common.
One of the things I recommend to anyone is understand what your strengths are. Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology has helped develop this framework around Values in Action, and you can do a VIA survey online. It’s free. You answer a whole bunch of questions, and you find out what your main character strengths are.
My number one character strength for instance is kindness. I’m naturally inclined to be kind, though it can also be a flaw. I can be a total pushover. I can be so eager to please that I let things slide that I shouldn’t let slide.
I’m aware that I have that tendency; I don’t want to upset people or hurt people’s feelings. There’s a strength in that as well as a weakness, so let’s call it a strengthness. Being able to absolutely know what your strengths are, and then being able to see those strengths in other people, is so powerful in any of this work.
Hop online and do that survey if you haven’t done it before. Think about yourself as a whole person when you do it, rather than who you are at work, or who you are at home, or who you are when you’re with your bestie. Maybe it’s the amalgam of all of those things.
What I love about Seligman’s work is that it’s called positive psychology because it’s not about a deficit model. It’s not about what you are missing, why you’re bad, or how you should fix that. It’s a good discipline to take into your work in change, and having that self-knowledge is something that can help you through those times when things aren’t going the way you hoped.
That would be a bit of advice around sustainable impact, as you say, because it’s a long journey. You’re going to keep doing this until you’re not, and most of the people I know in this work, people older than me and younger than me, are in it for the long haul. You’ve got to look after and know yourself.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive change?
An initiative I’m involved in that inspires me is the Awesome Foundation. There are chapters across the world, and it’s a giving circle. There are many dozens of them globally, and it’s all about giving away money to people doing something awesome. Look it up. It’s micro-philanthropy in action, and it’s absolutely delightful.
I’ve unearthed so many things through this that I never knew existed, and it cheers one up to get involved.
To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our audience?
I’m going to recommend a couple of books, and it’s always difficult to choose two, so I’m going to! Both authors are people I know and have worked with in leadership work, particularly in impact leadership.
The first book is The Dreaming Path, which many of your listeners will have read, by Dr Paul Callaghan. It’s built around a series of conversations with another doctor, Uncle Paul [Gordon], and it helps explore a whole range of concepts around leadership through Indigenous storytelling.
Paul has such a great way with words and makes sometimes quite complicated things easy to understand and connect with, much like you’re sitting by the fire with him having a yarn. That’s one hard recommend: get a hold of The Dreaming Path. There is also a new book on leadership Dr. Paul tells me is coming out in the new year, so get on the waitlist for that.
The other book is from a friend of mine, Durkhanai Ayubi. She has Afghani heritage, and her family came to Australia some years back and set up a restaurant called Parwana.
Parwana is also the name of this extraordinary book Durkhanai wrote, along with recipes from her sister and her mother. She tells the stories around Afghanistan’s long history and the diaspora through the sensory experiences of making, growing, cooking and sharing food. It is a brilliant book.
Dani has another book coming out in the new year, which I’m really looking forward to, and I think it’s even more deeply poetic and thoughtful. Those two books (The Dreaming Path and Parwana) are absolutely on my gift list. I love giving them to friends and changemakers alike, and I would absolutely love to know that many more people have discovered them through this podcast.
Initiatives, Resources and people mentioned on the podcast
Recommended books
The Dreaming Path: Indigenous Thinking to Change Your Life by Paul Callaghan with Uncle Paul Gordon
Parwana: Recipes and Stories from an Afghan Kitchen by Durkhanai Ayubi
