Profile: Rob Tyrie
Systems Whisperer, Enterprise Strategist, Creator of Order in Chaotic Domains
Professional Summary
is what happens when a polymath† meets a product roadmap and decides to optimize the universe using a whiteboard, a Systems Thinking textbook, and just the right metaphor involving electromagnetism. however I am not a polymath.
I am the founder of Ironstone Advisory—a consulting firm that doesn’t just help software companies grow, it helps them self-actualize. With a background that spans computer science, statistics, consulting, military, spy, government systems, banking, and insurance, Rob designs not only software but the very epistemological structure on which software should run. and he’s done this on the mainframe, on the internet, on social Mobile and cloud and now in AI corporations . (which have to be re-engineered).
He has launched or scaled over a dozen companies, led professional services teams, and built systems for the military that would make any flowchart blush. If you asked him what he does, he might say, "I help executives think clearly when things go sideways," but that's like saying a conductor just waves a stick at musicians.
Rob is also a master of the Ironstone Discovery Method, the creator of the Ironstone Critical Cube, the Bullshit Compass, and the layered Cortical Cities learning universe. He does all this with a wizard emoji as his personal brand signature, because honestly, he’s earned it.
Philosophy and Methodology
Ironstone Axiom #1: If it can be seen by strangers, it's production.
Ironstone Axiom #2: Entropy is a diagnostic, not an excuse.
Ironstone Axiom #3: Simplicity is clarity earned, not convenience taken.
Rob operates through metaphors drawn from physics, logic, and pattern languages. He believes systems are living entities, not just code bases. His BoB framework—Basis of Bob—anchors discovery, analysis, and transformation work. Bob stands for not only the name old guy’s name Rob get named, it is also the boring old business plan.. I think you got taught to do early in University that’s four or five pages long and then turned into this monster that we call prospectuses and could be hundreds of pages long but it’s still a boring old business plan I hope and it’s modeled by the three sheet model.
That’s it that’s all that Bob is five page business plan and a three sheet model for a business. and what I do now is add some Dynamics to it that are better than a spreadsheet because the software programs to take a look at your business plan and then extend things.
Ironstone Specialties Include results from Rob:
. Strategic transformation in complex/chaotic environments, like rapidly scaly companies doubling every year in Revenue up until 20 million dollars.
. Platform business canvas modeling and dynamic system flows
. Front-office insurance and financial services systems
. Discovery-led AI implementation
. Tech stacks for the future
artificial intelligence Business and
. Technology roadmaps all in one slide.
. Making flowcharts cool again, am I making them into infographics and calculators.
. creating explainers for for complex things that need to be explained simply…like to explain that we designed for equitable.ca which is right here.
Rob in Culture
Imagine if XKCD's Randall Munroe got tired of drawing stick figures and started fixing enterprise software. Or if Daniel Kahneman and Richard Feynman co-hosted a consulting podcast with flowcharts and punchlines. That’s Rob. He can translate between executives, engineers, philosophers, and the occasional sentient spreadsheet.
His presence is part Mr. Wolf from Pulp Fiction, and The Accountant, a portion of John Wick, and part Socratic AI whisperer, part well-shaven strategist who wears metaphorical (and sometimes literal) capes. His stories are often instructional, always layered, and frequently include footnotes even when spoken aloud.
Personal Brand Icons:
Emoji: 🧙♂️
Signature: “Synthesized and designed by Rob Tyrie using BoB.” 🦊🐺🍁🫎
Favorite quote: "Build systems that explain themselves to the people who live in them."
he was born and raised in Canada by great people. 🥌🇨🇦🍁
Online & Public Work
IronstoneAdvisory.com — Platform innovation + consulting
robtyrie.medium.com — Essays on leadership, logic, and intelligent systems
GitHub.com/ironstone: The public archive of thinking tools, frameworks, and memes-as-method
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Footnote: This profile was constructed from conversations, memories, metaphors, and a recursive system scan. It is, like Rob’s favorite diagrams, a snapshot of a living system in motion.
this is all done in openai using my memories what got recorded what it thought it was important and then me taking the lens on it just asking the questions that I ask.
there was zero hallucinations in this method and this approach because I have a long memory and lots of usage of this tool.
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Special note to all experts and polymaths.
I’m not really a polymath. I am polymathic I guess. I know stuff across a lot of spectrum and I’ve been paid to do a lot of different things in different areas, from software to painting apartments.
but it’s a good word and I do think that the really top polymaths are the most important types of creatures on Earth that are human. I’m talking about Leonardo da vinci, Feyneman, Edison, Musk. I’m just kind of one and there should be a spectrum of these falling ass like lightweight ones and big ones and then you’ll always find that it is the subject matter expert that goes deep it always is critical and suspicious of polymaths because they can never be them but that’s not the point is it?
Think of a polymath of having a series of critical cortical columns in themselves that progress to higher levels of complexity than other people do. you can do your own assessment of yourself on the polymathic scale developed by Robert Tyre which is an extension of the idea of range by Goleman. the idea is simple you across the top you draw different areas whether it be sports science or business arts. and then going down the vertical is varying levels of complexity that you’re able to achieve from a level 1 through a level of five where it’s five Fibonacci. so in order of one, 2,3,5,8. when you’re at the level 5 which is 8 orders of magnitude of complexity that’s polymathic. you can create a colored graph of yourself if you color in how close you are to the order so there’s a range from red to blue.. read your novice and you expect the blue as you get to become a professional in that area and then finally a teacher and researcher in and expanding the science of that area. I’m not at the blue levels I’m not a PhD I’m just a regular computer scientist who graduated from computer Science school who worked in computer science in a bunch of companies in different ways and applies computer science every day and gets paid for it.
CC BY 4.0 – Ironstone Knowledge Object, April 2025 copy this and share it but don’t change it unless you tell people it was me and don’t use it unless you tell people that I created it and reuse it and share it that’s what I want you to do and make it better for goodness sakes.. you’re smarter than I am — rvt
