Trigger Strategy (Tom Kerwin and Corissa Nunn)
Explorez tous les épisodes de Trigger Strategy
| Date | Titre | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Jan 2024 | 009: Using Pitch Provocations to poke the market - Part 3 | 00:35:33 | |
We get practical about how to create your pitch provocations fast and how to write them effectively. Then we talk about what’s next - testing the market, and learning what it’ll really take to deliver. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 26 Jan 2024 | 015: Continuously discovering beef on Linkedin | 00:28:47 | |
Everyone knows you should stay out of social media beefs, so we’re going against all common sense and wading in. This showdown between two camps has been a long time coming: should research be democratised, or does that only devalue research? Recently one populariser of democratisation has become a bit of a scapegoat. We think the debate on social media lacks nuance (surprising precisely nobody) and so we try to dig into some of the layers of nuance we can see, and have lived through ourselves. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Feb 2024 | 025: Change, ready-ing and a caterpillar with wooden wings | 00:29:35 | |
What if the theory of change we often try to impose on ourselves and our organisations is actually counterproductive? Is actually blocking what needs to happen for change to occur? We talk about a LinkedIn post Tom shared that stopped Corissa in her tracks, including a story about a woman who found herself giving back borrowed books. Here’s the link to the post, including a trail to get to Nora Bateson’s full essay, Ready-ing: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomdkerwin_an-essay-on-readying-tending-the-prelude-activity-7160987048626057216-ZZy9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 Apr 2024 | 041: Nuance, absolutes and shiny suits | 00:29:57 | |
Can you get through life without ever oversimplifying something? If not, when is it OK? And what does that have to do with parenting, politics and pole-climbing professionals? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 30 Apr 2024 | 042: Helping to euthanise a startup | 00:19:54 | |
In which we talk about how energy gradients affect the chances of a strategy succeeding, and imagine people pushing concrete wheels around. Tom shares the story of a client and how energy gradient thinking got them to finally identify the thing that was stopping them from making sales. It’s a cautionary tale and an encouragement for you to think about energy gradients sooner rather than later. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 003: Startups, assumptions and coaching | 00:23:10 | |
1) Can big company “A players” do scrappy startups? 2) Assumption mapping - does it work? Can you make it work? 3) Coaching vs tricking people into thinking your idea is theirs … spicy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 27 Jan 2024 | 016: Signals, Stories, Options - how to avoid getting trapped by simple stories | 00:20:33 | |
Corissa interviews Tom about the Signals > Stories > Options framework that appears (as “Anatomy of an Insight”) in his Innovation Tactics card deck. We get into how the concept of telling more stories can free you in both your personal and work lives and Tom shares some of the people who influenced his thinking as he traveled through the wilderness of narrative fallacy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 14 Feb 2024 | 027: Are you rushing to tie your shoelaces? | 00:32:49 | |
“Slow is smooth; smooth is fast” - we talk about this Marine mantra and how it relates to tunnel vision vs. expanded awareness in our personal and work lives. We’ve found this a transformational lens in our strategy and sense-making work — as well as our personal lives — and we hope you will too. Let us know! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 14 Feb 2024 | 026: Is your marketing funnel killing your offer? | 00:24:57 | |
A Hard Test is when you strip away all the accoutrements of what a product or marketing set up “should” look like, so you can distil out the absolute core. How do customers CHOOSE the value you promise, and how do they USE you to get that value? If that core doesn’t fundamentally work, all the fancy visuals and words in the world won’t help. But if the raw, distilled core works, you can be confident that building more around it will make it better and better. We talk about applying the Hard Test philosophy to your marketing and sales funnels in a way that’s so simple - and so terrifying. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 Feb 2024 | 029: Communication is lossy - and that’s OK | 00:32:38 | |
What’s in your head is perfectly clear, but then you have to use a string of words to communicate it to others. And the words can trigger different ideas in their heads. It’s kind of amazing that we can communicate at all! Today we dig into some typical confusions, challenge one “fix” that can feel helpful while actually making things worse, and then suggest a few alternative approaches that really do help. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 21 Feb 2024 | 028: Ship an idea in an hour? | 00:15:04 | |
Tom compulsively makes Multiverse Maps in Miro during meetings - and it seems to help people clarify things and take action. Why not put an offer out there to see if more people would like it? We talk about what that was like and challenge you: what could you ship in an hour? Here’s the article we talked about: https://open.substack.com/pub/maybeuseful/p/i-want-to-start-a-business-but-i … and here’s the LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomdkerwin_can-i-ship-a-new-business-idea-in-an-hour-activity-7164298372110041088-Cxgl?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 013: How experiences shape us | 00:27:33 | |
We share small experiences from our careers that fundamentally changed the way we think about the world. Topics include tacit knowledge, retrospective coherence, the pain and pleasure of glimpsing reality, and the Cynefin framework. And we suggest two tiny little exercises you can try today that might just change you. Dare you to try one! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 20 Apr 2024 | 040: Why isn’t [Role] doing what I think they should? | 00:30:53 | |
We talk about a post that Tom saw in Reddit: a Product Manager complaining about the designers they worked with (shock horror!). The underlying vibe of the complaint looked eerily similar to many situations we’ve both seen. And the responses in the Reddit thread tended to jump to mono-perspective “root cause” type reasoning (also a familiar pattern). So we took a few minutes to break down the situation from different angles, unpacking more of the conditions and dynamics that might be modulating the situation. Note: the specifics of this situation are quite product/design-specific, so bear with us if we slip into jargon. Because we suspect the general dynamics at play will rhyme with situations you’ve found yourself in. Let us know: what dynamics or conditions do you think we missed? Plus: towards the end, we share Jabe Bloom’s Ideal Present exercise, which is a collaborative and multi-perspective approach to managing the evolutionary potential of the present. Here’s the link we mentioned to a video where Ben Mosior walks you through the exercise in 5 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/live/19KUsV_qeyk?si=r4hOSMZ_CtFTvCcS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 09 Feb 2024 | 024: Should CEOs be making day-to-day decisions? | 00:17:22 | |
There’s a view of leadership that puts the CEO at the helm, steering the ship with their decisions. This view is becoming seen as “zombie leadership”. There’s another view that the CEO should normally be making no ground-level decisions, only connecting people. The dynamic between decisions and no-decisions varies at different scales of org and in different contexts. That’s what we’re talking about today. If you’d like to share your take, please drop us a note: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 31 Jan 2024 | 020: Product discovery depends on you building a model (of your coherent theory of value) | 00:26:03 | |
Off the back of an excellent coaching call, we share one thing we’ve found that makes all the difference for UXRs (and product people in general) who need to sift through mountains of observations to find the insights that matter. In our experience, it’s not enough to have documents or a repo etc. - instead you need to build a model. We talk all about what this might mean for you and some of the pitfalls that we’ve seen teams get stuck in. Here’s the link to the Innovation Tactics card we reference: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/40drbzxvy9c4zpuf8q523/Focus-Solve-For-Distribution-Back.png?rlkey=1dka88ysgqcix5x8v4dkivzv7&dl=0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 007: Using Pitch Provocations to poke the market - Part 1 | 00:31:32 | |
Many founders think “figure out how to build it, then figure out how to market it” but in our experience, it’s much more effective to move the “figure out how to market it” and do that right away. What founders who do this find is that they quickly get much clearer about what to build (and what not to build) too. And one of the fastest ways we’ve found to do this is using Pitch Provocations as parallel safe to fail probes. Today, we talk about why and how. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 29 Jan 2024 | 018: a blustery annotated reading - A/B testing ain’t for settling your disagreements | 00:28:17 | |
Warning: we lost the little foam hat off the microphone, and this makes wind noise much more audible than usual. If you can cope with the audio, you’ll hear Tom read out an article from 2017 that he no longer fully agrees with. We dive into several related topics around the know-ability of future outcomes, the prevalence of Underpants Gnomes, and our past experiences trying to make stuff better without really understanding what we were doing. What still holds up What’s different now? If you’d like to read along (and see the picture of the digger) here’s the link: https://tomkerwin.substack.com/p/a-b-testing-aint-for-settling-your-disagreements-3653285a4377 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 07 May 2024 | 043: Do 100 Thing | 00:22:25 | |
Wanna be a YouTuber? You have to make a lot of videos. Wanna be a blogger? You have to write a lot of articles. Wanna be a startup founder? You have to make a lot of sales. For lots of goals in life and business, there's at least one necessary (but not sufficient) activity that you need to do over and over again. So you need to be able to do it a lot. At least 100. In this episode we talk about why this approach works and how it's different from more common styles of business objective. PLUS: new recording setup! What we were using before has just shut down so please bear with us as we figure out new tools. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 08 May 2024 | 044: The one with the bees | 00:20:09 | |
Important note for this episode: scientists have recently discovered that humans are in fact not exactly the same as bees. But we don't let that stop us taking some metaphorical lessons from our tiny, stinging, honey-making buddies. We share some cool bee facts, and consider how we could be more bee in our lives and businesses. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 May 2024 | 045: When stories are helpful delusions | 00:18:15 | |
Our jumping off point today was a video from YouTuber Caroline Winkler about making friends as an adult. She instructs us to tell ourselves that when someone doesn't want to be your friend, it's always something practical in their life: they're too busy, they're about to move away, things like that. And it left us wondering: but what if it IS you? We've all met people we didn't like. What if you're a person someone doesn't like? But hey – perhaps it's helpful to hold on to the delusion that it's never about you? What we call "distribution" is a painfully slow, ambiguous investment. Maybe we need some delusion to carry on when it feels like a slog? Maybe that's healthy? But then how will you know if it is in fact you? We unpack more stories that might be going on when we can't seem to find friends or customers. Whether you're trying to make bookish friends at a gabba rave, or trying to find customers for your achingly cool new startup, this one's for you x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 14 May 2024 | 046: Enabling constraints | 00:41:50 | |
Some constraints are limiting, some are enabling. But what's the difference? What if most constraints are both at the same time? (Depending to some degree on your perspective.) We talk through lots of examples of constraints from design and Twitter poetry, through Lindy Hop and yoga, all the way into business breakfasts and research operations. We reference a book by Alicia Juarrero. we can't remember the title during the podcast. It's Context Changes Everything: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545662/context-changes-everything/ We also reference some past episodes where we talk about emergent properties and hint at constraints – check out episodes 10, 11, 12 and 14 in particular. But if you listen to most of our episodes we bet you'll find examples of constraints and emergence :D Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 17 May 2024 | 047: Shifting the evolutionary potential of the present | 00:39:53 | |
In this one, we talk about complexity in parenthood and in business. In both cases, there are plenty of people willing to sell you "the way" in their book. And there are millions of books that disagree, so anyone can cherry pick one that fits what they would like to be true. This is what you get when you try to treat a complex, dispositional system as if it were ordered and causal. And it's why so many of the efforts to determine what is the "best" way to parent, or run a business, or live a good life, end up inconclusive, contradictory and confusing. We talk about how we cope with all this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 May 2024 | 048: Conceptual Models | 00:16:59 | |
This one's definitely designer-centric. And it's pretty hard to explain without visuals, but we give it a good go. Tom talks about the shift that conceptual models enabled for him. When he was a younger designer, he often struggled to articulate design decisions, struggled to defend elements of the design that were crucial for things to be coherent, and constantly butted up against technical architecture that made it weirdly hard to design easy-to-use software. Once he figured out how to make and socialise a conceptual model, and then evolve the design around it, everything got way easier. We talk through what a conceptual model helps you do if you're designing a software product or service, how you can use them to diagnose tricky problems, and share some references to help you get started. References: OOUX by Sophia V Prater UX Magic by Daniel Rosenberg Elements of Product Design by Jamie Mill Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 28 May 2024 | 049: To SWOT or not to SWOT? | 00:28:03 | |
In SWOT analysis, you list your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Maybe you love it? Maybe you hate it? We've been in the second camp for a long time, but it was worth revisiting our thinking about the method. If it's so terrible, how come it's so enduring? Maybe there's some good in it? Or maybe our concerns and criticisms are warranted. Strap in as we walk and talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of this simplistic strategy 2 by 2. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 31 May 2024 | 050: Rumination, instinct and the fundamental attribution error | 00:23:11 | |
HALF WAY TO DO 100 THING! One night, Corissa messaged Tom: "It’s often unhelpful to get trapped in simple stories, but how do you know when to trust your gut? Our instincts aren’t always wrong. And pushed too far, obsessing over telling lots of different stories (overthinking??) could also become a trap in its own right?" Today, we tell some stories, and we talk about how to get untrapped. Overthinking vs underthinking. Rumination vs experimentation. Gut instinct vs rational consideration. When are you telling too many stories? When are you not telling enough? We talk through this question, and share ideas for how you can escape from all the traps. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 04 Jun 2024 | 051: The MVP Death Spiral | 00:39:54 | |
Of course it makes sense to build only exactly what customers will value – the Minimum Viable Product. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple in practice, and chasing the MVP dragon leads many a team into a life-sucking vicious cycle. There are a bunch of common conditions that lead teams into the MVP Death Spiral, from narratives about how product works to the very concept of features. If you've ever had a debate about MVPs — or felt that particular feeling of despair as yet another MVP fails to land with customers — then this episode is for you. Feel free to think of it as an MVP for some ideas that can free you from the dreaded Death Spiral. Wrapped in shiny paper with a big bow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 07 Jun 2024 | 052: OMF: Opportunity, Method, Format | 00:30:33 | |
Tom has a challenge: to convince Corissa that something called "Opportunity Method Format" is actually interesting and useful. We talk about examples like printing flyers to publicise dance classes and building MVPs in digital product companies. Tom reckons using these layers can help you make your experiments more effective for learning what you need to learn faster. Does Corissa agree? You'll have to listen to find out. And let us know: were you persuaded? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 11 Jun 2024 | 053: Smell the roses | 00:04:39 | |
Short little punchy one today: we bumped into one of our dad friends, who told us a lovely story about a parenting moment that was also a great example of emergent strategy and exaptation (radical repurposing). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 14 Jun 2024 | 054: The unofficial rules of the road | 00:29:02 | |
Corissa recently re-learned to drive and noticed links between the stresses on the road and the stresses in the office. So we talked it through. We touch on the difference between complicated and complex, and between uncertainty and risk. When do you follow the rules in the highway code, and when do you muddle through and figure it out on the way? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 18 Jun 2024 | 055: Existential despair in the chasm | 00:26:36 | |
Spoiler alert: when I shipped an idea in an hour it did not meet the pivot triggers I'd set for the probe. That was one of a whole array of probes we've been putting out into the world here at Trigger Strategy Group. The general sense we've been picking up is that we haven't nailed our positioning yet. That's normal for a business in the early days like ours, but figuring this stuff out is emotionally challenging. We talk through some of the journey we've been on, an epiphany we've had, and where we're thinking of probing next. For more on the original idea, check out:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 21 Jun 2024 | 056: Technical language – a doorway or a barrier? | 00:39:26 | |
Tom saw a discussion on LinkedIn about why Cynefin hasn't caught on in some scenes. One take was that it's the "academic, technical" language that puts people off. Corissa has lots of experience of the power of simplifying your language from her background in copywriting, and especially usability testing her copy. On the other hand, weird new words can provoke weird new ways of thinking ... but it's also easier to dismiss weird things if you don't like their implications. Perhaps there's no right answer. We talk about our experiences getting to grips with ideas like Cynefin, our experiences sharing such ideas with others, and we even talk about a dance class to explain the idea of the disposition of a complex adaptive system. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 Jun 2024 | 057: But who's this talk really for? | 00:41:34 | |
This is one of those where you walk along with Tom and Corissa while we're trying to figure something out. This time, Tom's giving a conference talk next week (which is last week from the podcast's perspective). He knows what he's talking about, but there's TOO MUCH of it! We try to figure out the one point he wants to make and why someone should care. Do we manage to tame this unruly topic or does it get away from us? You be the judge ... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 28 Jun 2024 | 058: Reflections from UX London | 01:02:11 | |
This is kind of a follow-up to our previous episode that was recorded before the UX London conference. With the whirlwind of travel and baby-care, this was the first chance Tom & Corissa have really had to talk about the conference, and we captured it for the podcast too. In our longest episode yet, we touch on Pitch Provocations, Multiverse Mapping, Zenko Mapping, rewilding, research repositories, behavioural design, regulations, stories, metaphor, communication, collaboration, validation, information architecture, design systems AND MORE. Whew. Also lots of shout outs and thanks to folks who gave talks and workshops, including Serena Verdenicci, Luke Hay, Emma Boulton, Dr Harry Brignull, Ben Sauer, John V Willshire, Tshili Ndou, Alicia Calderón, Stéphanie Walter, Peter Boersma and Brad Frost ... and the folks who curated, helmed and scaffolded a great few days: Jeremy Keith, Louise Ash, and many other awesome folk from Clearleft. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 02 Jul 2024 | 059: How can I help someone to "get" it? | 00:33:42 | |
This one's quite focused on business and building products ... OR IS IT? In this one we respond to a question that Tom's received from several people recently. We'll call one of them Dave. Dave has a friend who has a big product idea they want to build, or big business project they want to do. The plan Dave's friend has landed on is to do the whole thing (how hard can it be anyway?) and then receive the (as yet unspecified) rewards. And Dave wants to know: how can I help them see that's not the only way, that they'll probably fail, and that there's a better way ... without being preachy or lecturing them? We talk about the impossibility of reasoning someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, and share a few ideas for thought exercises that can help Dave figure out what flavour of situation he's dealing with. For example, the "I'm going to A even if it means I never B" exercise and the Time Machine selling manoeuvre. We also talk about "the inherent bigness of ideas", about dogfooding when you're not actually a dog, and the shocking distribution of returns for start up entrepreneurs. Beans and noses: https://articles.centercentre.com/beans-and-noses/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 05 Jul 2024 | 060: Chesterton's vestigial doorman | 00:30:44 | |
Today, we talk about the appendix, fences, SaaS for lawyers, putting Shoggoth in a box ... and more. Some links we mentioned: Why aren't smart people happier and how that relates to well-defined problems: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/why-arent-smart-people-happier Explainer on LLMs and why they probably won't take your job: https://cyberneticforests.substack.com/p/a-hallucinogenic-compendium Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 09 Jul 2024 | 061: Tumbling into the Vision Chasm | 00:48:15 | |
Strap in for some high-quality sleep deprived thinking out loud. We talk about the standard approach towards vision and strategy in organisations, and we challenge it. With some stories of past triumphs and pratfalls based on setting vision and suggest of alternative ways to go about Doing Strategy. We refer to some LinkedIn posts during this chat ... here they are! Dr Jabe Bloom's post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jabebloom_scanning-the-future-requires-a-diversity-activity-7211396177232060417-kCeb?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Stephanie Leue's post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7211982950198894592-jQsX?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop John Cutler's post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnpcutler_theres-a-big-thing-missing-in-most-it-starts-activity-7212101683579953153-55qS?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 12 Jul 2024 | 062: When good research is seen to create waste | 00:12:53 | |
We explore the story of a classic zombie project: where the team had the evidence they needed to know that a project was doomed, but carried on with it for 6 months anyway. These happen all the time, and we spend a few minutes unpacking the dynamics behind the trap. We also share some thoughts for how to ease open the jaws of the trap. We also reference Annie Duke's book Quit And Set Your First Pivot Triggers, available via a link here: https://pivot-triggers.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jul 2024 | 063: Good stress / bad stress | 00:28:16 | |
We talk about the good and the bad sides of stress. We tend to treat stress as a negative, but sometimes stress is helpful, and sometimes you want to provoke stress deliberately. But be careful. References: Happiness Lab with Dr Laurie Santos The Experience Machine by Andy Clark Estuarine Mapping – find links and resources at triggerstrategy.com That clip from Apollo 13: https://youtu.be/ry55--J4_VQ?si=FV3l_OZJklkmm-aS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 19 Jul 2024 | 064: Problems get replaced by better problems | 00:40:54 | |
Tom & Corissa talk about how understanding and tackling problems requires more than just a linear approach, like is often inferred through something like the Double Diamond. A bunch of metaphors, real world examples and other fun in this one. We also offer practical tips for engaging with solution-oriented colleagues and suggest some methods and recipes to see and solve more problems differently. Plus: a somewhat tortured supermarket metaphor. 00:00 Welcome to Trigger Strategy Podcast 00:11 Dental adventures 00:31 Exploring problems and solutions 02:09 The arrogance of designers 02:54 The horse poo problem 06:12 The Double Diamond design process 13:32 The Iron Triangle and trade-offs 14:37 Abductive logic and interconnected systems 19:49 The over-reach of the Enlightenment 20:13 The secret life of trees 21:12 Complex vs. complicated problems 22:33 Problem "validation" 24:16 The supermarket metaphor 28:34 Be more Cal Newport by putting solution recipes first? 33:25 What to do with solutionizing colleagues 38:34 Wrapping up in utopia Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 23 Jul 2024 | 065: The inherent bigness of ideas | 00:11:34 | |
When something that starts small becomes bigger and bigger, we can lose sight of what we were trying to do in the first place. We talk through some examples: from workshops, from designing flyers for dance classes, and from Lego bridges. The trick is subtraction. The knack is knowing what to subtract. "When putting on accessories, take off the last thing you've put on." – Coco Chanel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 26 Jul 2024 | 066: Feeling the edges of the Vision Chasm | 00:57:03 | |
This is one of our "thinking about things in real time" episodes. Tom & Corissa talk through the next part of the Vision Chasm blog series. For nearly an hour! We talk about when visions are good actually, as well as when they aren't, and when we could hold many visions lightly instead. And we explore the challenges of doing that. We look at the squickiness of emergent strategy through lots of examples and stories. We refer to a post by Stephanie Leue that does a great job of capturing what it feels like when you're in the weird reality distortion of the Vision Chasm: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7211982950198894592-jQsX?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop ... but we don't agree with her prescription for fixing the problem. We criticise the common approach to strategic "wisdom" that won't say this out loud but implies, "if you don't know what to do, then just try knowing what to do instead!" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 30 Jul 2024 | 067: Coping with "I'll know it when I see it" | 00:35:46 | |
Tom had a coaching call with someone who had been on the hook to run a one day workshop. A one day workshop that was expected to both work as a team building exercise AND deliver a complete new concept to go ahead and build. And it was sorta vague what that concept would be. What could go wrong? Sometimes, you can get a clear, crispy brief. But often, you can't. It's more of an "I'll know it when I see it" situation. It's tempting to try asking more questions, trying to pin people down to get a clear brief before you start making anything. But that doesn't work. Often people can't tell you exactly what they want, until you give something to them and they can tell you, "not that". One of the issues is about the tricksiness of language. You can't satisfactorily constrain creative work using adjectives. We share one of our favourite exercises for handling this. Another issue is that you can't get people to predict what's going to make them say, "that's it!". We share some thoughts for how you can quickly and efficiently share ideas for them to react to. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 02 Aug 2024 | 068: Modest visions vs sci-fi visions | 00:48:49 | |
In which Corissa and Tom explore more nuances and wrinkles to do with vision and strategy, with examples, metaphors and practical tips. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 06 Aug 2024 | 069: The alignment problem (not the AI alignment problem) | 00:42:32 | |
In which we coin the word "bungus" ... If you've ever complained about misalignment, or rallied people with the cry that "we need to get aligned", then this one's for you. Of course the feeling of alignment is a pleasant one, but what if you're in one of the situations where seeking alignment is actually hurting you? Corissa and Tom unpack the concept of alignment, including some discussion about different kinds of alignment and misalignment, some stories from the real world about situations where strategic misalignment can be good, and some references to our episode about the bees (episode 44: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/044-the-one-with-the-bees) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Aug 2024 | 070: Lobster dinner with a toddler | 00:53:50 | |
Q. What do these three situations have in common? Taking a friend for a lobster dinner, business strategy workshops, and personal coaching. A. They all feature in this episode as examples of how constraints, constructors and actants play out. The main chunk of this session is us talking through Tom's personal experience being 1:1 coached using Estuarine Mapping. We found this enormously enlightening, and we're excited to share. If you've been looking for definitions or examples of constraints, constructors and actants, then you're in the right place. Links and resources:
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| 13 Aug 2024 | 071: Granularity part 1 – decomposing people via ASHEN | 00:47:19 | |
Today, we start by adding some corrections to terminology we used in episode 70, which will be confusing if you haven't listened to that one. But it doesn't take long, and then we get into our main topic, which is granularity. When you work with too coarse a granularity, you can find yourself stuck or confused about what to do. When you work with too fine a granularity, you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed, drowning in data, paralysed by too many options. The magic is to find the sweet spot, where you break things down just enough to create good options for action. We talk through ASHEN as a typology for decomposing people or roles to a more legible and actionable level of granularity, and Corissa tries it out for real with one of her old bosses. Links ASHEN on the Cynefin wiki: https://cynefin.io/wiki/ASHEN Article about stages of companies vs different people's natural propensities: https://newsletter.thewayofwork.com/p/stage-fright Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Sep 2024 | 072: Granularity part 2 – Snowmobiling | 00:29:11 | |
In this episode, we zoom back in time to a situation when a load of meetings were frustrating people at this one company. Tom used Snowmobiling with a small team to break down the meetings into smaller pieces and then remix those pieces in a new way. We share some of the details and pitfalls along the way. This same decompose/recombine approach can be used in lots of different situations where you need to find something new. Because everything new is really just novel recombinations of existing stuff. We read out the steps on the Snowmobiling card (Innovation Tactics) – the exact instructions you can follow to harness the power of the remix. References:
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| 13 Sep 2024 | 073: Brat summer for billionaires | 00:20:56 | |
All credit to friend of the pod Pete Shaw for the "Founder mode sounds like brat summer" observation. Founder Mode triggered a beefstorm on LinkedIn, so we take a little stroll around the topic and share our takes. 3 parts nuance, 2 parts spicy, 1 long run-on sentence where Tom gets lost and forgets what he was trying to say. Topics include alignment, coherence, intuition, taste and more. References:
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| 17 Sep 2024 | 074: Self-deception, secret strategies and non-violent communication | 00:28:57 | |
A live thinking through of the next chunk in our series of articles about the Vision Chasm – that gulf between the glorious future people are talking about and the reality of where you are today. In this episode we look at situations where a Vision is unreachable because it's actually deceptive – either deliberate deception to keep everyone looking the other way while people deploy a secret strategy; or accidental self-deception because your reality has shifted but your narratives haven't caught up. We talk through a few stories from our past. 1) A company workshop where trying to crystallise a vision of the future fell apart - because nobody was ready/able to be honest about the true direction of the company. Still clinging to a cultural heritage that was no longer a fit for their market position? 2) A deep misunderstanding between a C-suite and design team – talking past one another because we were operating in fundamentally different worlds. A third party was able to show us why we were stuck in loggerheads. Looking back, we can see how daft we were being. But could we have done things differently at the time? 3) How the misunderstanding played out when the C-suite brought in an external agency. In one way, it was a disaster that made a mess and broke some hearts. In another way, it was a success that broke the deadlock and massively moved things forward for the company. References:
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| 20 Sep 2024 | 075: Effectual thinking vs causal thinking | 00:32:44 | |
We recorded this one on a whim and we didn't have our microphone with a little hat on it, so the wind noise makes a guest appearance. Apologies – return to quality sound soon. Corissa grabbed a snippet from an article: Over at one of my favourite blogs, Common Cog, Cedric Chin writes that there is a style of thinking that is reliably exhibited by successful entrepreneurs. It is called effectual thinking, and it's the type of improvisatory, reality based thinking that follows the question, what effects can be produced with the spread of resources in front of me? He contrasts this with causal thinking, which is the opposite pattern, looking towards an ideal outcome and then trying to work backwards to derive the actions required to eventually bring about that future. And this inspired us to talk through effectual thinking. We go on a blustery journey through chefs in high-end experimental kitchens, John Boyd's Snowmobiling, Mr Beast, Steve Jobs, Estuarine Framework and Small Bets. The big question: can effectual thinking give you a happier, healthier way to operate, or is it just the case that, as Andrew Wilkinson put it, "most highly successful people are “just a walking anxiety disorder, harnessed for productivity”? Linky goodness: Sasha Chapin's article: https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/our-perfume-line-is-here Cedric Chin's Common Cog: https://commoncog.com/when-action-beats-prediction/ Vaughn Tan's Uncertainty Mindset: https://uncertaintymindset.org/ Snowmobiling podcast episode: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/072-granularity-part-2-snowmobiling Do 100 Thing podcast episode: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/043-do-100-thing Innovation Tactics: https://bit.ly/innovation-10 Small Bets: https://smallbets.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 Sep 2024 | 076: Surviving survivorship bias | 00:25:45 | |
Survivorship bias is unavoidable. By default, we see what survives and not what doesn't. This is OK but it creates the risk that we take the wrong lessons from the survivors. In this episode, we talk about how we might mitigate the downsides of survivorship bias. We touch on a bunch of topics:
Linky Goodness Bounded Applicability: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/663109cbcff31b0012ae9306 Trigger Strategy website: https://triggerstrategy.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 27 Sep 2024 | 077: Do you have to spend years in the Pain Cave? | 00:26:54 | |
Welcome to listeners who've been referred by Rob Snyder of Path to Product Market Fit! In this episode, we talk about Rob Snyder's core ideas for founders and consider the interplay with our thinking. As ever, you'll hear some stories from our pasts, some methods to try, and some background noises from blustery Bournemouth.
Linky goodness:
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| 01 Oct 2024 | 078: Criticisms of selling before building | 00:13:16 | |
In the last episode, we introduced Rob Snyder's framing of finding your repeatable case study instead of building your tech product. This time, we step back into the Pain Cave to talk through some of the criticisms that Rob (and we) often face when we suggest the approach we do. We think they're misunderstandings of what we're advocating, but they're also sound points. First, we consider the scolding that we should follow a proper research and design process and build the right thing at high quality from day one, not throw spaghetti at the wall. Sometimes this is true, but sometimes it's just not possible. Second, we face the fear of selling "vapourware" – nobody wants to follow in Elizabeth Holmes' footsteps, promising stuff that can't be realised (Theranos). Absolutely right! But that's not at all what we're recommending. And all this brings us to the concept of Bounded Applicability. No ideas are suitable for all projects, products, etc. So how can you think about what's appropriate in a given situation? Linky goodness:
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| 04 Oct 2024 | 079: Speculative use cases | 00:33:45 | |
We talk about a question posed in Innovation Tactics Slack - about a stakeholder who’s skeptical that design research can help with genuine innovation, and wants to create speculative use cases instead. Topics we touch on:
Some quotes: "Getting a shoelace trapped in an escalator - that's not a thing that happened 500 years ago." "Just doing something because you think it's cool is totally valid as a way of operating a business" "Everyone who has a brilliant idea thinks that their idea is the next big thing. And everyone but one in a million is wrong about that. And even the one in a million tends to be wrong about exactly how it's going to work." "Play Doh was invented, not as a toy for kids, but as a putty for removing coal soot from walls. It was repurposed into the kids' toy after people stopped having coal fires" "You're very unlikely to invent something novel that works. You're very likely to find somebody doing something novel that you can scale." "You can absolutely go and do the best interviewing in the world and not come back with anything that's going to be a breakthrough innovation for your company. It may be that your company is not positioned to make a breakthrough innovation." "this is the trap that so many people fall into and I've heard it more times than I can count. It's that need to educate the market. Do not, do not try, red flag, back away slowly or run, run speedily off into the distance." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 08 Oct 2024 | 080: What the heck's goin' on in tech? | 00:30:54 | |
The world of digital/tech is going through "a moment" just now at the end of 2024. And we've launched a project to share and explore diverse perspectives from across the tech world, using a particular tool and methodology called SenseMaker. The goal is to showcase the diverse range of perspectives and stories of the moment in a way that's normally impossible. Some topics:
Want to see the responses we've collected?Take 10 minutes to share your experience, and you'll be able to opt in to access all the responses at the end. 👉 https://bit.ly/stories-from-tech Thank you for contributing ❤️ Linky goodness:How to use a new generation data collection and analysis tool? https://thecynefin.co/how-to-use-data-collection-analysis-tool/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Oct 2024 | 081: Alignment alignment alignment | 00:25:53 | |
We talk about alignment. Especially, we talk about relaxing our beef with the word alignment, and embracing the reasonable desire for alignment. 00:00 Welcome! 00:28 Alignment in companies 00:49 Challenges and misconceptions about alignment 04:07 Coherence vs. alignment; JP Castlin's ABCDE framework, and one line in the sand vs two lines in the sand 08:27 A real-world example of a misaligned project 10:38 Strategies for effective alignment, including "via negativa" alignment 12:52 Aligning teams with reality as well as intent 13:25 The role of the "strategy whisperer" 13:47 Empowering teams to find alignment 13:58 Back briefing for effective communication 16:13 Understanding the need for leadership governance vs the needs of teams 17:30 Challenges with leadership expectations 19:49 Navigating company growth realities 20:37 Dropping our beef with alignment and going vegetarian 23:34 Are you clearly a berry? Clear communication taps the forager's gathering instinct 24:41 Exploring alignment beyond the team 25:42 Final thoughts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 29 Oct 2024 | 082: 2D Comparison | 00:22:17 | |
Jamie asked: "anyone got good exercises for evolving your brand (and in particular visual identity) in-house? Did I remember you (Tom & Corissa) mentioning an exercise like clustering examples into "we want to be more like this" vs "we want to be less like that"?" So we wanted to give the exercise we designed its own special episode. Time and again, we saw projects get in a pickle when people tried to choose adjectives to define things like brand qualities, tone of voice, product principles or corporate values. This kind of ambiguous, subjective stuff is impossible to define perfectly with words, especially upfront. You could choose to work with a grizzled expert who can read between the lines of what you're saying to intuit what you really want. But if you're on a shoestring and want to figure out this kind of thing with your team, then the exercise we share in this episode is for you. Here's simplified instructions on a card: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2rjpbrj1vqklcfc8glgw8/Sense-2D-Comparison-Back.png?rlkey=71v3muppoho2pnac2v9b9luim&dl=0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 05 Nov 2024 | 083: Unfolding ideas over ideating features | 00:40:32 | |
It's a rain-soaked chat this time as Tom and Corissa wander through Bournemouth in a downpour. We tackle a thought-provoking LinkedIn question from WP Engine's Jason Cohen – a question about how to listen to customers when they ask for features. 00:29 LinkedIn inspiration and the big question we're tackling today 02:28 Customer feedback creates an apparent puzzle 03:40 Mistakes we've made by asking people what they want 05:14 Secret 1: what do people already do? 07:37 Secret 2: imagine your company is a big metal box 10:50 You're always limited by your own internal perspective, and that's OK 16:51 Secret 3: there's no such thing as a feature 19:48 The story in your customer's head is different from the story in your head 20:18 Don't make things look simpler than they are 20:48 "Feature" is just a label to make your own life easier 21:41 Secret 4: build as little software as possible to enable the most behaviours that create value 23:32 When customers are reduced to a metric 24:18 Why an Impact/Effort Matrix to decide on features will fool you 27:32 Real-world example: a Calendly integration project 33:33 Unfolding ideas by soaking in rich customer context 36:25 SenseMaker for generating insights in a very different way 38:30 When you try to make too much explicit, you get in trouble "Ask a customer if they’ll use a feature… They say “yes” but don’t use it. Ask them to name a feature they actually want and there’s the “faster horse” problem of incremental improvement instead of vision. What’s the answer? Just “gut feel” and sometimes you’re right?" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 13 Nov 2024 | 084: Isn't the SenseMaker collector negatively biased tho? | 00:27:51 | |
Surveys are almost always biased in several ways, notably both the way questions are asked but also sample bias: who in the population even answers surveys? In this episode we discuss: is the SenseMaker collector we shared biased just the same as any other survey? And if so, is that a problem? And if so, what can we do about it? Plus stories about skullduggery in presenting data, hiding gorillas in radiologist scans and the "magic" or standard questions:
Linky goodness:
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| 19 Nov 2024 | 085: High on agency? | 00:21:05 | |
“grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” – the Serenity Prayer The concept of “High Agency” burst into the online leadership conversation in recent years. And it sounds good, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to be high agency? Who wouldn’t want to have high agency employees? As with many such “obviously good” concepts, turns out it’s not that simple. In this episode, Corissa and Tom also look at the other side of hopes for high agency. We talk about how some leaders might wish for high agency employees, but would balk at what a very high agency employee would do in reality. And we talk about what you need to know if you’re an employee being expected to demonstrate more agency. And we signpost a whole load of lovely rabbit holes to go explore. “imagine that I could sell you a magic pill and you could give it to two of your employees and overnight they would suddenly become high agency. What would be the first thing you’d notice was different when you went into work the next day?” Linky Goodness
Timecodes to help you navigate00:00 Introduction 00:28 What is High Agency? 01:10 The Serenity Prayer 02:00 Estuarine Mapping is the Serenity Prayer in map form 03:45 High agency as a positive trait … & its permeation into leadership mythology 04:06 “Sound like a challenger, but be an obedient drone” 06:20 Perhaps it’s about not waiting for permission, while also not doing silly things 08:09 Tools to create higher agency if you want that – including Multiverse Mapping 13:01 What if the traits we want in leaders are not the traits that get you promoted? 17:31 A magic question for you to use 18:34 What would have to be true for that stupid thing to make a lot of sense? 19:42 “You can choose the game you play, but not its rules” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 011: Make stand ups useful with coherent pitches | 00:19:28 | |
Stand ups are common in tech companies, but are often inefficient and confused - often little more than “busyness theatre”. Leaders need to know what’s going on somehow, but stand ups and progress updates are mostly bad ways to achieve this. We talk about the worst stand ups we’ve experienced, and suggest a couple of simple tweaks we’ve used to make stand ups and progress updates way more effective. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 13 Mar 2024 | 032: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 1 | 00:29:25 | |
What do leaders who are skilled at navigating complexity know how to do? What do they do differently? What would you observe if a leader had these skills? These were questions Tom and John Cutler asked themselves when they co-wrote this article that got a lot of people talking: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate. The article contains 18 prompts to trigger reflection. This is the first in a series where we read through the prompts and talk about what they mean to us. We encourage you to think about them too! If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. In this first episode, we talk through the first 3 patterns: Accept We Are Part of the Problem, Encourage New Interaction Patterns, and Patient Divergence. We also reference a lovely series by Hazel Weakly where she’s started to reflect on the questions: https://hazelweakly.me/blog/observations-of-leadership-part-one/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 14 Mar 2024 | 033: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 2 | 00:33:10 | |
What do leaders who are skilled at navigating complexity know how to do? What do they do differently? What would you observe if a leader had these skills? These were questions Tom and John Cutler asked themselves when they co-wrote this article that got a lot of people talking: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate. The article contains 18 prompts to trigger reflection. This is the second in the series where we read through the prompts and talk about what they mean to us. We talk through 3 more patterns: Identify Plausible Contributors / Multiple "Causes”, Power of the Present, and Blend Diverse Perspectives. We encourage you to think about them too! If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 05 Feb 2024 | 023: Creating Customer Conversations | 00:19:17 | |
Today, we talk about a course that Tom is putting together in collaboration with Dave Grey’s School of the Possible. It’s very much us figuring things out live, explaining the School and then talking through my aims and ideas for the course. If the course sounds interesting to you, we’d love to chat more and help you figure out if it’ll be a good fit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 28 Jan 2024 | 017: You can’t leap directly from data to actionable insights - a live annotated reading | 00:23:54 | |
We’re trying something different in this episode. Tom reads out one of his old articles and we discuss our questions and issues as they arise. The article is an early version of his thinking about Signals, Stories, Options, which we talked about in episode 016. Does he still agree with everything? What would we change now? Can we describe a diagram in audio? If you want to read along with us, the article is: https://tomkerwin.substack.com/p/are-you-trying-to-leap-directly-from Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 02 Mar 2024 | 030: We need to talk about “mindsets” | 00:31:10 | |
We talk about the fallacy of mindset, and the inevitable failure when you focus on trying to change someone’s mindset. We also consider what you can do instead, including the magic pill test, and changing affordances, assemblages and agency (cf. Dave Snowden). This has been relevant for some recent coaching clients and is a common sticking point in change management work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Apr 2024 | 039: Bounded Applicability | 00:34:42 | |
How come your favourite methods don’t always work? We know one-size doesn’t fit-all, and we know that it depends on context … but *how* does it depend on context? We’ve been exploring a framework or model that can help iron out the fiddliness, and today we talk through some of the ideas, introducing a sort of spectrum that covers what we might call Solution Oriented — Outcome Oriented — Emergence Oriented (though we don’t use exactly those words in the conversation). It’s a bit of a meaty one today, enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 13 Apr 2021 | What ‘The Control Heuristic’ means for design research | 00:15:28 | |
A quick informal chat about Luca Dellanna’s book. We hash out why people tend to put off design research and noodle about how we might adjust that. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 31 Jan 2024 | 021: The perils of “should” | 00:21:26 | |
Do you should all over yourself? Do you have unconscious rules for what other people should be doing? Today, we look at where “should” turns up in matters personal and business, with a spotlight on Donald Miller’s Story Brand framework, and a side quest into bloviating YouTubers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 008: Using Pitch Provocations to poke the market - Part 2 | 00:26:57 | |
We pick up from where we left off last time, and talk about what you do once you’ve got some signals from your pitch provocation sessions. Also: how do you find people to do those sessions with, what makes pitch provocations hard, how to work around those mistakes, and how do you know who to listen to? Part 3 coming soon x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 30 Jan 2024 | 019: North Star Metrics and Framework - are they “dumb”? | 00:16:47 | |
In today’s walk, we respond to a question about Cedric Chin’s feisty claim that the “North Star Framework is dumb”: (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cedchin_im-thinking-of-writing-a-follow-up-post-activity-7157641902496870400--59g?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios). One of our friends asked, “is it though? I’ve found North Star metrics to be useful in working with complex adaptive systems - to give a sense of direction without limiting adaptation. What’s your take?” We break down the metrics and the framework and when they may be useful or not. Do we think they’re dumb? You’ll have to listen to find out! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Mar 2024 | 031: Probabilistic Parenting - is it a thing and how does it map onto work? | 00:24:52 | |
We talk about boundaries, commandments and socialisation. If right and wrong isn’t always set in stone, how do you encourage people to think creatively while also not becoming a pariah? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 21 Mar 2024 | 034: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 3 | 00:29:07 | |
What do leaders who are skilled at navigating complexity know how to do? What do they do differently? What would you observe if a leader had these skills? These were questions Tom and John Cutler asked themselves when they co-wrote this article that got a lot of people talking: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate. The article contains 18 prompts to trigger reflection. This is the third in the series where we read through the prompts and talk about what they mean to us. We talk through 3 more patterns: Patience and Self-Repair, Anticipate Effects, and Curiosity and Light Touch. We encourage you to think about them too! If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 004: Beans, noses, elephants and startups | 00:27:37 | |
How many times do you watch while someone puts a bean up their nose? That’s the question we go at today, Tom working through a frustrating client engagement. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 006: OKRs, moon landings and oil fires | 00:26:43 | |
Following on from Tom’s Substack pieces about OKRs, we talk about some of the issues with OKRs, when they can work, and what to do if you’re in a situation where they don’t work but you have to use them anyway. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 29 Mar 2024 | 037: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 6 | 00:41:23 | |
We made it! The sixth and final episode in the series where we read through prompts from an article and talk about what they mean to us. In this episode, Plant Seeds — Watch Them Grow, Tailor Ways of Working and Facing Uncertainty. We encourage you to think about them too! We also talk through some important notes that apply to this whole series at the very end. If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. And if you’d like to follow along with the original article: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 17 Jan 2024 | 014: Emergent Properties, Self Care and Leaf-Cutter Ants | 00:31:44 | |
What’s an emergent property? We take a tour through this sometimes confusing aspect of complexity theory, sharing some practical examples. Ant hills are emergent, but in a different way from human complex adaptive systems because of the 3 “I”s. We talk about how to manage the evolutionary potential of the present, changing conditions to allow emergence to happen, rather than setting explicit targets and instructions. Also: why adjectives are death. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 010: Rules, norms, heuristics and a stacking block toy | 00:21:04 | |
When do you need to follow the rules and when should you break them? When are rules not rules? We share some experiences from our pasts and talk about how to shape your environment for innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 01 Feb 2024 | 022: Disconfirmation Bias - do this innovation tactic live with us in under 15 minutes | 00:14:11 | |
What’s the biggest risk you need to tackle for an idea you’re working on right now? Today, we walk you through a quick exercise that will reveal the next step you need to take. This is one of the 54 cards in Innovation Tactics: bit.ly/innovation-10 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 08 Apr 2024 | 038: Creativity, innovation and a flawed coffee machine | 00:40:13 | |
How do you know if you're being creative or innovative? Does it even matter? We talk about art, business, feathers, and Corissa's fury with an underperforming coffee machine that set her on a path of creativity or innovation or maybe something else entirely ... and if you have a story of creativity or innovation you’d like to share, record it here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 012: Psychological safety is an emergent property | 00:21:10 | |
Psychological safety has been a bit of a buzz term for years, since Google’s internal research. We talk about what it means in different companies, and our own past experiences. We discuss how it’s not something you can simply choose to have, but an emergent property of many aspects of a given context. What does this mean for fostering psychological safety where you are? You’ll have to listen to find out :) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 Mar 2024 | 035: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 4 | 00:23:26 | |
The fourth in the series where we read through prompts from an article and talk about what they mean to us. In this episode, Both/And, Intervene Safely, and Abduction and Intuition. We encourage you to think about them too! If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. If you’d like to follow along with the original article: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 005: The bucket of features problem | 00:22:02 | |
We talk about the bucket of features problem, common to startups and corporates alike. What gets so many smart, brilliant people stuck in this problem? And we share a way to get out of the bucket too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 20 Apr 2021 | Why your stakeholders will only ever know it when they see it | 00:10:47 | |
In school, and in countless articles, we’re shown a way that design and copy “should” work. Not only does this not match the way design and copy actually work, it’s built on false underpinnings. In this episode, we explore this common frustration and consider what designers and copywriters might practically do about it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 26 Mar 2024 | 036: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 5 | 00:39:01 | |
The fifth and penultimate episode in the series where we read through prompts from an article and talk about what they mean to us. In this episode, Accept Diverse Strengths and Skills, Collaboratively Sense and Shape, and Coherence vs. Alignment. We encourage you to think about them too! If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. If you’d like to follow along with the original article: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||