Episodes
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“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 GoodnessMushfiqa Monica Jalamuddin - the Estuarine coach you’re looking forEstuarine MappingMultiverse Mapping (free course)Venkatesh Rao’s Gervais PrincipleJeffrey Pfeffer’s Leadership BSBrendan Reid’s Stealing the Corner OfficeLuca Dellanna’s 100 Truths You Will Learn Too Late
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”
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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:
What's similar, different and surprising?What, so what, now what?Linky goodness:
Don't send that survey! Here's what to do instead.Complex facilitation principles and the standard questionsHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Missing episodes?
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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
Jason's original post
"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.
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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
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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
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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:
Why is Tom so excited about SenseMaker?Who sees the gorilla?Contrasting Likert scales versus triads and dyadsHow standard "feedback surveys" are ruined by averaging and dominated by recency bias and the Halo Effect.Cynicism about the annual 360 feedback gameWhat if feedback could be descriptive instead of evaluative? And real-time instead of averaged over 6 months?Beef with the "product trio" conceptA few nuggets we've picked up in the early data.Our plans for open sense-making workshopsPatterns of care and rule-following in healthcareVector change using "more stories like these, fewer like those"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/
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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:
Are speculative use cases a "thing"? Is it helpful to imagine people doing something that's just not happening today? Like, 500 years ago, nobody got their shoelace trapped in an escalator. In 2003, nobody was planning out how they'd price their product on the App Store.Is it reasonable to be skeptical about design research?What do you do when you're working with someone who's already decided what they want and isn't interested in evidence?Radical repurposing as an alternative – follow the pathfindersSnowmobiling as a possible approach – remix the adjacent possibleJamming with your stakeholder to understand and clarify (with the side effect that you might expose gaps or incoherence)Bias in researchSome 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."
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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:
Bounded Applicability: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/663109cbcff31b0012ae9306My diagram showing some methods' Bounded Applicability: https://www.notion.so/Pitch-Provocations-54ad05d5740e451db0fa82479debeb91Previous episode about Rob Snyder: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/077-do-you-have-to-spend-years-in-the-pain-caveHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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.
Why no, you can't break down your idea into a set of clean hypotheses to "validate"Why you want to ship a case study instead of shipping codeCan you bypass the Pain Cave if you have a Time Machine?How to spot founders who are going to drag you deep into the Pain CaveHow to use Pivot Triggers to scaffold doing the case study approach instead of writing all the codeIntroducing "unfolding" as a way to design buildings, businesses, even lives How to save face while taking the risk of looking silly (won't you get cast out from polite society?)Is the optimisation game dying?A puzzle: what do you do when you care about building a business you'll love working in more than you care about just building a business?Do we need to go deeper into the Pain Cave?Linky goodness:
Rob Snyder's Path to Product Market FitInnovation Tactics: https://bit.ly/innovation-10Solve for Distribution: Front | BackTime Machine: Front | BackA great article that references Christopher Alexander's UnfoldingHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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:
rejecting simplistic Sinekismstheory-informed praxis, rather than copy-pasting patterns across contextschallenges to Estuarine Mappingzero-sum gamesbounded applicabilty – asking when something doesn't apply, or who shouldn't use a thingDouble DiamondsShiny FrameworksPortfolio of small bets in parallel – as a way to optimise for survivalAnd an invitation to you: what are we missing? How do you handle survivorship bias?Linky Goodness
Bounded Applicability: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/663109cbcff31b0012ae9306
Trigger Strategy website: https://triggerstrategy.com/
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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/
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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:
Vision Chasm Part I: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/061-tumbling-into-the-vision-chasmVision Chasm Part II: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/066-feeling-the-edges-of-the-vision-chasm2D Comparison / Card Sifting method:Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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:
Paul Graham's Founder ModeOur article We need to talk about AirbnbHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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:
Everything is a RemixAustin Kleon's Keep GoingJohn Boyd's Destruction and CreationSnowmobiling card from Innovation Tactics: Front | BackInnovation Tactics: https://bit.ly/innovation-10Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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
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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:
The article about unfolding: https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/unfoldingCoach Mushfiqa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mushfiqajamaluddin/More about Estuarine Mapping: https://triggerstrategy.com/estuarine-mapping-2-half-day-pre-strategy-workshop-for-execsHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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)
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In which Corissa and Tom explore more nuances and wrinkles to do with vision and strategy, with examples, metaphors and practical tips.
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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.
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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!"
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