Tom Kerwin And Corissa Nunn

Shows

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles102: Road Signs, Rapid Prototypes, and Productive ConfusionWhile sipping homegrown bay leaf tea, we explore how road signs, surprises, and deliberate confusion can unlock better thinking.From missing signs under railway bridges to the tangled journey of Google Glass, we trace how aporia — the ancient art of being productively confused — can help you build faster, align better, and see the hidden struggles that are gonna derail your projects.Why some signs should disappear to make things flow betterHow "productive confusion" can trigger better decision makingWhat Google Glass, magic roundabouts, and fast food kitchens have in commonHow to rapid prototype a bi...2025-04-2635 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles101: What's NOT emergent?We often talk about things being emergent in business, strategy, and life at large. The problem is, emergence can be kind of a pain to wrap your head around. And we were wondering: what if the starting point is what's NOT emergent? Does that help clarify what IS emergent?So we sat down in the garden and chatted it through. We landed on the discipline of conversion rate optimisation as an example of a business area where an understanding of emergence (and its opposite, if you could call it that) is...2025-04-1333 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles100: Done 100 Thing!We made it to 100!Corissa and Tom look back over the year and a bit of podcasting and talk about what they've learned, some anecdotes, and some highlight episodes from along the way. They talk about allowing something to unfold into what it's meant to be, rather than trying to force a specific framework or result.Expect some of the usual themes: constraints, complexity, experimentation and psychology. And shout outs to Anna Brook, Louis Childs, Paul Tevis and all our lovely listeners.Linky goodness:Visakan Veerasamy's...2025-03-2243 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles098: Product Market ProcrastinationWith one exercise, we can't predict whether your startup will succeed, but we can reliably predict if you're going to fail through procrastination.In this episode, we talk about mental blindspots. Corissa and Tom rib each other about their own mental blindspots. And we discuss how to pronounce the word "satiety"."It's more comfortable to fail when it's something you yourself have caused than when you fail at the hands of something that's outside your control." – Corissa“Hmm, I dunno, do you have any solutions that involve me doing everything 100% exac...2025-03-0329 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles097: Can you persuade a non-unfolder to try unfolding?A lovely, meandering conversation about the nature of success, the binds we often put ourselves in and more.Along the way, we touch on maverick musicians, maddening constraints, and McDonald's coffee.Linky Goodness:Henrik Karlsson's note: https://substack.com/@henrikkarlsson/note/c-95418840My note on his note: https://substack.com/profile/2368401-tom-kerwin/note/c-95543621Paul Millerd's Pathless Path: https://newsletter.pathlesspath.comNotes on an introduction to Christopher Alexander: https://www.edovanroyen.com/p/notes-of-ryan-singers-introduction-to-christopher-alexander Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2025-02-2328 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles095: EnshittificationCorissa and Tom talk through some examples of enshittification and the opportunities hidden within!Linky GoodnessCory Doctorow and EnshittificationAdam Mastroianni and Experimental History – and the article we were referencing a lotThe pile of sand and the edge of chaosDouglas Squirrel's Three Laws of AIHiut Denim – Do One Thing WellBen Mosior's Learn Wardley MappingInnovation Tactics card deck Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2025-02-0437 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles090: Should changing your mind mean changing your past work?If you're someone who puts ideas out into the world, how do you manage the fact that you change your mind over time? What if someone comes across an article or podcast you no longer agree with and takes the wrong idea from it?Should you maintain a living knowledge base or leave a trail of past articles like breadcrumbs in the forest?Does the burden of assessing information fall on the author or the reader?And what if the problem is that your material references someone who now you...2024-12-2030 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles089: The dance of feedback"Every student is looking for a great teacher. What a lot of students don't realise is that every teacher is looking for a great student." – Ron LeslieWe're talking here about a dance workshop Corissa attended. But really this is about how to seek out and handle feedback in all kinds of situations.How do you evaluate whether feedback is helpful or not?How do you handle feedback or advice that's not constructive?What do you do with people who throw their opinions around confidently even though they're wrong?Challenges in evaluating you...2024-12-1323 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles087: How big things get done (part 2)More thoughts from How Big Things Get Done while on the way to brunch.(You'll need to have listened to part 1 for some of the references in here.)The fight between data and storiesJimi Hendrix's Electric Lady recording studioSounds obvious that you should think slow act fast, but most projects don't go like thatThe political utility of sunk cost biasTom dramatically underestimated how long it would take to make his Innovation Tactics Pip DeckRobert Caro dramatically underestimated how long it would take to write The Power BrokerInternal forecasting vs Reference Class Forecasting...2024-12-0323 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles086: How big things get done (part 1)Tom finally read this book about mega projects and was surprised to find how relevant it was to the kind of work we do.Including: stories of the Bilbao Guggenheim vs Sydney Opera Housea reference to Bernard's Watchcontrasting processes for "think slow build fast"Pixar PlanningSnowflake Method and UnfoldingLinks with Multiverse MappingLinky goodnessHow Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg: https://sites.prh.com/how-big-things-get-done-bookMaster Multiverse Mapping Course: https://triggerstrategy.com/multiverse-mapping Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...2024-12-0115 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles085: High on agency?“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 PrayerThe 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 hope...2024-11-1921 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles083: Unfolding ideas over ideating featuresIt'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 today02:28 Customer feedback creates an apparent puzzle03:40 Mistakes we've made by asking people what they want05:14 Secret 1: what do people already do?07:37 Secret 2: imagine your company is a big metal box10:50 You're always limited by your own i...2024-11-0540 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles082: 2D ComparisonJamie 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 amb...2024-10-2922 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles080: What the heck's goin' on in tech?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...2024-10-0830 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles075: Effectual thinking vs causal thinkingWe 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...2024-09-2032 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles073: Brat summer for billionairesAll 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 Airbnb Hosted on...2024-09-1320 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles072: Granularity part 2 – SnowmobilingIn 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...2024-09-1029 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles071: Granularity part 1 – decomposing people via ASHENToday, 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...2024-08-1347 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles070: Lobster dinner with a toddlerQ. 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...2024-08-1053 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles069: The alignment problem (not the AI alignment problem)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...2024-08-0642 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles068: Modest visions vs sci-fi visionsIn 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.2024-08-0248 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles067: Coping with "I'll know it when I see it"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...2024-07-3035 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles066: Feeling the edges of the Vision ChasmThis 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...2024-07-2657 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles064: Problems get replaced by better problemsTom & 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 Podcast00:11 Dental adventures00:31 Exploring problems and solutions02:09 The arrogance of designers02:54 The horse poo problem06...2024-07-1940 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles059: How can I help someone to "get" it?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...2024-07-0233 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles058: Reflections from UX LondonThis 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...2024-06-281h 02

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles057: But who's this talk really for?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.2024-06-2541 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles056: Technical language – a doorway or a barrier?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, o...2024-06-2139 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles054: The unofficial rules of the roadCorissa 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.2024-06-1429 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles052: OMF: Opportunity, Method, FormatTom 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.2024-06-0730 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles050: Rumination, instinct and the fundamental attribution errorHALF 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 tell...2024-05-3123 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles048: Conceptual ModelsThis 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...2024-05-2516 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles042: Helping to euthanise a startupIn 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.2024-04-3019 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles041: Nuance, absolutes and shiny suitsCan 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.2024-04-2529 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles040: Why isn’t [Role] doing what I think they should?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 sli...2024-04-2030 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles039: Bounded ApplicabilityHow 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 informa 2024-04-1034 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles038: Creativity, innovation and a flawed coffee machineHow 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.2024-04-0840 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles037: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 6We 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 origin...2024-03-2941 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles036: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 5The 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.2024-03-2639 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles035: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 4The 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.2024-03-2523 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles034: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 3What 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...2024-03-2129 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles033: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 2What 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 Di...2024-03-1433 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles032: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity - an annotated reading - Part 1What 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 re...2024-03-1329 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles031: Probabilistic Parenting - is it a thing and how does it map onto work?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.2024-03-1024 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles028: Ship an idea in an hour?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.2024-02-2115 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles025: Change, ready-ing and a caterpillar with wooden wingsWhat 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...2024-02-1029 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles023: Creating Customer ConversationsToday, 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.2024-02-0519 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles018: a blustery annotated reading - A/B testing ain’t for settling your disagreementsWarning: 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...2024-01-2928 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles017: You can’t leap directly from data to actionable insights - a live annotated readingWe’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.2024-01-2823 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles016: Signals, Stories, Options - how to avoid getting trapped by simple storiesCorissa 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.2024-01-2720 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles006: OKRs, moon landings and oil firesFollowing 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.2024-01-1626 min

Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles004: Beans, noses, elephants and startupsHow 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.2024-01-1627 min

Trigger Strategy is now TentaclesWhy your stakeholders will only ever know it when they see itIn 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.2021-04-2010 min

Trigger Strategy is now TentaclesWhat ‘The Control Heuristic’ means for design researchA 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.2021-04-1315 min