Trigger Strategy

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:

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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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 pathfinders
• Snowmobiling as a possible approach – remix the adjacent possible
• Jamming with your stakeholder to understand and clarify (with the side effect that you might expose gaps or incoherence)
• Bias in research

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."

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Brief notes today. This is kind of a wrap up of 2024 but not like others.

TL;DR: a garden decking disaster becomes a meaningful framing for rearchitecting our business.

What metaphor can you use to reframe your 2024?

Linky Goodness

• Episode 043: Do 100 Thing
• The Choice by Eli Goldratt
• Master Multiverse Mapping

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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/663109cbcff31b0012ae9306
• My diagram showing some methods' Bounded Applicability: https://www.notion.so/Pitch-Provocations-54ad05d5740e451db0fa82479debeb91
• Previous episode about Rob Snyder: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/077-do-you-have-to-spend-years-in-the-pain-cave

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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 questions

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