Trigger Strategy
Tom Kerwin and Corissa Nunn
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Top 10 Trigger Strategy Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Trigger Strategy episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Trigger Strategy for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Trigger Strategy episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
071: Granularity part 1 – decomposing people via ASHEN
Trigger Strategy
08/13/24 • 47 min
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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081: Alignment alignment alignment
Trigger Strategy
10/16/24 • 25 min
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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068: Modest visions vs sci-fi visions
Trigger Strategy
08/02/24 • 48 min
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075: Effectual thinking vs causal thinking
Trigger Strategy
09/20/24 • 32 min
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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079: Speculative use cases
Trigger Strategy
10/04/24 • 33 min
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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078: Criticisms of selling before building
Trigger Strategy
10/01/24 • 13 min
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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069: The alignment problem (not the AI alignment problem)
Trigger Strategy
08/06/24 • 42 min
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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082: 2D Comparison
Trigger Strategy
10/29/24 • 22 min
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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070: Lobster dinner with a toddler
Trigger Strategy
08/10/24 • 53 min
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/unfolding
- Coach Mushfiqa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mushfiqajamaluddin/
- More about Estuarine Mapping: https://triggerstrategy.com/estuarine-mapping-2-half-day-pre-strategy-workshop-for-execs
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084: Isn't the SenseMaker collector negatively biased tho?
Trigger Strategy
11/13/24 • 27 min
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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FAQ
How many episodes does Trigger Strategy have?
Trigger Strategy currently has 84 episodes available.
What topics does Trigger Strategy cover?
The podcast is about Product, Marketing, Management, Entrepreneurship, Design, Research, Startup, Podcasts, Business, Copywriting and Strategy.
What is the most popular episode on Trigger Strategy?
The episode title '065: The inherent bigness of ideas' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Trigger Strategy?
The average episode length on Trigger Strategy is 29 minutes.
How often are episodes of Trigger Strategy released?
Episodes of Trigger Strategy are typically released every 3 days.
When was the first episode of Trigger Strategy?
The first episode of Trigger Strategy was released on Apr 13, 2021.
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