Trigger Strategy is now Tentacles

Hands up, who else loves a spot of brand-flavoured navel-gazing?  Two years ago we picked the company name Trigger Strategy Group in a last-minute scramble for our first client project. The name has, shall we say, one or two issues. (On the upside, it was a perfect example of Hard Test Easy Life: if you can make something work despite its flaws, you know you might be onto something.) But it w...

In which we sit in the garden, roast gently in the sun, and talk about cognitive biases, Panglossian optimism, Russian roulette, snakes on planes, and why most design is... fine actually. A very one-take kind of episode. Leaf-in-coffee energy throughout. Confirmation bias affects individuals. But if you want to harm an entire organisation, you need validation. You can be right, they can be right,...

You were hired to fix it. You did! Customers are happier. The company made millions. Your reward? They shut it all down. We sit on a garden bench and talk about those times when you feel like you're being punished for doing your job well. It turns out you can't mostly change a narrative with data. Your choices are power, influence, or acceptance. We share real stories, reflect on past mistakes, an...

While 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 sig...

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...

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 psych...

We talk about signals. Specifically, how can you settle on success signals when your wider context is always changing? We talk about a small example: setting Pivot Triggers for our Multiverse Mapping course, while our context is always changing in terms of overall cashflow. When the runway is tight, we wish the course would hurry up and sell more, but how do we avoid over-reacting or putting all o...

With 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 whe...

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-95418840 My note on his note: https://substack.com/profile/2368401-tom-kerwin/note/c-95543621 Paul Millerd's Pathl...

In this one, we answer a question: "I recently attended your Intro to Multiverse Mapping event and really enjoyed it. I'm also looking into Dave Snowden's Estuarine Mapping and noticed on your website that you facilitate that as well! What's the difference between Multiverse and Estuarine Mapping?" Linky goodness: Estuarine Mapping resources Master Multiverse Mapping Bent Flyvbjerg's How Big...

Corissa and Tom talk through some examples of enshittification and the opportunities hidden within! Linky Goodness Cory Doctorow and Enshittification Adam Mastroianni and Experimental History – and the article we were referencing a lot The pile of sand and the edge of chaos Douglas Squirrel's Three Laws of AI Hiut Denim – Do One Thing Well Ben Mosior's Learn Wardley Mapping Innovation Ta...

We discuss the Honest Prioritisation Matrix For some reason, the podcast description space here doesn't like images, so you can see it in this article about OKRs: https://triggerstrategy.substack.com/p/okrs-sound-good-but-they-dont-work Trigger Strategy Podcast has evolved into Tentacles – the podcast from Crown & Reach . You can find all our latest episodes here: https://shows.acast.com/...

“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress” – Niels Bohr In this episode, we answer a question from friend of the pod, Brian: "Have you discussed that bit about being intentionally confused before? I am intrigued." We talk about why you might want to trigger intentional confusion (aporia) and what the risks can be. And we talk about how to trigger...

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 Trigger Strategy Podcast has evolved into Tentacles – the podcast from Crown & R...

A lot of tech companies have bought into the idea of Build > Measure > Learn. But the "Build" bit always takes longer than anyone's anticipating, so the "Measure" and the "Learn" get squeezed out. Even though many of the people working in that system aren't happy that they're building crap and would love to be measuring and learning. In this episode, we talk about using Multiverse Mapping to...

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...

"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 Leslie We'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 t...

"We often give building a house as an example of something in the complicated sphere. But then we talked in recent episodes about the nightmare build of the Sydney Opera House – that was complex, but people were treating it like it was complicated. What's the difference? What makes one complicated and one complex? Is it a sliding scale from one to the other? How do you know which realm you're in?"...

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 stories Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady recording studio Sounds obvious that you should think slow act fast, but most projects don't go like that The political utility of sunk cost bias Tom dramatically underestimated how long i...

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 House a reference to Bernard's Watch contrasting processes for "think slow build fast" Pixar Planning Snowflake Method and Unfolding Links with Multiverse Mapping Linky goodness How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg:...

“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 “obviousl...

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 i...

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 Mis...

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 pick...

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 exam...