Tentacles - the podcast from Crown & Reach

A quick request: we're running our own method on ourselves, and we want to speak with marketing leaders: marketing directors, VPs of marketing, CMOs, and anyone else who's trying to position or launch a new business line. No selling, just a listening tour! Participants usually find the conversation somewhere between enjoyable and cathartic. If you know someone, please take 2 mins and introduce us: tentacles@crownandreach.com – or share this episode :D----Your new product or service is nearly working. But it's not quite there and you need to know WHY. So you do the responsible thing: user research. And everyone tells you the same two things: "it's not differentiated enough" and "have you considered adding more colours?" Everyone's right that something's wrong, but everyone's wrong about why. So now what?Recorded on a windy Bournemouth beach (with a windy baby asleep between us), this one's a debrief from a workshop we ran with a client. We walk from the classic usability-research dead end to the full mechanics of a Pitch Provocations sprint, including a new element of the sprint that we'll definitely be using again.Incluuuding:Why products can use the same two reproduction strategies as natureThe analyst trap, where school taught you there's always a right answer, but it fails you when novelty matters"It's like having someone else's thinking running through your own brain", the workshop moment a CEO called out, and why forcing execs to sit in silence reading transcripts is weirdly addictive ... for us but probably also for themPre-registering intuitions: the new twist that shows a team how their own minds changed before and after exposure to the dataHow to secretly dissolve the classic "my idea vs your idea" stalemate without anyone losing face or getting butthurtNone of your current ideas will be the one that works, but you gotta hurry up and test them anywayIt's all about the Uncertainty Bubble: temporary rules, taboo behaviours, and reintegrationThis is for anyone whose product or service is stuck at "nearly there", especially if you're frustrated that your research keeps telling you it's broken but not what to do about that.Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.comReferencesChildren of Time by Adrian Tchaikovskyr/K selection theory (the "K versus L" moment) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theoryThe secretary problem / optimal stopping (the "ignore the first 30" rule) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problemNeil Gaiman on feedback: "when people tell you something's wrong… they are almost always right; when they tell you exactly how to fix it, they are almost always wrong"The "starving crowd" idea that's usually attributed to Gary Halbert though we didn't name himThe adjacent possible, attributed to Stuart Kauffman, though we didn't name him either, oopsMultiple parallel safe-to-fail probes is a Dave Snowden concept, where safe-to-fail and parallel are both vitalRobert Walters case study https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l14lgb5wpesqefksaxscw/Robert-Walters-Case-Study.pdf?rlkey=mkycy26n6rm7h7gtdd5h65hmd&dl=0Pitch Provocations — episodes 007–009 https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategyUncertainty bubbles https://reach.crownandreach.com/posts/uncertainty-bubbles

A friend of the podcast got hired to run a facilitation: "vision on day one, backcasting on day two."He asked Tom for tips on backcasting workshops. Tom rolled up his sleeves and out fell a number of beefs.In this one we walk through why visions and step-by-step plans keep falling apart, and how to smuggle something that actually works into a workshop that's already been sold as backcasting.Including:Why the first hour of every exec visioning workshop is people scrawling "seamless interactive experience" on every sticky noteOur many beefs with backcasting (assumption of linear cause and effect being only the first)Sidecasting, and the curious joy of paying attention to the evolutionary potential of the present rather than gazing forwards or backwardsJabe Bloom's "Ideal Present" 2x2, plus an extra scaffolding step Tom adds so people don't freeze like deer in headlightsWhy your organisation's "maladaptive" behaviours are actually adaptive (you just don't like them)The rule that makes it all work: you're not allowed to throw future you under the busWhy a strategic plan is really a holiday brochureFor anyone who's ever been asked to deliver a vision on day one and a plan on day two — and suspects neither will survive contact with reality.Get in touch: tentacles@crownandreach.comReferencesDr Jabe Bloom's Ideal Present, explained by Ben Mosior https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19KUsV_qeykPavel Samsonov's recent piece on vision workshops and the ubiquitous "interactive experience" sticky note https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/ai-is-not-the-future-of-software-development-but-the-last-dying-gasp-of-the-pastDave Snowden — Estuarine Mapping: https://cynefin.io/wiki/Estuarine_frameworkStafford Beer — POSIWID ("the purpose of a system is what it does")The Serenity Prayer (Reinhold Niebuhr)Intro to Multiverse Mapping: https://youtu.be/577_CXCfHMI?si=NhgLcF4KqL0n2VN7

What does a six-year-old cartoon dog have to do with a maverick fighter pilot's theory of strategy?In this one we feel our way through two theories of how humans create knowledge — David Deutsch's collaborative "Taking Children Seriously" and John Boyd's adversarial OODA loop — and discover that Bluey's dad needed both, and had neither.From bath-time burger shops to spitting toddlers, we try to work out when to problem-solve with people and when to (gently, lovingly) run rings around them.Why Bandit got comprehensively outsmarted by a 6 year old in a bathtubThe radical parenting philosophy that works beautifully right up until your toddler wants to run into a roadHow a fighter pilot reverse-engineered his own brilliance (and why he loved discovering he was wrong)Is deception a necessary ingredient of all strategy? Tom didn't want it to be. He's coming round.The "playing the opposite" move that turned a spitting contest into the best half hour of the dayCan you be collaborative one minute and Boydian the next without it becoming good cop, bad cop with your own family?Green blackberries, apples under car wheels, and where exactly the boundary sitsFor anyone who's ever tried to reason with a toddler, a colleague, or an entire leadership team — and wondered why what it said in the book didn't work.Can you wield both approaches without gaslighting everyone? Drop us a line: tentacles@crownandreach.comReferencesBluey — "Burger Shop" episode (Season 2) https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-2/burger-shop/Taking Children Seriously — Sarah Fitz-Claridge & David Deutsch https://takingchildrenseriously.comKarl Popper — fallibilism and falsifiabilityJohn Boyd — the OODA loop, Energy-Manoeuvrability theory, and his paper "Destruction and Creation" (1976)Sun Tzu — The Art of WarCarl von ClausewitzGödel's incompleteness theorems and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (Boyd's source material)Mia Wisinski — Playful Heart Parenting ("playing the opposite") https://www.playfulheartparenting.comImmanuel Kant — the categorical imperativeRed Dwarf — Lister on the real lesson of the Trojan horseTaskmaster — the lolly-licking task (trigger warning: don't look up that clip. Or do.)The Matrix — bullet time

More apps are shipping to the app stores, but the same number of apps are getting downloaded. In this one we're pushing a pram round Bournemouth with a one-month-old and making sense of the current AI moment — from the slop machine that online advertising has become to why the big frontier model bet may have misfired, and what a walking creature that just falls over can teach us about software development.We feel our way through some stuff:* "Trend slop" ... how every frontier AI model tends to give you the same strategic advice regardless of context (and what does change its answer — infuriatingly)* Why running a team of AI agents is starting to sound suspiciously like managing that guy from Memento* The harness that matters more than the model — and why the frontier model arms race may have already peaked* "Boring tiny tools": the overlooked category of software that now makes sense to build (until the pricing changed)* What an evolutionary algorithm that learned to just fall over reveals about agentic engineering realities* Why growing software might be better than thinking we can build itJus' tryna think clearly about AI and block out all the hype and panic.

Xerox PARC famously invented the mouse, the graphical user interface, and the printer — then watched Steve Jobs walk off with all of it. The usual lesson: silly management didn't recognise what they had. The actual lesson is more useful ... and more uncomfortable for innovator types. Sit in your beanbag so you can't storm off.In this one, we use Xerox PARC as a case study in what happens when an uncertainty bubble has a membrane that's too thick and too long-lived. Then we tell the story of a client engagement where we built one that had the right kind of membrane. What does it take to run the scary process of innovation under the radar, while keeping stakeholders just comfortable enough not to kill it?Why the PARC director's real mistake wasn't being too far ahead, it was the trade fair"Duringmath": why the groundwork has to happen during the bubble, not afterNemawashi, information radiators, and the meetings before the meetingThe MAYA principle: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable — and what happens when you violate it catastrophicallyHow a challenge month became an uncertainty bubble that nobody could see was improvised and revised dailyThe barbell strategy for uncertainty: work the certain end and the wildly uncertain end; leave the middle for laterWhy successful projects end up nothing like the plan — and why that's the pointPretotyping: build nothing if possible, cobble something together if necessary, build the real thing lastThis one's for anyone who's tried to run an experiment inside a company that wasn't ready for it, or tried and failed to innovate by following official processes, or wondered why the brilliant innovator always seems to end up persona non grata.ReferencesAlberto Savoia, author of The Right It and coiner of "pretotyping"Uncertainty Bubbles, concept by Crown & ReachMAYA principle — Most Advanced Yet Acceptable, by Raymond Loewy.Nemawashi – the Japanese principle of preparing the ground; pre-meeting meetingsDuringmath – our new coinage from this episode :)4U framework: Unpack, Undergo, Unfold the Uncertainty, by Crown & ReachBarbell strategy, referenced in this episode, should be attributed to Nassim Nicholas TalebDeliberate strategy vs emergent strategy (attributed to "a Japanese CFO" quoted to by JP Castlin

What do you do if Strategy Doesn't Exist?Tom and Corissa have built a strategy consultancy and they're here to tell you that strategy doesn't exist.At least, not in the way everyone sells it — and probably not in the way you've been trying to do it.This one was sparked by a recent episode from friends-of-Tentacles Kyle and Jen on Notes from the Swamp. We start with domino rallies and end up somewhere genuinely uncomfortable: what if the thing you're planning isn't real, the thing that worked was partly luck, and everyone who sells strategy is either in on the joke or still under the spell?Why "if you just set the dominoes up right" is a fantasy ... and why we all keep buying it anywayDeliberate vs emergent strategy is a taxonomy that sounds useful ... until Corissa neatly dismantles itThe project pattern that's almost too perfect to be true: everything that succeeded ended up nothing like anyone could have expected at the start; everything that failed stuck to the visionHenry Mintzberg, retrospective coherence, and the stories we love to tell ourselves about how we got somewhere goodCan your immune system be strategic? (Tom thinks yes. Corissa is not convinced and does not enjoy the question)Why Dave Snowden can sell the messy, hard version ... and why most people can't (at least not yet)The Trojan horse question: do you know what's inside your horse? (Is it another, smaller horse?)For anyone who's ever suspected that "strategy" is a collective polite fiction and is curious about what to do with that suspicion.ReferencesKyle Godbey and Jen Briselli's Field Notes from the Swamp podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TELdIQUd8nMHenry Mintzberg — strategist, referenced for his empirical work on how strategy actually plays outJP Castlin's Strategy in Praxis substack; referenced for a four-part taxonomy of strategy types https://strategyinpraxis.substack.com/Michael Porter and classic strategy doctrine. Tom accidentally said he came up with the seven S's framework, that's actually McKinsey; Porter is associated with Five Forces and competitive positioning.Dave Snowden and the Cynefin Company, referenced for practitioner-level rigour and the paradox of "meet people where they are" vs "don't dumb it down"Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand Prime Minister during COVID; referenced as an example of deliberate strategic choiceTaylor Pearson's expansion of John Salvatier's point that "reality has a surprising amount of detail" https://taylorpearson.me/interestingtimes/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail/The OODA loop / John Boyd https://thecynefin.co/a-lamb-in-wolves-clothing/Crossing the Chasm (Geoffrey Moore), referenced implicitly via "early majority / late laggard" diffusion diagramSWOT analysis, referenced as a "late laggard" strategy toolDeliberate vs emergent strategy taxonomy (via JP Castlin's Mintzberg review series)"The three Is" https://thecynefin.co/anthro-complexity-1-3

Bread makers don't knead dough the way a human baker does. They get to the same result via a completely different route — and that turns out to be a pretty good map for what's actually happening with AI right now.We start with brioche, end up in a crisis of professional tacit knowledge, and find a surprisingly useful frame for thinking about what machines can and can't do — and what that costs us in the long run.Why "harness the model" is the real skill — and what that actually looks like in practiceThe 50/30/10 split: surprisingly good, fine, and catastrophically bad — in the same tool (and no the maths doesn't add up)Why test-driven development went from "boring best practice nobody does" to "the only way this works at all"The tacit knowledge cliff: what happens in 20 years when there are no senior lawyers who did the grunt workExplicit → explicable → tacit → relational: a spectrum that explains where AI taps outWhy scarcity and skin in the game are the two things a language model structurally cannot fakeArtisanal lawyers, peak athletes, and the industrial revolution: why commodification always leaves a pocket for the handmadeFor anyone trying to think clearly about AI without falling for either the hype or the backlash.ReferencesLuca Dellanna's piece on what makes humans different from AINonaka & Takeuchi (1995) – the bread maker as an example for how knowledge is encoded in processes and organisations https://www.scribd.com/document/258487259/Nonaka-I-and-Takeuchi-H-1995(Found after we recorded) a critique of Nonaka & Takeuchi's work on bread making machines - bread maker not as incorporation of tacit knowledge, but as fitting a social prosthesis into a rearranged world: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215439406_The_Bread-Making_Machine_Tacit_Knowledge_and_Two_Types_of_Action

Everyone's got a brilliant value proposition. And most of them fail.Tom's been reading a book that argues the problem isn't your messaging, your features, or your market research. The problem is that most people — most of the time — simply don't care.Indifference is the default. And you can't overcome indifference by being more persuasive. (Nor by shipping faster, dear LLM code wrangling friends.)In this one, we dig into why "unmet needs" is a nearly useless frame, what authentic demand actually looks like in the wild, and how a trucking startup found the wrong signal in all the right places.The "not-not" principle: why "it would be nice" is almost worthless, and what you're actually hunting forWhy a massive client said "when can it be ready?", started talking money, all the signals you'd be excited about ... and still never signed the contractOur old buddy Ignatz Semmelweis. He was right in a way that was socially unacceptable, and so he was thrown out of the establishment. 50 years later, everyone else finally got it, but only because it became socially unacceptable not to.What six weeks of not talking to truckers reveals about the psychology of founders (and possibly all of us)An example based on a fish finder and an accidental twist that created a breakthrough in product demand, from meh to three or four on each boat.Sturgeon's Law, the Mom Test, and why all the right signals can still point you in the wrong directionThis one's for anyone who's built something sensible that people said they wanted — and then didn't buy.ReferencesHeart of Innovation — Merrick Furst, Matt Chanoff, Daniel Sabbah & Mark Wegman (founders of Damballa and Flashpoint incubator) http://theheartofinnovationbook.com/Cedric Chin's writing on Heart of Innovation — https://commoncog.com/the-heart-of-innovation-why-startups-fail/Rob Fitzpatrick — Write Useful Books — https://writeusefulbooks.comSturgeon's Law — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_lawGoodhart's Law / Strathern's reframing — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_lawThe Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick — https://www.momtestbook.comInnovation Tactics (Tom's card deck via Pip Decks) — https://pipdecks.com/products/innovation-tacticsMultiverse Mapping — https://multiversemapping.com