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Trigger Strategy
043: Do 100 Thing
Season 1, Ep. 43
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Wanna be a YouTuber? You have to make a lot of videos. Wanna be a blogger? You have to write a lot of articles. Wanna be a startup founder? You have to make a lot of sales. For lots of goals in life and business, there's at least one necessary (but not sufficient) activity that you need to do over and over again. So you need to be able to do it a lot. At least 100. In this episode we talk about why this approach works and how it's different from more common styles of business objective.
PLUS: new recording setup! What we were using before has just shut down so please bear with us as we figure out new tools.
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92. 092: Twenty Twenty (Meta) Four
34:00||Season 1, Ep. 92Brief 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 GoodnessEpisode 043: Do 100 ThingThe Choice by Eli GoldrattMaster Multiverse Mapping91. 091: Antifragile Prioritisation
57:06||Season 1, Ep. 91A 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 help you prioritise your work so you benefit from uncertainty instead of being blown up by it. With real world examples, references to angry Lebanese people, a detour through performance management and another celebrity monster, We get back to Antifragile Prioritisation at 23:10.At the beginning of any project, we know the least we'll ever know about this project. So we should assume that we're going to learn important things as we do the project. But you can't just wait until you know the answers, because you'll only learn them through doing the project.Expirere: you need either experience or experimentation.In brief: create a model for how you're going to succeed, break that down into a level of granularity where you can identify critical behaviours, identify where you're facing the most uncertainty, then probe there first. Sounds trickier than it is – if you use Multiverse Mapping it's quite simple.Uncertainty is not the same as risk – uncertainty is generative, so you'll often get new, exciting ideas by running into the uncertainty. AND you'll also reduce your risk.And then we kinda debate around how much of the process of Multiverse Mapping can be explicit vs implicit. You do need to create a record for accountability, but don't make the mistake of trying to write down everything. Like all processes that support emergence: it's not that everything will just happen by itself, it's that you make something explicit and you get a happy side effect of updating lots of your tacit (shared) understanding.And we talk about using your Multiverse Map to set Pivot Triggers, which enable you to talk more strategically with stakeholders.And so you won't be doing Build > Measure > Learn – you'll be doing all three at the same time.Finally, we talk about using Multiverse Maps at a higher level of granularity to help you decide between different strategies.Linky GoodnessMaster Mutliverse Mapping: https://triggerstrategy.com/multiverse-mappingSatirical Skin in the Game review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/25/skin-in-the-game-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb-digested-readOne of Luca Dellanna's introductions to antifragility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS1CqSfxF4oEstimating Complexity by Liz Keogh: https://lizkeogh.com/2013/07/21/estimating-complexity/Vaughn Tan's Generative Uncertainty: https://vaughntan.org/generative-uncertainty90. 090: Should changing your mind mean changing your past work?
30:25||Season 1, Ep. 90If 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 realise is not great?We think through all this and come to a tentative conclusion, for the moment at least.Linky goodness:Annotated reading of A/B tests are not for settling your disagreements (podcast)Demolish your Creative Block with Graham Linehan and the Power of the SFD (article)Innovation Tactics (Tom's card deck)When your hero is a monster (YouTube video)Gaiman's Law:“Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” – Neil Gaiman89. 089: The dance of feedback
23:04||Season 1, Ep. 89"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 your own level of experience or skillWhen you ask for feedback, do you really want to learn – or do you secretly want to be validated?Two ways to receive feedback badlyChoosing a team based on their ability to take feedback on boardAn example of a teacher deliberately showing a class that they don't know as much as they thoughtFeedback is taken differently by professionals vs hobbyistsPutting yourself out of your depth to trigger your lazy brain to want to put the effort in to learnSome teachers/bosses are trying to challenge you; others are abusiveSome options to try if you want to challenge yourself more88. 088: Complex isn't the same as complicated
43:02||Season 1, Ep. 88"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?"This broad question comes up a lot when people encounter complexity.Hello again, CynefinThe phase shift from complicated to complexYou're not "in" any domain: instead, you decompose a project or situation into smaller chunks, distribute those chunks into domains, and then you can use applicable methodsThen your job is to move those chunks from one domain to another – like constraining something complex and unpredictable so you can make it more predictable for youEstimating Complexity by Liz Keogh: have you done this before?Light switches vs electricity substations vs energy markets vs power failures.Fun with etymology"An aeroplane is complicated; a mayonnaise is complex"The role of connectednessGlobal warming and a social ice ageMany folks are intuitively good at handling complexity without knowing all the words and that's OKProcesses and procedures to make things less unpredictable ... until they stop workingMethods to achieve the liminal complex to complicated phase shiftA Simon Wardley example of waste in an organisationThe surface layer of a thing is not necessarily everything that thing doesBoeing and the slip over the cliff from Clear to ChaosChesterton's aeroplane seatSeeds vs SoilThe liminal complicated zone where experts disagree and people have Opinions.If there's disagreement about an element of a project, decompose it until the disagreement goes awayIs there always a level of decomposition where you stop disagreeing? Football example ... Jefferson Fisher's courtroom example ...The move into Aporia and the EU Field Guide for Managing ComplexityLinky GoodnessCynefinEstimating ComplexitySeeds vs Soil – front | backJefferson FisherEU Field Guide for Managing Complexity87. 087: How big things get done (part 2)
23:36||Season 1, Ep. 87More 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, and the problem of uniqueness biasForecasting and iterating a solo jazz dance workshop ... based on Ashtanga yogaMaster Multiverse Mapping and fighting the Inherent Bigness of Ideas by asking, "how could we deliver the value to one person, right now?"Forecasting example: how long will kitchen remodelling take?Linky GoodnessHow Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg: https://sites.prh.com/how-big-things-get-done-bookInnovation Tactics by Tom Kerwin: https://pipdecks.com/products/innovation-tacticsThe Power Broker by Robert Caro: https://www.robertcaro.org/the-power-brokerLindy Hop classes – https://swingshiftlindyhop.com/Master Multiverse Mapping Course: https://triggerstrategy.com/multiverse-mappingThe Inherent Bigness of Ideas: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/065-the-inherent-bigness-of-ideasTrigger Strategy Group: https://triggerstrategy.com86. 086: How big things get done (part 1)
15:54||Season 1, Ep. 86Tom 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-mapping85. 085: High on agency?
21:05||Season 1, Ep. 85“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 hopes for high agency.We talk about how some leaders might wish for high agency employees, but would balk at what a very high agency employee would do in reality.And we talk about what you need to know if you’re an employee being expected to demonstrate more agency.And we signpost a whole load of lovely rabbit holes to go explore.“imagine that I could sell you a magic pill and you could give it to two of your employees and overnight they would suddenly become high agency. What would be the first thing you’d notice was different when you went into work the next day?”Linky GoodnessMushfiqa Monica Jalamuddin - the Estuarine coach you’re looking forEstuarine MappingMultiverse Mapping (free course)Venkatesh Rao’s Gervais PrincipleJeffrey Pfeffer’s Leadership BSBrendan Reid’s Stealing the Corner OfficeLuca Dellanna’s 100 Truths You Will Learn Too LateTimecodes to help you navigate00:00 Introduction00:28 What is High Agency?01:10 The Serenity Prayer02:00 Estuarine Mapping is the Serenity Prayer in map form03:45 High agency as a positive trait … & its permeation into leadership mythology 04:06 “Sound like a challenger, but be an obedient drone”06:20 Perhaps it’s about not waiting for permission, while also not doing silly things08:09 Tools to create higher agency if you want that – including Multiverse Mapping13:01 What if the traits we want in leaders are not the traits that get you promoted?17:31 A magic question for you to use18:34 What would have to be true for that stupid thing to make a lot of sense?19:42 “You can choose the game you play, but not its rules”84. 084: Isn't the SenseMaker collector negatively biased tho?
27:51||Season 1, Ep. 84Surveys 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