"Geoff" has been running critical parts of every business on a Byzantine spreadsheet empire for 20 years. Every IT department wants to regulate him. Who's right? (Trick question: you need both.)

In this episode, we feel our way through the murky territory of protocols—from life-saving surgical checklists to shadow IT empires built by people like Geoff, who just want to get their jobs done without asking permission. What we discovered: protocols aren't the enemy. Neither are the people who break them. You need both, and—whether you like it or not—you're going to get both anyway.

Fascinations:

• Why giving someone just enough control over how they wash dishes is a vital part of management
• The novel "tracer dye" method for tracking shadow IT (and why Geoff will quickly find a way around it)
• How a 19th-century doctor was ejected from the medical community for [gasp!] suggesting surgeons wash their hands
• How expert oil rig workers can land helicopters in storms through tacit knowledge no checklist could capture
• The difference between a checklist, a flow chart, and knowing when neither will save you
• How social norms function as soft protocols (and why London Tube etiquette is more fragile than you think)

This one's for anyone who's ever tried to bring order to chaos — and for anyone resisting someone else's attempt to do the same.

Links and references

• Venkatesh Rao – "Summer of Protocols" / protocolization concept
• Vaughn Tan – "boring tiny tools" concept https://vaughntan.org/bttparadigm
• Ignaz Semmelweis – 19th-century physician who pioneered handwashing
• Atul Gawande – Author of The Checklist Manifesto
• Dave Snowden – Cynefin framework / oil rig helicopter story
• Gary Klein – Expert intuition and pattern recognition
• Procrustes – Greek mythology (innkeeper with the "one-size-fits-all" bed)
• Chick sexing – Example of tacit knowledge that can't be articulated
• Social protocols – Norms like cheek-kissing customs across cultures
• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) / Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) – Technical protocol examples

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the start of 2025, we faced a question: should we pack in our business and get [gasp] proper jobs? Our old brand felt like rotten decking – layers of horrible surprises with no clear foundation.

But instead of quitting, we found an octopus, embraced distinctiveness over differentiation, and built something we're actually excited about.

In this year-in-review, we trace a tangled thread from near-shutdown to genuine transformation, exploring what worked (uncertainty bubbles, relationship-driven growth, really good sandwiches) and what didn't (cold outreach, content marketing as a silver bullet, biscuits). Along the way, we workshop potential themes for 2026: bubbles, relationships, or possibly giant fluffy hats.

Including but not limited to:

• Why Byron Sharp's evidence-based marketing vindicated our octopus obsession (distinctiveness > differentiation)
• The brutal realisation: thought leadership doesn't automatically convert to clients ... so what does?
• "The only thing worse than having a struggling business is having a successful business that you hate running"
• How our iterative approach to website messaging revealed insights no "big bang rebrand" could surface
• "Uncertainty bubbles" - presenting external certainty while protecting internal space for emergence
• Why we'll never do much cold outreach, even though it works for others, and what we're doing instead
• The hot seat moment that changed Tom's career: when someone just picked up the phone instead of planning

This one's for anyone building something that doesn't quite fit the playbook, wondering whether there's a way to grow without becoming someone you don't recognise.

Links and references:

• Byron Sharp (marketing researcher, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute)
• Dolly Parton: "Figure out who you are and then do it on purpose"
• Adrian Tchaikovsky (author, Children of Ruin - source of crown & reach octopus metaphor)
• Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (evidence-based marketing research)
• Distinctiveness vs differentiation (branding principle)
• Uncertainty bubbles (concept from Tom's Deel masterclass)
• Safe-to-fail probes (complexity/Cynefin principle)
• 4U Framework: Unpack, Undergo and Unfold Uncertainty
• Granularity, disintermediation and iteration (our hidden facilitation principles)
• Innovation Tactics (Tom's Pip Decks card deck - 50+ methods) https://collabs.shop/yxzsjg
• Decking metaphor episode (our previous year-in-review)

What's your theme for the year? Did anything in this episode trigger a thought for you? [email protected]

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the reason you can't find the right name for your experiments is because you're asking the wrong question?

In this one, we tackle a deceptively simple question from friend-of-Tentacles Matti about behavioural scientists, voting SMS messages, and which Cynefin domain they're playing in. This spirals into a wonderfully messy exploration of why simulation has limits, why "safe to fail" needs better words, and what ice hockey can teach us about working in uncertainty.

Including-but-not-limited-to:

• Why the person who thinks they can predict things in complexity is the most wrong of all
• An ice hockey metaphor that might finally make Cynefin dynamics click (featuring goosebumps, but not just because it's cold)
• How Multiverse Mapping deploys simulation for coherence testing, not fortune telling
• The liminal zone between complicated and complex – and why most "experiments" live there
• Why you can't measure a system without changing it
• The profound difference between "conditions and consequences" vs "cause and effect" thinking
• Why "poking reality" might be better than probes, scouts, or bets (or why we still can't decide)

This one's for anyone who's tired of treating complex human behaviour like it's a physics problem – and anyone who's wondered why their "experiments" keep failing even though the logic seemed sound.

Links and references:

• Matti J Heino (posed the question about voting SMS)
• Dave Snowden (Cynefin framework, Ritual Dissent)
• Jen Briselli (ice hockey player and fellow complexity wonk) https://medium.com/topology-insight/head-up-feet-moving-b56e60867190
• Wayne Gretzky (Canadian hockey player, "skate where the puck is going" quote)
• Ursula Le Guin (author, Earthsea series, concept of "true names")
• Sun Tzu (conditions and consequences thinking)
• Cynefin Dynamics https://cynefin.io/wiki/Cynefin_Dynamics
• Liminal Cynefin https://cynefin.io/wiki/Cynefin_Domains
• Tom's bounded applicability diagram https://triggerstrategy.com/pitch-provocations
• Multiverse Mapping: https://multiversemapping.com
• Matthew principle / Matthew Effect ("to him that has riches, more will come")
• Schrodinger's cat / superposition
• Episode 131: Safe to Fail Boops: A Pragmatic Critique of Business Experimentation (mentioned as previous episode)
• Why Does the Pedlar Sing? (on advertising, branding, and fame)

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Bezos famously said not to overthink decisions you can just undo. But what if rolling back a change doesn't actually roll anything back?

Tom and Corissa explore what can happen when you stack "reversible" experiments until the whole system collapses—from Facebook's slow degradation to an apocryphal Tesco story where undoing an experiment didn't fix what got broken.

Along the way: sand pile criticality that can't be predicted, seaside penny waterfalls that cascade unpredictably, and why "safe-to-fail probes" might need a rebrand (spoiler: aliens).

Including but not limited to:

● The grain of sand you can't predict—and why that matters for your business experiments

● When Subway cancelled unlimited salad and what it has in common with private equity acquisitions

● The Tesco experiment that broke the camel's back

● Throwing gravel from a boat in a storm

● Three of the requirements for truly safe-to-fail experiments (and why most companies miss all three)

● Boops vs. probes: finding language for experimentation that doesn't sound like something unpleasant that happens during an alien abduction

This one goes out to all our friends who suspect their "data-driven" culture is just pretending to control things it can't.

References:

● Jeff Bezos (Come on Jeff, get 'em!) – two-way door decisions concept

● Heraclitus – "you can't step in the same river twice"

● Sand pile and criticality (mathematical concept)

● The Sorites Paradox – when does some sand become a pile of sand?

● Enshittification – term and concept from Cory Doctorow

● Rory Sutherland – restaurant story about private equity "meaner" portions

● Tesco AB testing story (flagged as potentially apocryphal)

● Dave Snowden – Cynefin framework and safe-to-fail probes

● Path dependency (mentioned as topic of previous episode)

● North Star metrics

● Andrew Anderson – obliquely referenced in context of experimentation https://testingdiscipline.com/

Questions, stories, or better names for "safe-to-fail boops"? Email us: [email protected]

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

But what if it goes deeper than salary? What if it's about identity itself?

In this one, we explore why clear explanations often increase resistance, how an interior designer accidentally solved the change management problem, and what executive data analysis reveals when everyone plots different insights from the same numbers.

From expert panels to Pimlico plumbers, we feel our way through the murky challenge of introducing ideas that threaten people's fundamental worldview – and discover that experience beats explanation every time.

We get into:

• The Sinclair Effect: when understanding threatens identity (not just salary)
• Why simplifying your explanation can actually make your ideas MORE threatening
• The executive data exercise that exposed beautiful chaos (everyone saw something different)
• The Winkler Constraint: how Caroline Winkler transformed her viewers' rooms with only three purchases allowed – and why
• How expertise shows up best under tight limitations
• The plumber parallel and why end customers don't care which wrench you use
• Leading with theory vs. leading with experience (and Tom's early mistakes)
• Opening portals vs planting flags, and the role of jamming
• Why the saying "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" can hurt your career (ask us how we know)
• How to give people what they want while accidentally also giving them what they need (but without being manipulative about it)

"You can't just not give people what they want. Then you are a blocker."

References & links

• Upton Sinclair - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
• Jen Briselli and Kyle Godbey's "Field notes from the swamp" https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL89SttTTcPTGDdRlcQTcEqz4Ra9z2w0le&si=FC6O6zfbLCzykKm8
• Cynefin framework / complexity science (Dave Snowden)
• Caroline Winkler - YouTube interior designer https://youtu.be/ZvHM_VCybN0?si=CIPObJld8IM4Mc-X
• Venkatesh Rao - "Portals and flags" concept https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/06/25/portals-and-flags/
• Eleanor Roosevelt - (possibly apocryphal) "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds"
• Pivot Triggers (Crown & Reach)

When have you fallen over by leading with theory? When have you enabled an experience that let things shift by themselves? Drop us a line: [email protected]

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can "insights" be pre-packaged? Should they be?

In this one, we wade into the murky distinction between polished agency deliverables and raw, messy data exposure. From a bank that knew what it wanted (and just needed to show due diligence) to clients who fundamentally changed direction after reading customer transcripts, we explore when different approaches can actually work.

Along the way we talk about how the iconic Rowan Atkinson Barclaycard campaign (UK only, we think) had absolutely nothing to do with the original brief – and how frequently that's the story of projects and innovation. We also mention AI because that's still a thing, and we reference "decision-based evidence-making" and how it's more common than you might think.

This one's for anyone who's sat through a glossy presentation questioning whether the conveniently self-serving story is justified, and for anyone who's tried to synthesise insights for others and been left wondering why it doesn't seem to make a dent.

Including but not limited to:

● How a beloved Barclaycard ad campaign was thrown together in a last minute panic after the pitched idea fell apart

● Gary Klein's chef's kiss definition of insight: "an unexpected jump to a new story you can't unsee"

● The cost of pre-packaged, pre-masticated insights – if it's too easy to swallow there's no chewing needed

● Why you can't know what counts as an insight in someone else's company

● Decision-based evidence-making vs. evidence-based decision-making

● The intense 7 hours of workshopping that "changed everything" for our client

● How we use AI to clean transcripts (take out the ums and ahs) but not to generate insights ... because it can't

● Why "disintermediation" might be the most important move in strategic research, though it's not an easy one to pull off

● When glossy agency work actually serves the purpose perfectly

● The opportunity cost that isn't about money, and why senior teams avoid the hard work

Links & references

• Book "Why Does the Pedlar Sing?" by Paul Feldwick (advertising/creativity)
• Gary Klein – insight definition
• Jonathan Korman – "decision-based evidence making" quip (though we think he credits someone else)
• Genchi Genbutsu – Toyota principle of "go and see"
• Pitch Provocations – our research method, message us for more!
• Multiverse Mapping – our mapping method
• 4U Framework – our meta-methodology

Questions, stories, or strongly-held opinions about research methods? Pop us a message: [email protected]

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You've been told you must transform your business with AI. But you have no budget for consultants, no runway for experiments, and absolutely no permission to fail.

So... what now?

This is the impossible bind facing many executives right now. And spoiler: trying to brute-force it is exactly how you end up as the expendable experiment in someone else's portfolio.

Drawing lessons from electricity infrastructure booms, a hapless lettuce entrepreneur, Tom Chi's plasticine prototypes, and our own white-knuckle cash crisis earlier this year, we explore what actually works when resources are scarce, pressure is high, and the path forward is genuinely uncertain.

Including-but-not-limited-to:

• Complexity of abundance vs complexity of scarcity: why portfolio strategies collapse when you run out of eggs to put in baskets
• The electricity/steam substrate shift: why you can't just "add AI" to your existing factory layout and expect magic
• Why some execs are being set up as expendable experiments in someone else's portfolio ... and how to spot if you're one of them
• Our own near-death cash flow moment, and why we didn't buy any of the blueprints that promised us a solution
• Watchful waiting: the counterintuitive move that actually worked when all we wanted to do was panic
• Why the lettuce man was right but early, which is functionally the same as being wrong
• Tom Chi and the art of radical cheapness: testing Google Glass with plasticine, wire, and half a day
• The oblique AI productivity hack where you get productivity ... but not by trying to be productive
• How to make experiments so cheap that you can afford to throw most of them away
• Testing your core assumptions vs your peripheral ones—why people protect their existential beliefs
• The dangerous middle ground: trying to get early adopter benefits without an early adopter resource cushion
• Why substrate change happens through billions of individual choices, not top-down mandates
• JP Castlin's bind: when your assumptions don't match reality, you can try to change your assumptions or you can try to change reality. Choose wisely.

"If you're really at the point where you've got no resources left, you have to focus on survival first. You can't do transformation when you're in survival mode."

References:

• East of Eden by John Steinbeck (the lettuce carriage story)
• Shape Up by Ryan Singer / Basecamp (fat marker sketches)
• Dave Snowden - Cynefin framework https://cynefin.io/wiki/Cynefin
• Imre Lakatos - philosopher (research programs: core vs peripheral assumptions)
• JP Castlin https://strategyinpraxis.substack.com
• Tom Chi - Google Glass rapid prototyping https://youtu.be/d5_h1VuwD6g
• Rob Snyder - PULL framework, AI note-taker example https://howtogrow.substack.com/p/nobody-wants-ai
• John Cutler & Tom's article about leading in ambiguity https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate
• Uncertainty bubbles / The Double Game (deliberate vs emergent strategy)
• Opportunity Method Format (OMF) https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/052-omf-opportunity-method-format
• Multiverse Mapping https://multiversemapping.com
• 4U framework: Unpack, Undergo, Unfold - https://crownandreach.com/#resources
• Obliquity by John Kay
• The Founder (McDonald's kitchen scene) https://youtu.be/F-7cjdtrQ9Y
• Minority Report (gesture interface scenes)
• Episode on Founder Mode / Brat Summer https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/073-brat-summer-for-billionaires
• Episodes 007-009: Pitch Provocations: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/663109cbcff31b0012ae9326

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is your very job dissolving? You're not imagining it.

As festive redundancy season rolls around (you've noticed the seasonal pattern too, right?), we explore how the boundaries around professional roles have been blurring and melting, and what that means for anyone who feels like their job identity is slipping away.

Using the corollary of music – from vinyl singles through to algorithmic playlists — we map that to knowledge work. How do patterns of democratisation, "AI", and evolving business models play into what a job even is?

And we look at how these cycles always create new opportunities from the mess. The big question is how to reposition yourself if the ground keeps shifting.

Including-but-not-limited-to:

● The bundling and unbundling pattern: from singles to albums to MP3s to playlists, and how it applies to your career right now

● "Mandatory entrepreneurship" and the pressure to become self-employed even when you'd rather just do good work (hat tip Lex Roman)

● How roles like designer, engineer, and product manager are blurring beyond recognition

● Why jack-of-all-trades is hot again (and what that means for specialists)

● Democratisation that scales quality vs. democratisation that cuts costs

● How to joyfully remix your own job: what do you actually like doing and what would you happily leave behind?

● Henrik Karlsson's musician story: what your role "ought" to mean vs. what you actually want to do

● Practical strategies for increasing your luck surface area (without becoming a hustle bro)

● The grieving process that comes with career rebirth

For anyone who's wondering why their carefully-built expertise suddenly feels less solid than it used to, and what the heck is next.

References:

• John Harvey Jones - The Troubleshooter - at Morgan Cars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtDA714SdgQ
• Henrik Karlsson's musician friend https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/constraints
• Episode 043: Do 100 Thing https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/043-do-100-thing
• Visakan Veerasamy's Do 100 Thing https://www.visakanv.com/blog/do100things/
• Mandatory entrepreneurship concept from Lex Roman https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lexroman_were-you-forced-to-become-an-entrepreneur-activity-7371539212074004480-8Z7R
• "There's only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle." - Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO
• Corissa's Ultrabangers playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3FFiwdRsFjMXYvye4lbzE4?si=9242add1c657441c

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom got AI to critique his sales call. The feedback was detailed, line-by-line, technically correct... and basically useless.

In this episode, we dig into the surprising limitations of LLMs that most people don't seem to be talking about. Not the obvious media fluff about hallucinations or training data or taking everyone's jobs, but the deeper constraint: they can't reorient.

We start with our experiment using an LLM to critique one of our client discovery calls, which led to an observation about what's missing. We talk about what happens when AI conducts research interviews, why care home robots are increasing the workload they're supposed to decrease, and the crucial difference between "reading all the books" and actually understanding what matters.

This isn't anti-AI. It's about being clear about what these tools can and can't do, and why that matters for anyone doing customer research, strategy work, or trying to understand real human problems.

Including-but-not-limited-to:

• Why the AI critique of Tom's sales call was technically brilliant but fundamentally unhelpful
• Boyd's OODA loop and the missing "orientation" capability in LLMs
• What happened when someone showed up to a research call... with an AI interviewer
• The emotion gap: why LLMs can't follow the rich seams of energy in a conversation
• Why LLMs don't know when to pivot and when to push
• Japanese care home robots that create more work than they save, and the babysitting idiots effect
• Venkatesh Rao's "it's read all the books" theory of LLM usefulness (and when it actually works)
• How our "expert panel" AI prompt is useful for critique—if you keep your critical thinking switched on
• Why pattern-matching to words isn't the same as understanding context
• You heard it here second? Active inference models: the next wave beyond LLMs?

If you'd like a copy of our experimental "expert panel of dissenters" prompt, email us at [email protected] and remember the risk: it requires your critical thinking.

References

• Ben Ford ("Commando Dev") on No Way Out Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/agentic-ai-thinks-like-boyd-the-ooda-upgrade-llms-cant-touch/id1663685759?i=1000734032438
• Venkatesh Rao https://substack.com/@contraptions
• John Boyd's OODA Loop and Snowmobiling
• JP Castlin's Strategy in Praxis https://strategyinpraxis.substack.com/p/the-only-one-writing-and-ai
• Dave Snowden's Ritual Dissent - https://cynefin.io/wiki/Ritual_dissent

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Q. When do teams want certainty the most?

A. Exactly when it's least available!

Not a joke. Just true. This time we look at the patterns of peak uncertainty: those make-or-break moments when an organisation desperately wants a clear plan but is operating in conditions where rigid plans are most likely to fail.

We bang on about our Go to Market Sprint offering and the uncertainty-native methods behind it, especially Pitch Provocations. The fun of being deliberately wrong to discover what might actually be right.

Including-but-not-limited-to:

• The peak uncertainty paradox: why the moment you most want a clear plan is when plans work least
• Three patterns of peak uncertainty (and why all consultants wish they'd been called earlier)
• Pitch Provocations: testing with words on a page to surface hidden market constraints
• Why "I know it when I see it" is both valid intuition and a political safety net
• The art of being deliberately wrong in the right way
• How to make the mess explicit (and why that's actually helpful)
• The vision chasm revisited ... and why emerging direction beats fixed vision
• Why teams get stuck waiting for clarity while leadership waits for signals
• The cucumber gets pickled more than the brine gets cucumbered ... plus reading labels from outside the jar
• Meeting teams where they already are instead of trying to change how they work

"We're not gonna persuade people to work in a different way. We're gonna meet you where you are... and do the bit that you don't wanna do."

References:

• Pitch Provocations method (episodes 007-009 for introduction): https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy
• Episode 061: Tumbling into the Vision Chasm: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/061-tumbling-into-the-vision-chasm
• The "Four U" model: Unpack, Undergo & Unfold Uncertainty
• Multiverse Mapping: https://multiversemapping.com
• Crown & Reach's Go to Market Sprint – email [email protected]

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.