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

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

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 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 Goodness

• Master Mutliverse Mapping: https://triggerstrategy.com/multiverse-mapping
• Satirical Skin in the Game review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/25/skin-in-the-game-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb-digested-read
• One of Luca Dellanna's introductions to antifragility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS1CqSfxF4o
• Estimating Complexity by Liz Keogh: https://lizkeogh.com/2013/07/21/estimating-complexity/
• Vaughn Tan's Generative Uncertainty: https://vaughntan.org/generative-uncertainty

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

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 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 Gaiman

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

"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 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 skill
• When you ask for feedback, do you really want to learn – or do you secretly want to be validated?
• Two ways to receive feedback badly
• Choosing a team based on their ability to take feedback on board
• An example of a teacher deliberately showing a class that they don't know as much as they thought
• Feedback is taken differently by professionals vs hobbyists
• Putting yourself out of your depth to trigger your lazy brain to want to put the effort in to learn
• Some teachers/bosses are trying to challenge you; others are abusive
• Some options to try if you want to challenge yourself more

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

"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, Cynefin
• The phase shift from complicated to complex
• You'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 methods
• Then 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 you
• Estimating 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 connectedness
• Global warming and a social ice age
• Many folks are intuitively good at handling complexity without knowing all the words and that's OK
• Processes and procedures to make things less unpredictable ... until they stop working
• Methods to achieve the liminal complex to complicated phase shift
• A Simon Wardley example of waste in an organisation
• The surface layer of a thing is not necessarily everything that thing does
• Boeing and the slip over the cliff from Clear to Chaos
• Chesterton's aeroplane seat
• Seeds vs Soil
• The 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 away
• Is 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 Complexity

Linky Goodness

• Cynefin
• Estimating Complexity
• Seeds vs Soil – front | back
• Jefferson Fisher
• EU Field Guide for Managing Complexity

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

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 it would take to make his Innovation Tactics Pip Deck
• Robert Caro dramatically underestimated how long it would take to write The Power Broker
• Internal forecasting vs Reference Class Forecasting, and the problem of uniqueness bias
• Forecasting and iterating a solo jazz dance workshop ... based on Ashtanga yoga
• Master 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 Goodness

• How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg: https://sites.prh.com/how-big-things-get-done-book
• Innovation Tactics by Tom Kerwin: https://pipdecks.com/products/innovation-tactics
• The Power Broker by Robert Caro: https://www.robertcaro.org/the-power-broker
• Lindy Hop classes – https://swingshiftlindyhop.com/
• Master Multiverse Mapping Course: https://triggerstrategy.com/multiverse-mapping
• The Inherent Bigness of Ideas: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/065-the-inherent-bigness-of-ideas
• Trigger Strategy Group: https://triggerstrategy.com

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

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: https://sites.prh.com/how-big-things-get-done-book
• Master Multiverse Mapping Course: https://triggerstrategy.com/multiverse-mapping

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

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 “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.

• Mushfiqa Monica Jalamuddin - the Estuarine coach you’re looking for
• Estuarine Mapping
• Multiverse Mapping (free course)
• Venkatesh Rao’s Gervais Principle
• Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Leadership BS
• Brendan Reid’s Stealing the Corner Office
• Luca Dellanna’s 100 Truths You Will Learn Too Late

00:00 Introduction

00:28 What is High Agency?

01:10 The Serenity Prayer

02:00 Estuarine Mapping is the Serenity Prayer in map form

03:45 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 things

08:09 Tools to create higher agency if you want that – including Multiverse Mapping

13:01 What if the traits we want in leaders are not the traits that get you promoted?

17:31 A magic question for you to use

18:34 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”

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

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

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

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 Mistakes we've made by asking people what they want

05:14 Secret 1: what do people already do?

07:37 Secret 2: imagine your company is a big metal box

10:50 You're always limited by your own internal perspective, and that's OK

16:51 Secret 3: there's no such thing as a feature

19:48 The story in your customer's head is different from the story in your head

20:18 Don't make things look simpler than they are

20:48 "Feature" is just a label to make your own life easier

21:41 Secret 4: build as little software as possible to enable the most behaviours that create value

23:32 When customers are reduced to a metric

24:18 Why an Impact/Effort Matrix to decide on features will fool you

27:32 Real-world example: a Calendly integration project

33:33 Unfolding ideas by soaking in rich customer context

36:25 SenseMaker for generating insights in a very different way

38:30 When you try to make too much explicit, you get in trouble

Jason's original post

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