Trigger Strategy

Some constraints are limiting, some are enabling. But what's the difference? What if most constraints are both at the same time? (Depending to some degree on your perspective.) We talk through lots of examples of constraints from design and Twitter poetry, through Lindy Hop and yoga, all the way into business breakfasts and research operations.

We reference a book by Alicia Juarrero. we can't remember the title during the podcast. It's Context Changes Everything: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545662/context-changes-everything/

We also reference some past episodes where we talk about emergent properties and hint at constraints – check out episodes 10, 11, 12 and 14 in particular. But if you listen to most of our episodes we bet you'll find examples of constraints and emergence :D

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Our jumping off point today was a video from YouTuber Caroline Winkler about making friends as an adult. She instructs us to tell ourselves that when someone doesn't want to be your friend, it's always something practical in their life: they're too busy, they're about to move away, things like that. And it left us wondering: but what if it IS you? We've all met people we didn't like. What if you're a person someone doesn't like?

But hey – perhaps it's helpful to hold on to the delusion that it's never about you? What we call "distribution" is a painfully slow, ambiguous investment. Maybe we need some delusion to carry on when it feels like a slog? Maybe that's healthy? But then how will you know if it is in fact you?

We unpack more stories that might be going on when we can't seem to find friends or customers. Whether you're trying to make bookish friends at a gabba rave, or trying to find customers for your achingly cool new startup, this one's for you x

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Important note for this episode: scientists have recently discovered that humans are in fact not exactly the same as bees. But we don't let that stop us taking some metaphorical lessons from our tiny, stinging, honey-making buddies. We share some cool bee facts, and consider how we could be more bee in our lives and businesses.

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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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In which we talk about how energy gradients affect the chances of a strategy succeeding, and imagine people pushing concrete wheels around. Tom shares the story of a client and how energy gradient thinking got them to finally identify the thing that was stopping them from making sales. It’s a cautionary tale and an encouragement for you to think about energy gradients sooner rather than later.

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Can you get through life without ever oversimplifying something? If not, when is it OK? And what does that have to do with parenting, politics and pole-climbing professionals?

We talk about a post that Tom saw in Reddit: a Product Manager complaining about the designers they worked with (shock horror!). The underlying vibe of the complaint looked eerily similar to many situations we’ve both seen. And the responses in the Reddit thread tended to jump to mono-perspective “root cause” type reasoning (also a familiar pattern). So we took a few minutes to break down the situation from different angles, unpacking more of the conditions and dynamics that might be modulating the situation. Note: the specifics of this situation are quite product/design-specific, so bear with us if we slip into jargon. Because we suspect the general dynamics at play will rhyme with situations you’ve found yourself in. Let us know: what dynamics or conditions do you think we missed? Plus: towards the end, we share Jabe Bloom’s Ideal Present exercise, which is a collaborative and multi-perspective approach to managing the evolutionary potential of the present. Here’s the link we mentioned to a video where Ben Mosior walks you through the exercise in 5 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/live/19KUsV_qeyk?si=r4hOSMZ_CtFTvCcS

How come your favourite methods don’t always work? We know one-size doesn’t fit-all, and we know that it depends on context … but *how* does it depend on context? We’ve been exploring a framework or model that can help iron out the fiddliness, and today we talk through some of the ideas, introducing a sort of spectrum that covers what we might call Solution Oriented — Outcome Oriented — Emergence Oriented (though we don’t use exactly those words in the conversation). It’s a bit of a meaty one today, enjoy!

How do you know if you're being creative or innovative? Does it even matter? We talk about art, business, feathers, and Corissa's fury with an underperforming coffee machine that set her on a path of creativity or innovation or maybe something else entirely ... and if you have a story of creativity or innovation you’d like to share, record it here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message

We made it! The sixth and final episode in the series where we read through prompts from an article and talk about what they mean to us. In this episode, Plant Seeds — Watch Them Grow, Tailor Ways of Working and Facing Uncertainty. We encourage you to think about them too! We also talk through some important notes that apply to this whole series at the very end. If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. And if you’d like to follow along with the original article: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate