Hands up, who else loves a spot of brand-flavoured navel-gazing?

Two years ago we picked the company name Trigger Strategy Group in a last-minute scramble for our first client project. The name has, shall we say, one or two issues. (On the upside, it was a perfect example of Hard Test Easy Life: if you can make something work despite its flaws, you know you might be onto something.) But it was about time we gave things some proper thought.

• How naming a company in 20 minutes can haunt you for 2 years
• The surprising violence baked into “trigger strategy” (thanks, game theory)
• The difference between command, control, and cephalopods
• What bees, psychiatric hospitals, and chatGPT have in common

In short, our company is now called Crown & Reach, and our podcast is called Tentacles.

Why? To find out, you'll have to listen...

References:

• Hard Test Easy Life https://triggerstrategy.substack.com/p/stop-polishing-turd-products-with
• Innovation Tactics Pip Deck https://pipdecks.com/products/innovation-tactics
• Dave Kang's Octopus Life https://davekang.substack.com/
• Taylorism - Frederick Taylor’s scientific management model
• Coherent Heterogeneity, a concept from complexity thinking https://cynefin.io/wiki/Common_fallacies
• Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith
• Crown & Reach Website https://crownandreach.com/

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In which we sit in the garden, roast gently in the sun, and talk about cognitive biases, Panglossian optimism, Russian roulette, snakes on planes, and why most design is... fine actually. A very one-take kind of episode. Leaf-in-coffee energy throughout.

• Confirmation bias affects individuals. But if you want to harm an entire organisation, you need validation.
• You can be right, they can be right, or (more likely) you’re both missing something and a third way exists.
• Heuristics are usually good. It’s when you step into a new context that they betray you.
• Change start with acceptance. Weirdly, that’s when things can shift.
• Almost everything on our shelves is poorly designed in some way ... and yet it’s still there.

Links, Ideas, and People Referenced

• Gary Klein – firefighter heuristic/pattern recognition story – more at https://youtu.be/QKpMLYwLRR4?si=8ie9txFbL__Q88gI
• Daniel Kahneman – cognitive biases, focusing illusion
• Nora Bateson – snake instinct, context-specific intuition
• XKCD’s "10,000" Comic – https://xkcd.com/1053/
• Taylor Pearson on Ergodicity – https://taylorpearson.me/ergodicity/
• Prisoner's Dilemma – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
• Candide by Voltaire – Dr. Pangloss and "all for the best" satire
• Gary’s Economics (YouTube) – https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics
• Oliver Burkeman – stress, lateness, perspective
• 10–10–10 Rule – “Will I care in 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years?”

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You were hired to fix it. You did! Customers are happier. The company made millions. Your reward? They shut it all down.

We sit on a garden bench and talk about those times when you feel like you're being punished for doing your job well.

It turns out you can't mostly change a narrative with data. Your choices are power, influence, or acceptance.

We share real stories, reflect on past mistakes, and explore safer (?) ways to inspire change when truth-telling gets you sidelined. Along the way: multiverse mapping, toddler psychology, and why the best performing landing pages often don't stay live.

Books & Articles:

• Stealing the Corner Office by Brendan Reid
• Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don’t by Jeffrey Pfeffer
• Why Design is Hard by Scott Berkun
• Why Your Org Doesn’t Want Optimization to Succeed by Andrew Anderson
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Ramit Sethi’s framing: “If someone is succeeding doing something that looks stupid… what do they know that I don’t?”

Frameworks & Tools:

• “Show the thing to change the thing” – concept from John Willshire
• Wardley Mapping
• Multiverse Mapping (Trigger Strategy Substack)
• Play the hand you're dealt – "Don't start with what you want people to do. Start with what people want to do." – Dave Trott

Character References:

• Wormtongue and Gandalf (Lord of the Rings) – models of influence

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