Tom Kerwin

Your success always depends on the behaviours of people and systems that are outside of your control.

The good news? I can help you embrace this truth in a strategic, practical way, so that you can make meaningful progress.

• Trying to communicate your strategy so your organisation just "gets" it? This is a common struggle, and I can help you translate big picture business strategy into practical focal points so your teams can take the most effective action.
• Want to accelerate new product development? I've developed methods to dramatically increase Speed to Signal, so you can reduce your risk rapidly. What if you could get the signals you need in days instead of months, hours instead of weeks?
• Or perhaps you want to build a great design and product culture, but don't yet need a full-time leader? I can operate as a fractional leader to avoid the common pitfalls and get the right practices in place both for today's needs and tomorrow's.

I want to help you ditch debates about features, so you can cut to the core of product/market fit: a hungry crowd; a killer offer; deliver the goods.

Connect with me: Substack | LinkedIn | Twitter

Who am I?

My thinking

Trigger Strategy Podcast

My partner Corissa and I dig into strategy and sense-making while taking our baby for a walk.

Speaking

I’m doing a few keynotes this year

• Sneaking Agility Back Into Agile
• Bridging the Gap Between Ethnography and Continuous Discovery

Workshops and courses

• Multiverse Mapping
• Have you ever Discovery and delivery needs a model.
• [COMING SOON] Creating Customer Conversations.

Writing

• I write on my Substack, including …
• OKRs sound good but they don’t work An ongoing series digging into common problems with OKRs and what you can do differently, developing the concept of Adaptive OKRs.
• We need to talk about Airbnb My take on the shift in the role of product management at Airbnb and what this might mean for the wider tech world.
• 💩✨ Stop polishing turd products with this one weird trick Introducing the concept of the Hard Test, a fast, effective and uncomfortable way to make sure what you’re building is worth building.
• A trip into the estuary Notes from a recent strategy workshop. I share a new complex facilitation method that uses metaphor to break habitual patterns, empowering teams to start new journeys.
• Pivots and Triggers A feature interview on JP Castlin’s newsletter, where we talk about the Vision Chasm and the MVP Death Spiral, among other things …
• Signals > Stories > Options A simple method that will help you generate new ideas and see new possibilities.
• Are you trying to leap directly from data to action? It’s not that simple. The precursor to Signals > Stories > Options, this introduces the role of knowledge in interpreting data, turning DIKW on its head.
• How much research is just enough research? How much is too much? My most-shared article. A graph popped into my head when I couldn't sleep. It showed a lot about why teams struggle to build an effective research habit, and what we can do about that.
• Fear-Driven Development What’s behind all those disagreements and misalignments you get stuck in? It’s a predictable but hidden set of different fears. Here I introduce the “Time Machine” exercise, which helps you get those hidden fears out in the open, helping you have much better discussions and get unstuck.
• The secret to 10x feedback “I assume you know that this is terrifying, right?” This is my most valuable and worst-hidden technique for writers, designers and makers of all stripes. Use it if you dare.
• How do you generate ideas you couldn’t have had? A conversation with Dave Snowden about SenseMaker and new practices for design in an increasingly complex world.
• The thorny case of the solutionising colleague
• Don’t send that survey! Here’s what to do instead
• Shaping Trios Workshop Playbook – a fast and easy format to gather diverse perspectives and pull an actionable plan out of an ambiguous opportunity
• I have also ranted on Twitter … though not so much any more.

Join my cohort-based course Innovate Confidently with Pivot Triggers

Get your hands on the most powerful and pragmatic product methods I’ve found and remixed over 20 years.

Ready to book? Go here.

Visual communication

My model of the classic product risks, and the way most companies get distracted.

The honest prioritisation framework – this is what’s hiding behind all the pseudo-objective prioritisation frameworks!

The just enough research curve