Me to big agency group (BAG): 'Can you pay my invoice please as it's now overdue' BAG: Me: Can you pay my invoice please? BAG: Me: Please? *One month later* BAG: Can you fill in this new information and it will take 2 weeks to onboard you to.our new payment system Me: 🙄

AI is about to steamroller through traditional L & D practice, so what could the future of learning in the workplace look like? I've had a go at mapping it out. Interested to know what you think onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

AI doesn’t just give us answers, it shapes what we pay attention to. With AI becoming more ubiquitous in business, if we take short cuts, or fail to think critically, there is a huge danger that we are building up systemic risk onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

This is a powerful takedown by Margaret Heffernan of the whole pretence around corporate 'purpose' which so often falls foul of less worthy incentives in the face of the realities of the market and leadership priorities heffernanm.substack.com/p/purpose-is...

We’ve reached a point where a radical rethink of how organisations are structured and nature of work has become an existential necessity. onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

'The engineers who thrive aren’t necessarily the best programmers - they’re the ones who’ve figured out how to navigate everything around the code: the people, the politics, the alignment, the ambiguity.' I liked these lessons from a Google engineer addyosmani.com/blog/21-less... HT @kottke.org

Reframing is one of the most important tools that a strategist has at their disposal, and the role that AI engines can play as a cognitive circuit breaker is wholly undervalued. onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

Late last year I was lucky enough to speak to Ed Cotton on his 'Inspiring Futures' podcast and the episode has just been published. We talk about AI (obvs) but particularly about AI as a thought partner, cognitive outsourcing, and the roles that it can play. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

A phenomenal article by Dr Rachel Barr looking at some of the biggest philosophical questions (our notion of self, the concept of free will, and how we find meaning) through a neuroscience lens. It gave me a totally different way of thinking about these ideas. Bravo. bigthink.com/thinking/3-p...

Pre-orders for Random the Book are now open: securityblendbooks.com/products/ran...

In many ways, strategy is a creative process. We toggle back and forth between divergent possibilities and convergent judgement and evaluation. In the last newsletter of 2025 I've written about the 'clown' and the 'editor' in creative and strategy workflows. open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

I suspect (but don't know) that one of the reasons why advertising is becoming increasingly disliked is because of relentless, out of control retargeting. Casually look at any product online = carpet bombing of similar stuff. Buy something = endless ads for the thing you've just bought.

There are some not insignificant architectural limitations to how LLMs work which suggest that there is no straight line between where we are now and AGI (if we even want AGI which is a big question). onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

Always great

This week I've been working with a client on techniques for using critical thinking in conjunction with AI engines. The more I see about how most teams use AI the more I think that this is an unusually enlightened approach

Humans and LLMs learn in fundamentally different ways. Understanding these differences helps us to work with AI in a 1 + 1 = 3 kind of way. open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

Successive (Tory and now Labour) governments have made it much harder to run a small business in the UK (Corp tax, Dividends allowance reductions and tax rises). It's a real shame that governments don't seem to like people who are self-starters and are willing to take the risk to be entrepreneurial

Nicely put

When it comes to driving change, systems are way more powerful than goals. Many businesses mistake goals and targets for strategy, but systems motivate through progress, compound through repetition, and preserve adaptability and optionality onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

We've all been there, mate

Frosty morning from the shed

John Burn-Murdoch on the growing numbers of young NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training), disengaged not only from the economy but the rest of society. Something big is happening to our young people and it's not good www.ft.com/content/bd61...

Some weekend listening - I've been binge-listening the BBC's wonderful 'This Cultural Life' in which creative figures talk about their life and influences. These 2 episodes from James Rhodes and Goldie are so moving but so inspiring www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

One of the biggest challenges in AI transformation is the ‘bottom-up trap, top-down fantasy’ that results in a disconnect between leadership intent and the reality of how stuff gets done in organisations. This week's newsletter looks at this, and the ROI of AI open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

There's an interesting/awful thought in here about companies paying talented employees to train agents so that they can retain at least some of that capability/knowledge when the employee leaves www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The fact that the BBC has made serious culpable errors does not negate the point that there is a real and concerted right-wing media campaign to destroy it. Both points can be true at the same time and the campaign would not end even if the errors did.

I genuinely think that intellectual curiosity will be even more of a superpower in the age of AI and so I've written a 'How to be Interested (Part Two)' post, as a follow up to my first one a few weeks back. onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

A term I really dislike (in a corporate context): 'Playbook'

There seems to be conflicting data on whether AI is actually taking jobs at scale but this FT piece is a good analysis. TL:DR is that it’s complex but so far AI is displacing tasks not jobs, unless you are a freelance copywriter or graphic designer www.ft.com/content/3d26...

Difficult to know what to think about this. On the one hand, maybe some people are getting some form of help. On the other, it's terrifying that that help is coming from the black box of AI techcrunch.com/2025/10/27/o...

All through my career (and in life) I've always believed in the value of working at the edges of what you know, and what psychologists would call 'desirable difficulty'. This week's newsletter is all about that, along with the usual interesting/useful links onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

This week I spoke at the Google Partner Summit in Dublin on the future of agencies in the era of AI. I did some (AI-assisted) scenario-planning for it to set out potential futures and paths open to agencies. I've written up the key insights from that here onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

Robot waiter in Dublin airport

Properly thought-provoking post this on cognitive offloading substack.nomoremarking.com/p/are-we-liv...

Fascinating study which shows that when a broader set of psychological dimensions are considered overall mental functioning peaks between the ages of 55 and 60. There's hope for me yet theconversation.com/worried-abou...

Almost a decade ago I wrote a report for the IPA on the Future of Agencies, and used a framework to define a key dynamic for the future: systems and empathy. I've found myself thinking a lot about this now we're truly in the age of AI. onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

Off the back of the latest WARC Future of Strategy survey I did some scenario planning for the future role of the strategist. Interested to know what you think onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

A powerful piece from Cory Doctorow about the ongoing enshittification of the internet, using Amazon as a 'Prime' example (see what I did there) www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

OH: 'Every time I go to a meeting there are four pillars and they're different from the last four pillars' 🤣

I truly believe that intellectual humility and curiosity will be a key differentiator in the era of AI. So this week I've written about the paradox of information abundance, Virginia Woolf, and why we need more institutionalised doubt in business. open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

I've been working with the BBC this week on how they use AI. I love the BBC. What it does and how it does it is needed more than ever and the licence fee is exceptionally good value for what we get and what it does for the country

Did some teaching today at Venice International University. Such an amazing place. History + great architecture + lovely food

Clients that tell you when you're invoicing too little. Those are the kind of clients I like

AI is in many ways a perfect Dunning-Kruger storm. But by working with it in the right way we can amplify and extend human cognitive ability rather than outsourcing it. open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

One of the biggest problems in big company innovation is connecting the flow from pioneering experiments and ideas to the realities of execution. This execution gap is where good ideas go to die. I've written up a few thoughts on what to do about it onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

Nothing like being in the city that the IDF decide is going to be their next target. Heard the blasts from my hotel room and thankfully all safe, but crikey

In this week's newsletter I've written about AI and high creativity, and about how lived cultural philosophies capture the essence of what AI generated art struggles to create, but also how technological change can take creativity in entirely new directions. onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

There are some really interesting stretch use cases for how strategists and planners can use AI at each stage of the planning process and in this week's post I've written about some of the ones that hold real potential. open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

I'm being grumpy but there's a certain type of 'thought leader' over on LinkedIn that is clearly using AI to source and summarise reports and research about AI to then post. If you haven't thought about something you can't call yourself a thought leader

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive page on how to tell if something is written by AI en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...