In his book ‘The Origin of Wealth’ Eric Beinhocker describes the idea of ‘Frozen accidents’ - arbitrary decisions that seem inconsequential at the time but which result in a cascade of consequences and which become an irreversible foundation for the future. onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

There are certain words that I always always mistype in the same way every time and I've no idea why. Unfortunately they are words I use a lot. So strategy become 'startegy'. Claude becomes 'Calude'. Consultancy become 'conslutancy'.

David Bowie once said: ‘Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.’ In this week's post I've written about getting older, and building meaning over time onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

My talk on 'What the Victorians Knew About AI' at the brilliant Watch Me Think conference is now online and you can view it here - had a lot of fun with this looking at the lessons from transformative technologies of the past and what that signals for AI today www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHjt...

This is the most profound piece of writing that I’ve read in a long time. Packy McCormick looking at the question of why, in an age of technological abundance, so many of us are unhappy. www.notboring.co/p/riding-the...

This week's post focuses on a new operating model for agencies in the AI era - architecting knowledge, human + AI, and compounding value onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

As an experiment I set up my own AI braintrust and the results have been quite remarkable. I use it in client work, strategy and talks. So I wrote up how I created it here in case it's useful open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

This is the best thing I've read on the future economic impacts of AI for a long time. An excellent, and ultimately more hopeful, essay substack.com/home/post/p-...

We’ve come to the point where every business needs to develop not only an AI strategy, but an AI philosophy - defining the principles, assumptions and beliefs that should govern how AI reasons, decides, and acts within an organisation. onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

Are we having the wrong conversation about AI and jobs? This week's post focuses on bank tellers and ATMs, the dawn of the electric age, that widely misinterpreted Anthropic study, and the hidden risk that no-one is talking about open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

How do you actually design for an agentic future? In this week's post I look at three critical aspects...I hope it's useful open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

This legislation aimed at protecting small businesses from late payment of invoices is much needed. I've run a small business for over 16 years. Large companies late paying small ones is completely unnecessary and also has consequences beyond cash flow. www.ft.com/content/287c...

Maybe Meta should consider taking down (or changing) this page

This week I've written about some very practical ways in which AI can transform client relationship management for agencies and consultants. Beyond simple automations and minor efficiency gains, how to properly rebuild how you work onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

I wrote a few words on leading human/AI hybrid teams open.substack.com/pub/onlydead...

Fluked Fluke

I'm doing a keynote about AI at an agency event on Friday and I've title my talk 'Beyond the Mediocrity Machine'. So much talk about efficiency and productivity, so little about how it can be a true creative and thought partner.

Fascinating angle this. Before now I've used Amazon as an example of a business that believes in the value of writing as a way of thinking and explaining (so many businesses default to PPT). This gives a whole new dimension to cognitive outsourcing.

Saw Wuthering Heights last night. Verdict - I thought it was brilliant but the most amazing thing in it was not what I had expected - Martin Clunes was absolutely phenomenal

A real up and down week but some great client things happened this week and ending it on a high with a new business win 😀

Anthropic’s Head of Product for Enterprise said last week that he thought we were moving into an era of ‘vibe working’. So I've written something about the value of craft, and what we're in danger of losing onlydeadfish.substack.com/p/fish-food-...

WhatsApp is great for personal stuff and quick messages but I have clients who insist on using it for almost everything. It's a thing. 'WhatsApps that should have been an email' giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

I'm a huge fan of what the BBC does and personally believe it's great value for money. The government consultation on the future of the BBC is online and anyone can submit a response. Takes about 15 minutes to do dcms.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

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-...