Phantom Pursuit - Kirk & Blackbeard

"If you're not breaking things, you're not innovating." said Stockton Rush on a conference stage in 2022, talking about the Titan, a submersible he had built to carry paying tourists to the wreck of the Titanic — nearly 4000 metres below the North Atlantic. Its hull was made of carbon fibre, a material the entire deep-sea industry had rejected for compression at depth. Rush called it a breakthrough and the Titan 'safer than flying in a helicopter.' In 2015, a deep-sea engineer told him carbon fibre was the wrong material. He pressed on. In 2018, his own director of marine operations flagged that the hull had never been properly tested. He was fired the next day. On dive eighty, passengers heard a loud bang. Sensors spiked. The hull was damaged. No one was told. Eight dives later, at 3,350 metres, the carbon fibre did what every expert had said it would do. The implosion killed all five aboard in an instant — including Rush. There are ten submersibles in the world rated for that depth. The other nine use titanium or steel. They have for decades.

What is it?

A new technology appears on the radar. Blockchain, NFTs, the metaverse, generative AI. Its promise is magical: the conferences are buzzing, the consultants have their decks ready, and all your competitors already seem to be light years ahead. Something needs to be done.

What follows is predictable. "We need an AI strategy" sounds exactly like "we need a blockchain strategy" did five years ago. The technology changes, the reflex stays the same. The tool becomes the goal. No one asks what problem it solves. Budgets are allocated. Somewhere, a team starts working on something no one asked for.

Why does it matter?

What management sees is the magic, not the road to get there. The technology du jour is sold exactly this way. Having a clear narrative, a sense of control, and the signal that you're keeping up is what's rewarded in many boardrooms. That making the thing work will take years of experimenting, failing, and maturing before it delivers practical value doesn't fit that story.

For management, the promised silver bullet is too good to ignore. Realistic arguments against it can't win from magic. So budgets flow to initiatives that never land. Real problems remain unsolved. Your best people—the ones who want to work on things that matter—start looking elsewhere. And competitors who stayed focused? They leap ahead while you're chasing a mirage.

What causes it?

Two things that coexist in many organisations:

Distance. The higher up in the organisation, the further from the need. The signals that engineers and designers pick up from users and customers reach the boardroom filtered, softened, or not at all. From above, complex problems look simple, and magic is the solution.

Wishful thinking. Ah! The mirage of someone else's success without the stench of someone else's problems. Whether it actually works for your organisation, your users, in your applications, with your data, in your stack, executed by your people? By then it's someone else's problem.

How to recognise it:

When conversations start with the solution and don't mention actual problems.
When the boardroom is more excited about the technology than the people who actually understand it.
When the same consultant who sold blockchain last year is now selling AI.
When pilots are launched with applause and buried in silence.

What you can do:

Start with the problem. No problem, no initiative. Simple, but surprisingly often skipped.
Shorten the distance. The people doing the work know things you don't. Make sure that knowledge reaches the table unfiltered.
Think in experiments. Big transformations feel grand, but a portfolio of small pilots that can fail fast delivers more than one initiative that's too expensive to stop.
Make stopping normal. As long as ending a project feels like losing face, you'll keep muddling through with things that don't work.

What is it?

A new technology appears on the radar. Blockchain, NFTs, the metaverse, generative AI. Its promise is magical: the conferences are buzzing, the consultants have their decks ready, and all your competitors already seem to be light years ahead. Something needs to be done.

What follows is predictable. "We need an AI strategy" sounds exactly like "we need a blockchain strategy" did five years ago. The technology changes, the reflex stays the same. The tool becomes the goal. No one asks what problem it solves. Budgets are allocated. Somewhere, a team starts working on something no one asked for.

Why does it matter?

What management sees is the magic, not the road to get there. The technology du jour is sold exactly this way. Having a clear narrative, a sense of control, and the signal that you're keeping up is what's rewarded in many boardrooms. That making the thing work will take years of experimenting, failing, and maturing before it delivers practical value doesn't fit that story.

For management, the promised silver bullet is too good to ignore. Realistic arguments against it can't win from magic. So budgets flow to initiatives that never land. Real problems remain unsolved. Your best people—the ones who want to work on things that matter—start looking elsewhere. And competitors who stayed focused? They leap ahead while you're chasing a mirage.

What causes it?

Two things that coexist in many organisations:

Distance. The higher up in the organisation, the further from the need. The signals that engineers and designers pick up from users and customers reach the boardroom filtered, softened, or not at all. From above, complex problems look simple, and magic is the solution.

Wishful thinking. Ah! The mirage of someone else's success without the stench of someone else's problems. Whether it actually works for your organisation, your users, in your applications, with your data, in your stack, executed by your people? By then it's someone else's problem.

How to recognise it:

When conversations start with the solution and don't mention actual problems.
When the boardroom is more excited about the technology than the people who actually understand it.
When the same consultant who sold blockchain last year is now selling AI.
When pilots are launched with applause and buried in silence.

What you can do:

Start with the problem. No problem, no initiative. Simple, but surprisingly often skipped.
Shorten the distance. The people doing the work know things you don't. Make sure that knowledge reaches the table unfiltered.
Think in experiments. Big transformations feel grand, but a portfolio of small pilots that can fail fast delivers more than one initiative that's too expensive to stop.
Make stopping normal. As long as ending a project feels like losing face, you'll keep muddling through with things that don't work.

What is it?

Why does it matter?

What causes it?

How to recognise it:

What you can do:

What is it?

Why does it matter?

What causes it?

How to recognise it:

What you can do:

Let's talk.

Let's talk.

Let's talk.