Remember that dress? The one that had the entire internet at each other's throats about whether it was white and gold or black and blue?

Turns out it reveals something profound about how our brains work—and why getting your team aligned on a vision might be the wrong goal entirely.

We dive into the viral dress phenomenon and explore what it teaches us about prediction, perception, and the challenge of alignment in organisations. From Andy Clark's "Experience Machine" to the bunny-duck illusion, we explore why our brains are prediction engines rather than cameras, and how this changes everything about strategy.

Some stuff we talk about:

• Why your brain sends four times more signals outward than it receives inward (and what this means for finding your keys)
• The real difference between the dress debate and the bunny-duck illusion
• How the dress reveals the fundamental problem with forcing everyone to see the same vision
• JP Castlin's three requirements for effective aspirations: precise, ambiguous, and fractal
• Why zooming out beats analysing pixels when you're stuck in disagreement
• The via negativa approach: sometimes it's easier to agree on where you DON'T want to go
• Storyboarding to envision behaviours not features

This one's for anyone who's ever wondered why smart people can look at the same thing and see completely different realities. And anyone who's tired of vision statements that sound like expensive wishes.

Drop us a line: tentacles@crownandreach.com

References

• "The Experience Machine" by Andy Clark https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313594/the-experience-machine-by-clark-andy/9780141990583
• JP Castlin's Strategy in Praxis https://strategyinpraxis.substack.com/
• The dress (white/gold vs black/blue) https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/
• Bunny-ducking: https://reach.crownandreach.com/posts/bunny-ducking
• Multiverse Mapping https://multiversemapping.com
• Pitch Provocations

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

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