Neil Perkin

Nicely put

Fish Food 669: Why systems beat goals Change through systems, AI is eats the world, Gemini 3.0, testing AI-produced ads, why we still need to teach knowledge, and the myth of shrinking attention spans

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

Young adults are growing increasingly economically dislocated A disconnected class is taking shape, but is absent from the headline statistics

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...

BBC Radio 4 - This Cultural Life, James Rhodes Pianist James Rhodes talks to John Wilson about his formative influences and experiences.

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...

Fish Food 668: AI Transformation and ROI - Bottom-up trap, top-down fantasy The ROI of AI, how much AI will audiences accept in art, Meta on the future of agencies, Sam Altman on ChatGPT advertising, and consulting slop

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...

Ex-McKinsey Consultants Are Training AI Models to Replace Them The consulting sector has been buffeted by headwinds in key markets from the UK and China to Saudi Arabia and Australia in recent years. But its latest challenge might come from within.

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.

Fish Food 667: How to be Interested (Part Two) Turning intellectual curiosity into a superpower, the state of enterprise AI, AI mode as agent, and are technology bubbles good, actually?

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'

The AI Shift: where are all the job losses? A macroeconomic change isn’t clear yet but payroll data shows some types of work are already being displaced

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...

OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly | TechCrunch OpenAI released data on just how many of ChatGPT's users are facing mental health challenges, and how it's addressing them.

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...

Fish Food 666: In praise of working at the edge Operating on the edge of comfort, a guide to getting more done with AI, inhouse content machines, and a guide to 'aliveness'

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-...

I like this angle. A sense of what you want to do in a medium you love rather than a fully formed idea

Fish Food 666: The Future of Agencies in the Age of AI Where do agencies go from here? Are we living in a 'stupidogenic society'? Are there more AI generated articles on the web than human generated ones? So many questions.

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

Stubble & co are popular because they're all over Insta but I've had two backpacks from them now and they've both been excellent. If you go to the website you'll be retargeted to death, mind

Are we living in a stupidogenic society? The cognitive muscles we no longer exercise

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

Also makes a mockery of the ageism which still exists in many industries

Worried about turning 60? Science says that’s when many of us actually peak Perhaps it’s time we stopped treating midlife as a countdown and started recognising it as a peak.

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-...

Ha yes. Nice analogy

I'd stay away. I still post occasionally but have used it less and less over the past couple of years. It's full of algorithm curated content which is generally terrible but which makes it hard to see content from your friends

Fish Food 664: The Future of Strategists and Planners Scenarios for the future role of strategists in the age of AI, peak social media, the 'enshittification' of Amazon, and learn your own way

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-...

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...

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' 🤣

Fish Food 662: How to be interested (Part One) Swimming against the information tide, a 90/10 model for learning, OpenAI ads, the future of social media algorithms, and virtual hot air ballooning

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

I know - I really can't complain 🙂