Coming up

1. OK Leader! - How to Build Together

2. OK Systems! - Disagree and Commit

3. OK Brain! - The Oxytocin Edition

   …and a bunch of quick links, a manifesto from Grayson Perry, and three book recommendations.

OK Leader! - How to Build Together

➔ Leadership in practice

If you live in the UK, I want you to cast your mind back to the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics. Sponsorship scandals, ticketing chaos, ballooning costs, awful weather - it felt like a national embarrassment in waiting.

The opening ceremony director, Danny Boyle almost walked away when organisers insisted that volunteers performing in the ceremony would have to pay to keep their costumes. Boyle admitted the it might end up, in his words, “shite.”

And then, at 9 pm on Friday, 27th July, an opening ceremony filled with hope and creative ambition changed everything. As meadows appeared, chimneys rose, and the Queen skydived with James Bond, thousands of dancers, drummers, and dreamers turned cynicism into collective joy. As The Times put it, ”London turned down the option to celebrate giants and supermen and power and might and chose instead to celebrate people.”

But it wasn’t just the brave creative that made it so mindblowingly brilliant. The surprise element had the audience totally gripped.

In an age when secrets rarely hold, Boyle somehow managed to keep 10,000 volunteers silent. As rehearsals took place in rain-soaked car parks of East London, Boyle demonstrated his leadership genius by opting against policing the story, choosing instead to invite everyone into it. He shared the vision, the early cuts, the energy. He told his creative team to “ride our own excitement” and encouraged volunteers to make the work their own. They weren’t executing Danny’s idea. They had become co-authors of a vision.

Days before the ceremony, 60,000 people saw the dress rehearsal. The hashtag #savethesurprise was flashed across screens as Boyle made one appeal: this is what we’ve built together—keep it safe for everyone seeing it for the first time. And they did.

Great leaders know that control creates compliance, connection creates commitment. When people feel trusted and part of something meaningful, they protect it, turning creative projects into shared triumphs.

The thread running through this week’s newsletter is “connection.”

Enjoy,

Hugh

Go deeper:

• Danny Boyle - “We trusted them…they responded by not telling the media”

• Why I'm happy to #savethesurprise

• The world’s media responds to the 2012 Opening Ceremony

Notes:

#1 Danny created rituals of connection: rehearsals where volunteers shared stories, pre-show gatherings where the team talked about purpose, post-show handshakes that said "I see you."

#2 After the ceremony, Danny Boyle spent four hours shaking hands with every single volunteer.

#3 70 sheep, 12 horses, 10 chickens, 3 cows, 2 goats, and a dog made up the “cast” for the rural opening segment of the ceremony.

OK Systems! - Disagree and Commit

➔ Systems and frameworks for thinking

The Wright brothers fought constantly. Not polite disagreements. We’re talking Gallagher-level disagreements but without the 15-year split. They’d shout all morning, then calmly share tools in the afternoon. People who worked with them learned to tune it out.

As children, their father taught them to debate fiercely, then switch sides and defend the opposite view. It sounded like a game, but it rewired how they saw conflict. A bad idea stopped being a personal threat. It became a thing to be tested.

So when they were arguing, they were always on the same side. The side of flight. The side of figuring it out together. Once they made a decision, both committed. The solution became theirs, even if one had to abandon their position. No sulking and never “I told you so” when things went wrong.

Intel’s Andrew Grove later gave this mindset a name: Disagree and Commit. The Wrights didn’t call it anything. They just lived it because the aeroplane didn’t care who won the argument.

You see the same pattern in many creative teams. The disagreement itself isn’t the problem. The problem is disagreement without a shared purpose. When leaders make the mission bigger than anyone’s ego, teams can argue tooth-and-nail in the morning and build something remarkable by afternoon.

Connection is essential for creative teams to thrive, but that doesn’t mean avoiding conflict. Connection is built by making the goal so clear that friction becomes fuel. The Wrights proved you can shout at your brother over breakfast, then fly together before dinner. The work is what matters. Not who was right.

Go deeper:

• A good scrap - why disagreements are vital to human reason 

• Bad arguments and how to avoid them

• Pixar’s Braintrust and respectful disagreement

• Netflix Culture Manifesto - uncomfortably exciting

• Project Aristotle - Google's study on team effectiveness highlighted psychological safety as the most important predictor of team performance

Notes:

#1 Wilbur and Orville Wright were not scientists or qualified engineers. They didn’t attend university, and they weren’t attached to any corporation.

#2 The Rolling Stones are fans of the Disagree and Commit framework. In his autobiography, Keith Richards shares multiple stories of creative clashes with Mick Jagger. Despite this, the band have worked together since 1962.

#3 Confirmation bias is an evolutionary feature. In a dangerous physical world, it evolved as a survival mechanism to help us make decisions faster by reinforcing what we already believe.

OK Brain! - The Oxytocin Edition

➔ Lifting the lid on what’s happening inside our brains when we do creative work

Your nervous system knows something your ego doesn’t: you can’t tackle impossible challenges alone.

Here’s what happens when you face a huge creative problem. Your brain instantly runs a risk assessment. If you’re isolated, your Amygdala (the threat detector) lights up. The challenge reads as dangerous. Focus narrows, thinking becomes cautious, and you start protecting what you have rather than reaching for what is possible.

But when social support is present, your brain releases Oxytocin. Suddenly, that same problem reads as interesting instead of threatening. Your nervous system decides: I have back-up. This is worth attempting.

Danny Boyle understood this when he gave ownership of the 2012 Olympic ceremony to volunteers. By signalling trust, he transformed a high-pressure performance into a shared endeavour. The Wright Brothers proved it too. Their fierce arguments never fractured their bond because their shared mission kept the chemistry of collaboration high.

While team safety exercises may spark a connection, shared purpose sustains it. That connection keeps the Amygdala quiet while amplifying resilience. The work becomes the protagonist, not the people.

But it’s worth pointing out - your nervous system won’t commit to an abstraction. It commits when it feels its contribution matters. That is why a tangible, shared purpose binds a team together, whilst a generic corporate one leaves them cold.

If you want your team to attempt the impossible, help their brains realise they are not doing it alone. Oxytocin isn’t soft. It’s the chemistry of courage.

Go deeper:

• Neurotransmitters of leadership

• Paul Zak’s TED Talk on trust, morals and oxytocin

• Simon Senek on the scientific power of kindness

• The neuroscience of goals and behaviour change

Notes:

#1 During childbirth, oxytocin has two roles: it triggers contractions while simultaneously activating the mother's brain circuitry for recognising and bonding with her newborn.

#2 Oxytocin is often referred to as the ‘glue’ of psychological safety.

#3 Dr. Paul Zak is known as the “vampire economist,” because he frequently takes blood before and after emotionally charged rituals, like weddings, massages, Quaker worship, and tribal ceremonies, to measure shifts in Oxytocin.

➔ Things to read, watch, listen, and buy

Daniel Pink on how to fix your attention - The author of 7 books breaks down the growing crisis of attention fragmentation and why reclaiming your focus has never mattered more. In OK BRAIN! 001 I wrote about how to use dopamine in the creative process to improve flow. (5 min watch)

The illusion of consensus is powerful. Here’s why you should fight it - The Big Think looks at a famous and fascinating 1951 experiment that showed that the pull to conform to a group can cause us to doubt the evidence right in front of our eyes. (6 min read)

Sublime: an inspiration engine for ideas - I’ve been playing around with this tool for the last few days and am at the point where I’m gonna go premium. Sublime is a bookmarking/clipping tool. What’s interesting is that when you save a quote, link, image, thought, article, etc., it will surface related ideas from your library and other people’s. It’s Pinterest for ideas. (tool)

Snipd: the podcast player I’ve waited my whole life for - OK. I’m calling it. Snipd is the best podcast player on the market. It solves so many problems for podcast fans. It integrates AI to give you transcripts, quotes, insights and clips as you listen. It’s perfect for bookmarking/clipping moments in conversations - I do a lot of listening in the gym and always want to make notes. You get email summaries and can see highlights and clips to shows you have yet to listen to. (tool)

135+ trend reports - It’s Strategists’ Christmas! Every year, Amy Daroukakis and a group of cultural strategists collect trend reports from a huge range of industries and share them via a Google Drive. It’s always a fascinating read. Of course, you won’t have time to read them all, but you can get insights from the collection using your favourite AI tool. (huge report dump).

The brain has five ‘eras’, scientists say, with adult mode not starting until early 30s - A new study suggests human brain development has four pivotal ‘turning points’ at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83. (3 min read)

What are you all reading/watching/listening to? Send me your links. I’d love to know what’s stretched your thinking recently.

The Rules - Red Alan’s Manifesto by Grayson Perry

➔ Rules for work, play, and life

In Red Alan’s Manifesto, made for the Royal Academy, Grayson Perry takes a playful swipe at some of art’s biggest questions - like what actually counts as art, and who gets to say whether it’s any good. The manifesto is written from the perspective of Red Alan, a ceramic sculpture of his childhood teddy bear, Alan Measles.

Artists are NOT philosophers, comedians, politicians, or priests etc. They will be JUDGED on their art.

Bookshelf

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