OK Leader! - Poets and Plumbers

➔ Leadership in practice

In 1957, a little‑known Danish architect named Jørn Utzon unexpectedly won a competition to design the Sydney Opera House. It wasn’t a plan so much as a dream. It was a series of white arcs that looked like sails, clouds, or wings. It was pure poetry. One judge described it as "genius" and declared he could not endorse any other choice.

There was just one problem. It couldn’t be built. No one, not even Utzon himself, knew how to turn those curves into concrete. His drawings were visions without geometry. They were beauty without structure.

For years, engineers struggled to translate the idea into something gravity would tolerate. Costs soared. Politicians fumed. Utzon eventually resigned and left the country before his masterpiece was finished. It wasn’t until a team of engineers discovered that the building’s sweeping shells could all be formed from sections of a perfect sphere that the Opera House finally found its logic - its plumbing.

Stanford scholar James G. March described this tension succinctly: “Leadership involves plumbing as well as poetry.” The phrase captures his core insight that leading isn’t just about grand visions and meaning‑making. Leadership is also the mundane, day‑to‑day work of keeping systems running and coordinating people and processes. March’s On Leadership argues that plumbing, the routine competence that keeps an organisation functioning, and poetry, the imaginative work that gives people purpose, are both essential sides of the same craft.

That’s the challenge of leadership and creativity. Too much vision without execution and nothing stands. Too much execution without vision and nothing inspires. Utzon had the poetry, but his engineers provided the plumbing. Together, they made something timeless. Great leaders juggle both, dreaming boldly while ensuring the practical foundations exist to make those dreams real.

The thread running through this week’s newsletter is the paradox of leading.

Enjoy,

Hugh

Go deeper:

• Sydney Opera House - Our Story

• Notes from On Leadership by James G. March

• Jørn Utzon

Notes:

#1 The building took 14 years to construct, far longer than the original estimate of four years. The final cost was AUD 102 million, more than 14 times the initial estimate of AUD 7 million.

#2 In 2007, the Sydney Opera House became a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its architectural and structural innovation.

#3 Utzon returned to work on parts of the interior decades later. The reception hall was redesigned and named the Utzon Room in his honour.

OK Systems! - Second-order Thinking

➔ Systems and frameworks for thinking

In 1958, China declared war on birds.

As one of the first campaigns of the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong launched the Four Pests Campaign, an ambitious drive to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. The logic seemed simple. Remove the animals thought to eat grain and spread disease, and crop yields would improve. Ordinary citizens, farmers, students and workers were mobilised to chase sparrows from their nests, destroy eggs and beat pots and pans until the birds dropped from exhaustion. By some accounts, billions of sparrows were killed over the next two years.

At first, it seemed like a success. The pests were gone and harvests were expected to improve. This is first-order thinking, focusing on the immediate cause and effect. But sparrows were not only grain eaters. They also consumed insects. With the birds largely eliminated, locusts and other insects multiplied unchecked, devastating crops in an already fragile agricultural system.

The second-order consequences were catastrophic. Within a couple of years, the ecological imbalance had contributed to widespread crop failures during the Great Chinese Famine, which killed millions. Some analyses estimate that the collapse in yields attributable to sparrow eradication accounted for nearly two million excess deaths.

For creative leaders, the lesson is clear. Second-order thinking means looking beyond immediate outcomes and asking what will happen next, and after that, and after that. It forces us to anticipate the ripple effects of our decisions before they become problems. Vision without attention to consequences risks catastrophe. Execution without imagination risks stagnation. Great leaders combine both. They pursue bold, poetic ideas while carefully considering the systems and consequences that will bring them to life.

Go deeper:

• The Four Pests campaign

• Second-order thinking - what smart people use to outperform

• Leverage second-order thinking to improve leadership decisions

• Trophic cascade

Notes:

#1 The sparrow incident demonstrates a classical trophic cascade, where removing one species triggers broad, cascading ecological changes.

#2 Mao Zedong’s push to rapidly industrialise China led millions of farmers to abandon crops for backyard steel production. Poor planning and false reporting caused massive food shortages - a second-order disaster that triggered one of the deadliest famines in history, killing an estimated 30–45 million people.

#3 By replacing traditional controllers with motion sensors, Nintendo made gaming physical and intuitive - a second-order win that drew in families, seniors, and first-time players, expanding gaming far beyond its core audience.

OK Brain! - The Amygdala Hijack Edition

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

Sometimes your most rational decisions aren’t made by the rational part of your brain.

Psychologists have long studied how the brain reacts to stress. Joseph LeDoux’s work on rats in the 1970s showed that the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure, is central to detecting threats. In his experiments, rats learned to associate a neutral tone with a mild shock. For days after the shock was removed, the amygdala continued to trigger defensive responses in the rats, demonstrating how emotional memories can persist and shape behaviour.

The amygdala exists for a reason. It evolved to keep us alive, detecting danger and prompting rapid physiological reactions. In life-or-death situations, it saves lives. But in leadership, it can hijack our thinking. When deadlines loom or decisions carry high stakes, the amygdala can push us into reactive mode. Rational planning, reflection, and imagination, the prefrontal cortex’s domain, take a back seat. Suddenly, leaders may default to plumbing: controlling processes, micromanaging, and focusing on immediate fixes, while the poetic side, vision, experimentation, and inspiration, is muted. This is what Daniel Goleman named the Amygdala Hijack in his book .

This is the paradox of creative leadership and how our brains can sometimes work against us. Stress can tip the balance, but awareness allows leaders to regain control. Pausing, deep breathing, and deliberate reflection activate the prefrontal cortex, helping integrate intuition and reason, vision and execution.

Leadership is not just about making decisions. It’s about recognising when instinct has taken the wheel, stepping back, and consciously balancing the creative and the operational.

Go deeper:

• Daniel Goleman's explanation of "amygdala hijacks"

• A psychiatrist explains the neuroscience and physiology of fear

• Somatic markers - your brain’s highlights reel

Notes:

#1 During an amygdala hijack, the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for planning, logic, and creativity, temporarily shuts down.

#2 Verbalising feelings, simply naming the emotion, reduces amygdala activity. This technique, known as affect labelling, engages the prefrontal cortex and helps restore calm.

#3 The brain can’t tell the difference between social threat and physical threat. A harsh email or tense meeting can trigger the same stress response as being chased by a predator.

➔ Things to read, watch, listen, and buy

Brené Brown on the Tenacity of Paradox - Brené on why she chose Tenacity of Paradox as a chapter title in Strong Ground. (5 min read)

A good booklist on marketing and behavioural science - Richard Shotton, author of some of the best books on the subject of behavioural science, has curated a great list! (list)

How to deal with stress using our eyes - Fascinating read from 2020 on how we can actually turn off the stress response by changing the way that we view our environment. (4 min read)

A framework to help organisations clarify, align, and map their digital work - If you don’t already subscribe to Ash Mann’s newsletter, you should. It’s always filled with fantastic tips, stories and frameworks for leaders working in the cultural sector. His 3 Modes Model helps organisations map digital work across three areas of focus - ‘Enable’. ‘Engage’ and ‘Express’. (tool)

Bruce Daisley on the Manager Response Paradox - One of the biggest predictors of whether we think our leader is capable is the timeliness of their responses to us. So, how long is the right length of time? Well, it’s complicated. (1 min read)

5 lessons pop music can teach us about creativity - I liked this story about songwriter Amy Allen from Bruce Daisley’s Make Work Better newsletter: “When the NYT interviewed her she said she’d written a song a day, 7 days a week for 7 years (normally in a writing room with co-writers or artists). Over those 7 years that meant she’d penned 2500 songs. ‘And talking about big songs I’ve had — that’s like, what, six? The batting average ain’t strong. But that’s enough to have a career.’ Six hits from 2500 songs.” Subscribe to Bruce’s newsletter. (4 min read)

How to use Aaron Sorkin’s story structure in strategy decks - This video explains why the traditional Situation–Complication–Resolution model often falls flat and how showing the struggle creates emotional engagement, clarity, and executive buy-in. Perfect for leaders, strategists, consultants, and anyone presenting to senior stakeholders - via Neil Perkin. (2 min watch)

This is how to avoid overreacting to ugly problems and annoying complaints - Dan Pink has three words to help him deal with this. It’s also a simple tip for getting to the heart of a problem. (2 min watch)

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 - Annie Atkins 10 Rules for Working Under Pressure

➔ Rules for work, play, and life

Graphic designer Annie Atkins makes paper props for period filmmaking. Her old newspapers, maps, posters and various other paper “stuff” have been used by Steven Spielberg and Wes Anderson, not forgetting Chicken Run II: Dawn of the Nugget!

My favourite is: “Answering any question with ‘I don’t know’ takes experience and confidence.”

Bookshelf

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