No #186 | September 14, 2025

by Matthew Boyd

Good morning, welcome to the weekly Lead It Cool newsletter.

I read this quote yesterday and it perfectly reflects my mood as the seasons change. Such a great time of year, and I also now finally get the chance to bring out my quarter zip sweaters🤣.

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 🔥The Slow Burn - Shawshank Redemption
• 🤯Order versus Chaos
• 🍰Cheesecake
• 🤣Book Cargo
• 😎Cool Links

🔥The Slow Burn - Shawshank Redemption

I watched The Shawshank Redemption with my teenage son last weekend. We spread it out over two nights (it’s a long one!), and his reactions after each viewing said it all.

Night one, halfway through: “This movie is kinda boring.”​
​Night two, after the credits rolled: “This is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.”

Truth be told, Shawshank is a slow burn.

It doesn’t hit you with car chases, explosions, or a Marvel-sized CGI battle. Instead, it follows Andy Dufresne’s quiet, steady, often painful journey through Shawshank prison. It takes its time, and because it does, it lingers with you long after the credits roll.

In today’s world of instant gratification, they don’t really make movies like Shawshank anymore. Too often, modern films feel like a string of TikTok clips stitched together (see: Happy Gilmore 2), each scene engineered to feed the dopamine drip in our brains. Entertaining, sure, but rarely lasting.

It reminded me of an old saying: “All things come to those who wait, except for those who only wait.”

Andy didn’t just sit around for 20 years, he chipped away at a wall, one handful of dirt at a time. His patience was paired with quiet action. That’s why, when the payoff finally came, it was so powerful.

The good stuff isn’t always fast, flashy, or immediate. The slow burn often outshines the quick spark.

But then my son said, "Dad, what are we watching next?"🤣

🤯Order versus Chaos

Look at this image and let your brain try to process it (source).

The paradox is that order isn’t always about rigid organization, and chaos isn’t always about randomness. Nature shows us that harmony often emerges when pieces are allowed to live in relationship with one another.

It’s a good reminder that in teams, organizations, and even families, order doesn’t always come from strict rules, charts, or systems. Sometimes order comes from letting things stay connected, messy edges and all.

🍰Cheesecake

Do you see the cheesecake? 🤯

🤣Book Cargo

Whenever I take the bus to work I always bring a book to read, but never do (I end up listening to music), so this is highly relatable.🤣 (source: Asher Perlman)

😎Cool Links

🤔College students are caught between 'AI gets you in trouble' and 'AI is the future'. Yet colleges still have a patch quilt of standards for what constitutes acceptable AI use and what’s verboten. Across majors and universities in the US, Grammarly also discovered that while 78% of students say their schools have an AI policy, 32% say the policy is to not use AI. Nearly 46% of students said they worried about getting in trouble for using AI.

💡5 Essential leadership lessons from B.C.'s top tech and media executives. Some really interesting and applicable advice here.

🤝Tips for Effective Meetings. Excellent list from HBR.

🤖The AI Darwin Awards. Honouring Those Who Asked "Can We?" Without Ever Asking "Should We?" Because why stop at individual acts of spectacular stupidity when you can scale them to global proportions with machine learning?

😀Andrew Carnegie's 23 traits of an attractive personality. Number one is positive mental attitude.

💌Tell a friend to subscribe​

Thank you!

Let’s connect! 💬 You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter