No #185 | September 7, 225

by Matthew Boyd

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

I'm back teaching an evening course at UVIC this semester and once again I think about this meme every time I'm teaching🤣.

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 🎾Rivalries
• 🏈Football!
• ☕Working at a Cafe
• 😎Cool Links

🎾Rivalries

For history nerds our there, a book worth reading is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.

The book explores Abraham Lincoln’s unconventional leadership approach of assembling his closest rivals into his cabinet. Instead of surrounding himself with loyalists who would echo his ideas, Lincoln deliberately chose strong personalities who often disagreed with him (perhaps he abided by the old adage: keep your friends close but your enemies closer).

But there’s more to it than political cunning, there’s science behind it. Studies in organizational psychology and decision-making consistently show that dissenting opinions reduce the risk of “groupthink,” where teams fall into the trap of consensus without critical evaluation.

When rivals or challengers are present, leaders are forced to test their assumptions, consider alternative perspectives, and sharpen their reasoning. The friction created by disagreement, when managed well, produces innovation in equal measure.

This idea is not limited to politics, it’s alive in sports.

Rivalries are often the engine of greatness.

Take men’s tennis today: Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have become the defining matchup of this new era and will be facing off in the US Open final this afternoon (their third major final match up in a row).

As of now, they have split the last two major championships, each pushing the other to expand the limits of their game. When Alcaraz raises his level, Sinner must respond. When Sinner breaks through, Alcaraz digs deeper. Their rivalry doesn’t diminish them, it elevates them.

That’s the paradox of rivalry: a competitor, even an adversary, can bring out your best self. Rivals demand your fullest effort, your most creative strategies, and your greatest resilience.

🏈Football!

Football is back!

To celebrate, here's one of my favorite quotes from the excellent biography of NFL Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh that outlines the importance of preparation in all facets of life.

☕Working at a Cafe

I agree😂

😎Cool Links

😬Cringe is cool now (or effective, anyway). "Audiences, particularly younger ones, are over perfection and tired of ads that read as ads, which can be boring or easily drowned out. Cringiness, in contrast, can be relatable, interesting, and can humanize a brand."

🤔Our Phones are Adult Pacifiers. A Stanford study about how quitting social media may improve your mental health.

🍟McBillionaires: The Super Successful Entrepreneurs Who Got Their Starts At Fast-Food Chains. “Amazon is a demand-driven organization,” says Matthew Davis, who works in data center planning and delivery for Amazon Web Services. “At McDonald’s, Bezos broke demand into components–300 burgers meant 300 buns, 300 patties, 300 slices of cheese. We do the same thing at Amazon. If customers need a certain number of gigawatts, we calculate how many racks we need, how many data centers to build. This logic comes straight from fast food: what do you need, and how can we deliver it in the most efficient way possible?”

😔Former Canadiens star goaltender Ken Dryden dies of cancer at age 78. "Ken Dryden was an exceptional athlete, but he was also an exceptional man," said Geoff Molson, owner and president of the Montreal Canadiens. "Behind the mask he was larger than life. We mourn today not only the loss of the cornerstone of one of hockey's greatest dynasties, but also a family man, a thoughtful citizen, and a gentleman who deeply impacted our lives and communities across generations."

🎵The Case of the Missing Hit (podcast). I relistened to this podcast on a recent road-trip and it's even more enjoyable a second time.

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