The Not So Breakfast Show
Listen, laugh and learn as we share our latest thoughts about staying relevant, contemporary leadership and doing life right. Ish Cheyne is the Head of Fitness in New Zealand for global fitness juggernaut Les Mills. Sacha Coburn is the COO of Coffee Culture, a leading group of boutique coffee shops, and the co-founder of The Company You Keep.co.nz.
The Not So Breakfast Show
Rubik’s Cubes, Bougie Birthday Cakes and Three Very Useful Envelopes
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Episode 266
What do Rubik’s Cubes, children’s birthday cakes, startup pitch decks and a CEO with three envelopes have in common?
Quite a lot, apparently.
In this episode, Ish uses his hard-earned Rubik’s Cube mastery to explore how leaders solve problems. Sometimes we learn the process. Sometimes we copy someone else’s steps. Sometimes we outsource the whole thing. And sometimes we quietly rearrange the stickers and hope nobody looks too closely.
The real question is whether you’re building the capability to solve the next problem or simply making this one look finished.
Ish and Sacha unpack the surprisingly useful leadership lessons hiding inside a Rubik’s Cube.
Ish shares how his first attempt at solving one produced the right result but very little actual learning. He followed a YouTube tutorial, completed the cube and then had absolutely no idea how to do it again. From there, the conversation explores shortcuts, outsourcing, internal capability and the difference between following a reliable process and genuinely understanding the problem in front of you.
They discuss why leaders need dependable “algorithms” when they’re starting out, how experience helps you recognise patterns and move faster, and why breaking the rules only works once you’ve bothered to learn them.
There’s also some excellent chat about cheating at family card games, paying professionals to make better birthday cakes, bringing new energy into established teams, the predictable cycle of corporate restructures and whether Duolingo’s animated bird should really be applying that much pressure.
If you haven’t come across it yet, Working Genius is one of the simplest, most practical models I’ve seen for helping teams understand how they actually get work done. Not personality. Not fluff. Just clarity on where people thrive — and where they get frustrated.
If you’re planning your next team day, offsite, or work event, I’d love to bring this to your crew.
Find out more at IshCheyne.com