Chris Deaver

How did Apple overcome a culture of secrecy? How did Pixar out-innovate Disney? Why do companies kill creativity? Does Shark Tank teach us something about the way we pursue success that isn’t true?

We’ve been told that working harder and smarter is the only way to succeed in business and life. But it’s not true. Hustle culture is causing burnout and pain in our lives, making us feel divided. What if instead we focused on working creatively with others? And asked how we can shape cultures people love? There is hope in co-creation.

Brave Together is a deep exploration into how we can live and lead as co-creators, filled with unexpected stories, powerful principles, and a future-oriented framework. These ideas have been pressure-tested with startups and Fortune 500s—including Apple. This is the path to reimagining our approach to culture and converting creative ideas into billion-dollar solutions.

Millions of people feel their workplace leadership and/or cultures remain toxic. So, why does this problem persist and how can leaders, workplaces and employees finally beat it?

Instead of the tired ego-driven leadership style we’ve seen of late, Chris Deaver shares a modern framework for anyone to embrace a "
co-creative culture
.” We’ve pressure-tested these meta principles not only as patient observers but as practitioners and coaches within our teams. We’ve witnessed their power to ignite life-changing and business-transforming solutions beyond Apple. This same framework helped Disney build their NextGen platform, which received Fast Company’s “Innovation by Design” award, and Dell transform into a more customer-centric culture by expanding innovation.

Building on the futuristic framework in his book Brave Together, Chris dives deep into building brave spaces people love. His principle-powered insights will leave you feeling fueled to unlock creativity by leading with questions and igniting a culture of collaboration where people do the best work of their lives.

In short order, AirPods have not only surprised and delighted hundreds of millions of people but become a $24 billion business of their own—seemingly overnight. And the story of how this came to be is more than a technical treatise on innovative features. It’s a story we were involved deeply in shaping with senior leaders and teams at Apple.

It started with a directive from Apple when they hired me (Chris) with this extraordinary challenge:
“Seventy percent of our people have been here five years or less. We can’t teach them Apple culture fast enough. Can you help?”

The most valuable company in the world was asking me to take it to the next level by focusing on culture. But this was not a company in decline or a toxic fixer-upper. The leadership team wanted to keep what made Apple great and make things even better. What started as a small braintrust turned into a grassroots movement, and grew organically with the help of brave leaders, timeless principles, and the promise of co-creation.

We began by asking a different question:
“How can we shape the future culture together?”

We needed to involve the new people and learn from those who had already made an impact. It became a massive cultural shift at Apple, from “
think different
” to working “
different together
” that powered over 100,000 people to move the future of innovation forward. We witnessed an iconic company with a venerable history transform. In some ways, Apple was not so different from any organization that experiences growing pains. It had to deal with struggles on how to handle secrecy, the usual infighting, and friction when it came to collaboration.

This is about the power of co-creation, about being brave together, especially in moments when we’re confronted by fear. Apple was part of a beta test for how to approach culture shaping and how to apply co-creation to any domain.