Each and every week the Square Holes team are deep in the bowels of a number of projects, working to mine all of the insights that we can to help grow businesses and support thriving cities.

These insights are used by businesses and organisations to innovate their offerings, move into new markets, track their impact and hone their products and output. Each week we will be sharing a broad insight that we have learnt for you to use in your own work.

Let us know what you find valuable!

Dylan: Effort to mastery pipeline

I’ve been spending more time trying to improve my golf game, and one thing I keep reminding myself of is that repetition is where improvement really happens. It’s tempting to look for the next tip, technique or shortcut you’ve found on YouTube, but the biggest gains I’ve found have come from doing the same fundamentals over and over until they become instinctive. Every swing teaches you something you missed the last time. It’s the same with any skill, habit, or goal; there’s rarely a substitute for simply showing up and practising. Repetition isn’t always fun or glamorous, but it’s what turns effort into progress and progress into mastery.

Mahalia: Cultural assumptions

Last year (2025), I made my first big overseas trip in over 15 years to the USA. This year (2026), a new pal from Philadelphia came and stayed with me for 3 weeks. What struck me about my time travelling and my pals’ visit was the narratives we create about places and people we have never experienced. In visiting Pennsylvania, I expected to see Amish people around every corner. I didn’t see one. New York had felt like this fantasy land, an amalgamation of all the films and shows that feature the city as a character. And while she was big, loud, and busy, she wasn’t so foreign to the capital cities in Australia. My pal from Philly delighted in tracking all the new bird sounds they experienced down here, and laughed at my attempt at making us hot dogs (a sausage in a bun doesn’t cut it, apparently!). The beautiful thing about travel is that you get to challenge your perceptions and build new ones. While the pressure of Trump’s reign can be felt in the communities of the US, my general perception of the people there was of helpful, kind and forward people who wanted to learn more about the places they hadn’t been.

Ewa: Where do we draw the line?

Watching the USA-Belgium match this week, I found myself thinking less about the result and more about the reaction afterwards.

Many European fans were outraged by reports that Donald Trump had called the FIFA president to seek a reversal of a player’s suspension. They saw it as crossing a line. Politics, they argued, should stay out of football.

Yet the same fans will often accept behaviours that outsiders struggle to understand – players exaggerating contact, tactically wasting time or drawing fouls. These aren’t usually celebrated, but they’re widely recognised as part of the game.

At first, that seems contradictory. Why is trying to fool a referee tolerated, but trying to influence the people running the competition considered unacceptable?

Perhaps the answer is that they are two very different kinds of rule-bending.

One happens within the contest. The referee is still the ultimate decision-maker, and both teams play by the same written and unwritten norms. The other comes from outside the game. It risks undermining the independence of the institution that everyone relies on to make the contest fair.

It also reveals an interesting cultural contrast. American culture often admires disrupting the status quo and finding a way around obstacles. European football, on the other hand, fiercely protects the independence of the game itself. You can push the boundaries on the pitch, but don’t use power outside the pitch to change the rules.

Every culture has its own invisible line. We all accept some forms of rule-bending while rejecting others. What’s fascinating is exploring which rules we believe are sacred – and why.

Square Holes is a cultural insight studio.

We design mixed method explorations of people and culture beyond the category,  uncovering the patterns, tensions and shifts shaping behaviour to inform strategy, inspire innovation and enable confident decisions. Our studio model brings together the right mix of thinkers, researchers and specialists for each exploration. If you’re navigating change, entering a new market, or seeking deeper understanding of people and culture, let’s start a conversation >