You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

As I wrote about in my last article, I have found creative leadership can be grouped into two general areas – leaders and managers. Managers do just what the name implies by managing their projects and focusing on individual deliverables. They hold weekly status meetings where the team slowly and painfully goes around the room reporting in on the progress of the workload and concludes with a quick rundown of the highlights from the latest company newsletter. This method may be great for employees who do repetitive and mindless tasks but for anyone creative it is a slow, uninspired death where you increasingly feel like your career is going nowhere. So what makes leaders different? What makes them a source of innovation and leadership instead of just a source of deadlines? Let’s break this problem down into a series of comparative traits that I think clearly separate leaders from managers.

Leadership vs Execution

The void in creative leadership starts with the fact that most companies don’t realize that just because someone is a good designer, information architect or writer DOES NOT mean they have any of the skills needed to be a great leader. They could be a crucial asset to your company, so much so that you might need to look into websites like https://www.keypersoninsurance.com to deal with the economical loss if something unfortunate happens to them. However, it is not always necessary that a good employee can make a good leader too. For example, if someone is a designer, IA or writer it means they are good at coming up to creative solutions to a problem and meeting deadlines. These are executional challenges that require creativity but to be the person who leads those writers and designers requires a completely different set of skills. It requires an arsenal of skills including psychology, politics, and confidence to be successful. You have to be a psychologist who understands the individual creative process of everyone on your team to know when you need to push them to solve the problem for themselves or help them by giving them some guidance to keep the process moving. You have to be a politician who understands the matrix of any organization, maneuvers your group into a position where they are viewed as having value and then uses it to give promotions, raised, praise, etc. You have to have confidence so other people want to listen to you, want to follow you and want to be inspired by you. NONE of these skills have anything to do with the quality of your work as a designer or writer and they need to be developed completely independently. This is why you see time after time that you someone who was a fantastic designer fails miserably when they are asked to take more of a leadership role. There has to be a recognition that as you move up the ladder at any creative organization your skill set has to grow from the executional to the psychological to be successful. I have yet to find a company or agency that has made this realization was grooming their future creative leadership with this in mind.

Insights vs Best Practices

I go to conference after conference where a parade of speakers stands up to talk about their best practices to an audience who is diligently taking notes and trying to translate the knowledge to a form that will work for them. The problem is that best practices have value but without the ability to create your unique insights you are staying the same as everyone else with no competitive advantage. Leaders can use best practices as a starting point but then create unique insights that give them competitive differentiation from everyone else. You need to look at social trends, business results and consumer insights to create real and unique insights to guide the vision of the brand, channel or next project. Spending the time to do this work can generate incredible returns and separate your brand from everyone else and isn’t that the headline that every conference brochure is promising?

Beliefs vs Status Quo

Navigating the politics of any organization can be difficult and you till see that managers deal with this problem by floating along with the status quo letting it move their opinions where it will. They do it because when you have an opinion it means you have declared a position on an issue and you can be judged on it – good or bad. Leaders aren’t afraid of this judgment and often welcome it. They have a strong vision and set of beliefs that they use to guide and drive their team. Think of any great creative leader – Steve Jobs, Ray Eames or Jim Henson – they all had their unique visions and beliefs that they used to drive their teams. To be a leader you need to be able to develop your beliefs and access that people will judge you on them but it will be your passion and thinking that will rally them to your side.

Ideas vs Management

Understanding how to position your creative team inside of your company can be a huge factor in its success. Managers create teams that are focused on deliverables, dates and blinding doing whatever is in the creative brief. While that approach doesn’t make any waves within the organization it also means that your group is perceived as a service driven commodity with not much real value. To change this, you need to be a leader who makes your group focused on ideas that are always in service of the best consumer experience. This means you need to question what is in a creative brief if it isn’t in service of the idea that creates the best consumer experience. All of this is critical because ideas have value and that value will change the perception of your group and you.

Actions vs Words

Everyone has heard the phrase ‘talk is cheap’ but most people don’t take the time to understand just how true it is and just how important it is to lead a creative team. Every new leader comes in with a lot of bravado and great sounding ideas but time is the real test of if it’s anything more than just talk. To be a real leader and to get your team to buy into your vision that talk needs to lead to real actions. It has to happen because creative teams need a sense of security and they need to know that their hard work is part of something real of they will get frustrated, disillusioned and they will leave. So remember that saying the right things is easy but doing the right things is hard, but people inherently know the difference.

Self Awareness vs Emotional Deafness

Part of being a leader has nothing to do with your team but has everything to do with you and your self-awareness. Managers have emotional deafness where they aren’t able to read the emotional and physical cues given off by people or teams to know how to get the best out of them. Just like how people with hearing issues use hearing aids similar to the ones available at EarPros, maybe, managers also may have to get their hands on some sort of aid to understand their employees better. If not, the situation might lead to a blunt force management style where they force everyone to work as they do and the team becomes nothing more than a production shop. This defeats the point of hiring talented creative professionals because you are robbing them of their creativity, ideation, and passion. To be a great leader you need to take the time and create the self-awareness to understand your process and how you can include your team in your process so they all rally behind it, make it better and improve their personal process so they get stronger. This is critical because creativity is largely an emotional profession where people need to feel inspired, invested and protected to do their best work.

Great vs Good

The last thing I see in every great leader is that good work is the single greatest threat to great work. Good work is such a threat because it gets the job done and can get sold to a client but its a compromise. Great work takes hard work, thought, and the passion to go beyond what could get sold and get to work that is great, meticulously thought out and breakthrough. You get there by treating creativity like a blue-collar profession where are willing to do the extra work to create strong concepts and understand that when it comes to their execution there are no unimportant details.

So… NOW WHAT?!?

I have found there is no magic bullet for what makes a great leader because their success is also defined by the company they work for, the challenges they need to solve and team they surround themselves with but these are all traits that I have seen in the great creative minds and the great leaders that I’ve worked for and with over the years. It is a difficult subject which is why so many people tend to default to the thinking that leaders were born with that skill set as opposed to thinking that people can learn to be a leader. I don’t agree with the thinking that you have to be born that way because I have found that with the right training and tools anyone who is willing to make a sincere investment in working on the skills listed above can become a great leader. I would love to hear your thoughts on what has made up great leaders you have worked with or what you have done that has created leadership in your team.

As a creative director, I have had tons of interactive portfolios come across my screen over the years and I see the same problem over and over again. Designers who think that technology is an idea. Unfortunately, most of this work has been produced in Macromedia Flash and that technology has taken a huge amount of criticism over the years. I believe that pointing to Flash as the reason for ineffective user experiences and online advertising makes about as much sense as blaming the paper for creating junk mail or the telephone for creating the solicitors who call during dinner. The fault should fall to the designers who have not taken the time to use a creative strategy as the basis of their work.

A good on-line creative strategy should define the values and brand attributes that need to be communicated to the consumer in a distinctive and compelling way that takes advantage of the medium.  I use answers to the following list of questions as a starting point when I meet with a new client or start on a new project.

What are we advertising and why?

When you meet with your client about a new project, get a thorough understanding of the focus of the communications efforts such as the brand, a specific product or service, a promotion or new news. Make sure you understand their reasons for wanting to be on-line.  Often the rationale clients provide are expressed as marketing objectives, not as communications objectives. Communications change the way people think and influence their behaviors.  That is the difference between a marketing objective and a communications objective.  What is it they are trying to achieve?  Increase market share? Drive awareness? Increases frequency or penetration?  Increase sales? Focus on uncovering the single most important obstacle the communications must overcome.

What is the brands communication past?

Get a clear understanding of where the brand has come from and where it is now is critical to determining where the brand needs to go. Look at the brands past advertising to gain a solid understanding of the it’s positioning, personality, and focus.  Research if the target of the brand’s activities has shifted and why.  What are the reasons for this change?

What do we need to do?

It is a simple as it sounds.  What are the deliverables that need to be created to fulfill the clients marketing and communications needs?

Who are we talking to? (Demographics)

What are the physical characteristics of your clients market?  Your client should be able to provide you with some statistics that provide a snapshot of the consumer you will target with the creative work.  Common demographics include: age, gender, religion, income level, education, and family composition.

Who are we talking to? (Psychographics)

What are the mental characteristics of your clients market? Your client should again be able to provide you with some information that provides a snapshot of the consumer’s mindset regarding their personal values, their beliefs, their habits and their activities. Psychographics is often more powerful influences upon how a consumer views your client’s category, brand or product as attributes often affect behavior, and attitudes typically cross age groups.  Take time to know your consumer so your creative will be more impactful.

What is the personality and tone?

A brand’s personality should be a reflection it’s behavior, character, and manner. This personality should drive the style and tone of all our communications in writing, photos/illustrations, typography and style.

What is the selling idea?

The selling idea is a way of saying the most persuasive thing you can say to get consumers to alter their behavior towards a client’s category, brand or product. The selling idea should be the starting point for the development any compelling, original, and successful creative ideas. The selling idea can be about: ways of using the product, disadvantages of not using the product, satisfying needs (physical, social, psychological, new ways), product heritage / where or how it was made or generic benefit you want to own.

What do we want the consumer to do?

With any advertising you want to be able to evoke and emotion or action. What is the emotion you want them to have? How should they feel about the brand? What do you want them to do?

This list is just a starting point. To create a great strategy you have to be able to distil and refine the answers to get the insights and core brand attributes. The more accurate and concise you can become the better your ideas will be. I also recommend if possible to share your answers and thinking with a team of your peers or co-workers because the more people thinking about a project, the more new ideas can be generated.

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Over the years, the number one question I get from pretty much everyone is ‘Whats the secret to your success?”. My answer is short, sweet and always the same – “Have great ideas and work your ass off”. I then watch the hopeful, bright-eyed enthusiasm melt off their face as they realize that the secret they are seeking seems to be the two things they apparently want to avoid – time and hard work. The reality is that to be successful takes a lot of time, a lot of hard work and there is just no getting around it. You are going to have to evolve from a Designer or Copywriter to an Associate Creative Director to a Creative Director and on and on. Each of those stages will require you to learn new skills and continually evolve. Here are the two key insights I have learned that have helped me turn all that hard work in success.

APPLICATIONS ARE JUST TOOLS. NOT A CAREER PATH.
One of the most common career mistakes I see are creatives who think that by pouring all their efforts into learning how to use applications will make them successful. Don’t misunderstand me, knowing applications are critical parts of any career but those applications are nothing more than an electronic pencil. Just like a pencil if you don’t have any ideas to draw, write or communicate then even the best tool is useless. You need to learn applications to the point where you no longer have to think about how to create your ideas and are just able to let your creativity flow. But it’s that focus on learning applications so they are tools to express your ideas that are critical because if you only focus on your ability to use the tools, then you will hit a ceiling as agencies and businesses value the ability to create ideas over the ability to just create executions.

COLLEGE IS A GOOD CHOICE.
It is true that college is not for everyone, although there will obviously be some careers that will require a long stint in college – you won’t be able to get any vet jobs without a long stint in college, as an example. Regardless of what you want to do in the world, if you have the capacity to further your studies then it is important that you go out and learn new skills. For example, if you are interested in becoming a counsellor or scientist of the mind then you would aim to look for the best psychology colleges in PA, CA, or, any other region so that could develop skills as well as improving your qualifications. Although this is a lot of hard work it will be worth it in the long run.

OPPORTUNITIES WON’T CALL AHEAD
As I put together this article I wanted to pass on tangible advice but I will admit that there is also an element of luck in being successful. It happens when you get one of those rare and magical moments where everything you need lines up and the universe gives you an amazing opportunity. The problem is that most people are completely unprepared to act on those opportunities and they either don’t have the skills, knowledge or insight they need to take advantage of them. I have found that to be successful you have to be willing to work constantly and prepare for these future opportunities even when you don’t know when or if they are going to arrive. It is a hard thing to do because it requires a lot of discipline,self-motivation and belief that the work will pay off at some unknown point in the future. I have always tried to approach my career as it is a blue-collar profession working to evolve the skills I think are strong and working to learn and improve the skills I think are weak. For me, it has paid off because when those rare moments came around, I have been ready to take advantage of them which has made all the difference.

I’ve always focused on making the foundation of my career the ability to deliver great ideas over the ability to just hit a deadline, know a new technology or use an application. I think this has worked because those applications, technologies, design aesthetics and even the needs of society have changed but the need for great ideas will never change. Here are the three key insights I have learned that have helped those ideas get stronger and work better within a team.

DEVELOP YOUR PALETTE
In my article ‘Jiro dreams of sushi. You need to dream of design‘ I wrote about master sushi chef Jiro Ono who teaches his chefs that to be a great chef you need to have tasted great food so you can develop your palette to know when you cook great food. It’s a critical concept as a creative as well because to be successful you have to be in a constant two-part cycle of experiencing the best of your chosen creative profession and then using that knowledge as a measuring stick to judge your work. This means that to be a great designer you have to constantly experience great design or to be a great writer you have to constantly read great copy and then you use that taste level and insights to drive your work forward. You also have to understand that this cycle consumption to developing your palette never stops no matter how long you have been in the industry. It has to constantly evolve to keep up with changes in society, psychology, technology, creativity and design. I have seen many great creatives who think that they know it all or that they don’t need to keep up this constant evolution, and they are the ones who quickly find their work becoming increasingly less effective until their career fades away.

EXTERNALIZE YOUR CREATIVITY
I have always coached my teams on the importance of being able to externalize and share your creative process with the rest of the team which is a concept that runs counter to what is often encouraged by a lot of companies where individual achievement and ownership is valued over the work of the team. I think it’s important to not only share your process and ideas with the team but to develop a culture where the team will constantly try to pressure test and find weak spots in those ideas to make them stronger. It’s something that requires strong leadership to work so that everyone doesn’t feel like that is being attacked or their ideas are being put down but instead allows everyone to contribute and take ownership in creating the best ideas. I have seen this concept work as the core of a lot of groups at companies like Apple and Google where they are relentless in seeking out the best ideas by sharing their work, knowing it can always be better and using that process to continue to refine it until it is something great.

BE ETERNALLY DISSATISFIED
Also in my article ‘Jiro dreams of sushi. You need to dream of design‘ is another theme where Jiro talks is his lifelong dedication to sushi and his constant work to improve all aspects of his craft. This is a trait that I’ve come to embrace over the course of my career and it’s a trait that I see shared by every great creative mind I’ve ever known. I think it’s a byproduct of the fact that they constantly work to develop their palette and they constantly want to make everything they do better. I’ve come to embrace the fact that there is no time when the design is completely out of my mind because I am constantly looking for new inspiration, tormented by the flaws in my old work and looking for that next great idea. When a project is finished I allow myself 15 minutes to enjoy the work that was done and then I am on to next project. I have little use for nostalgia because when I look back I see only see the mistakes and things that could have been done better. Nostalgia is for people who’s best days are behind them and for people who look to the past for answers. That eternal dissatisfaction can be a strong motivating force to keep your work moving forward but it is also something that needs to be kept in perspective because if it gets out of balance you can become a naysayer who lets that dissatisfaction take over their process and let it blind them to new ideas.

I have found my biggest career challenge has been getting a clear understanding of who I am as a designer, understanding my unique creative process and then learning to summon my creativity on demand. I took years to write my “design ethos” which define my guiding design and leadership principles I wanted my group and myself to always aspire to. They are meant to be simple statements but I wanted that simplicity to be deceiving as each is purposely challenging and aspirational. Coming to understand those things is an incredibly personal process so there is no book, conference or class that is going to be able to teach you more than some common themes and starting points you can build on. Here are the three key insights I have found as I have worked through the process of getting to know who I am and how I have great ideas.

UNDERSTAND YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS
The process of having a great idea is different for everyone because we all approach problems differently. I have found success by centering my creative process around divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking happens when you can work quickly to create a lot of different ideas through writing, sketching or even done in Photoshop (but I don’t recommend it). You then keep building on your ideas, to push yourself into new thinking, to work through a lot of different ideas and to embrace the fact that not all of those ideas are going to be great. Those bad ideas can be just as valuable as the good ones because the failures may uncover new lines of thinking or highlight possible weaknesses in your concept. Once you have generated all those ideas it’s important to use convergent thinking to take them all and curate the best parts into fewer condensed ideas. You can then go through the process of divergent and convergent thinking, again and again, to focus, refine or strengthen your ideas into something great. I have found that the most highly creative people are the ones who really understand their creative process and are really good at getting their brains to flip quickly between divergent and convergent thinking so they can quickly generate strong ideas. But the most critical part of the entire process is that you take the time to be self-aware and understand the process you went through when you had a great idea and what you did when your ideas weren’t so great so you can replicate it or avoid it in the future.

BE SELF AWARE
Self-awareness plays a critical role in your success first for your ability to know how to have ideas and second as you become a leader so you can understand how your actions affect your team so you can tailor them to become more effective.

Every person has a completely different way they create ideas because creativity comes out of your personal life experiences, opinions, emotions, strengths, weaknesses and personal emotional baggage that you have accumulated over your lifetime. All of those variables come together to create your point of view and it drives what happens in your brain when you sit down with a blank piece of paper to start to work through a problem. As a creative director I think it is my job to work with my team to get them to start to become aware of all of those variables so they can start to pay attention to exactly what happens when they have a great idea but also what happens when they get to a place where the ideas just aren’t coming. It is this self-awareness that is the mental foundation of every great creative mind I have ever known. It gives you the ability to start to understand how to have ideas, to understand what do you need to do mentally to let those ideas happen and then start to work on how you can make it happen faster and with great regularity. I’ve found books like Making Ideas Happen, The Accidental Creative and Die Empty are great books that can help you with this process.

Self-awareness is also critical as your leadership role grows because I have seen lots of incredibly talented creatives who have great leadership potential who self-sabotage opportunities because of the way they express their views, treat other people, or even handle their ego completely undermine their authority. During an interview process, such personality traits can undermine your chances of selection. For someone who’s in the initial stages of an interview process, demonstrating your leading and onboarding plan that aligns with the vision of the company can impress your recruiters. To be an effective creative director, you must have the self-awareness to understand when you need to drive your vision for a project versus when you need to support and nurture the visions of the rest of the team. The best leaders I have known can keep these things in balance so they are seen by their team and clients as leaders with great ideas but they are also seen as someone who lets their team shine and grow. This process means that you need to develop the confidence and self-awareness to let those other voices be a larger part of the conversation because no one who is creative wants to work for a dictator who just wants you to do nothing more than execute on their ideas with no input from the team.

INSPIRE YOURSELF
As you go through your career you will become more accomplished and gain more experience but you will notice a change taking place. Early in your career you will be inspired by other people and use them as a guidepost to push yourself forward but as you gain more experience you will find that the problems become harder, the solutions to ideas and leadership will be more personal and that you will be less motivated by the people that used to inspire you. To continue to evolve as a thinker, designer, writer and leader you have to develop the ability to inspire yourself, stay grounded, motivated and moving forward to be successful at all of those challenges. I inspire myself through talking to some of the world’s greatest chefs like Ferran Adria (Insights on creativity from Ferran Adria, the world’s greatest chef.) and Heston Blumenthal (Why you need to develop short-term memory loss) or doing experiments on my friends to better understand the psychology behind why people use social media (The Inverse Facebook Experiment). You have to stop looking to other for answers and understand that companies want people who can bring value and original thinking to their roles and not just copy what other people are doing. To be able to find real inspiration means that you will have to invest in understanding your creative process as I talked about before because if you don’t understand how to have great ideas, then you will never really understand how to feed your brain with new thinking to inspire new ones.

There are few lines that are more difficult to walk than knowing how, when and where to correctly promote yourself, your abilities and achievements. People who confidently make their achievements known are often seen as more competent, yet we also live in a culture of modesty so if you do it badly you can be seen as an egotistical loner who puts themselves ahead of the team. Here are the three key insights I have learned on how to walk that line, prepare for the future and build your brand.

BECOME A BRAND
I have found the biggest reason why people are unable to get their dream job is that they have no idea who they are and what makes them different from everyone else. Their resume and portfolio are filled with generic business-speak and overused cliché phrases that look impressive to fill up a page but ultimately say nothing about them. To solve this problem you have to be able to take a step back, treat yourself as a client and think about yourself as a brand by defining your core values, brand voice, image, differentiators, etc. You have to be able to do this not only for your resume or portfolio but so can you can stand out in an interview or even at your current job by having the ability to articulate and build on your unique strengths and differentiators. My article ‘How to write a resume that will get your noticed‘ goes into a lot more detail about different exercises you can use to define your personal brand to help you stand out from the crowd. This works takes a lot of personal introspection and treating yourself like one of your clients but it leads to a place where you will be able to understand how you are different, what your strengths are, how those lead to your achievements and why they make you a unique talent any company would want to work with.

INVEST IN YOUR RESUME, PORTFOLIO AND NETWORK LIKE ITS A JOB
Once you have defined your brand values then you need to invest in your image, content and messaging through things like your resume, portfolio, social media channels and networking because this is another case where opportunities both good and bad won’t call ahead. Many people are surprised to hear that I have been laid off from 2 of my last 3 jobs and it happened because of sudden changes in leadership or business strategy that I could do nothing about. If you just read that line and thought to yourself that you are good at your job so you are safe then you are nieve. I got laid off from my last job right after I designed an app that was featured in 3 Apple keynotes, 4 Apple TV commercials, and generated tens if not hundreds of millions in free press but that wasn’t enough for me to keep my job. If you are working on your portfolio then you need to read my article ‘A Creative Director’s 5 biggest portfolio warning signs‘ which lays out the five most common mistakes and warning signs I see in creatives portfolios and how to avoid them. I have also found that your professional network is an overlooked necessity because the best jobs will never be listed on LinkedIn since those candidates are found based on referrals, reputation, and notable work. The best way to build that network is to connect with people in real life but LinkedIn can also be an incredible tool. In the end, I have learned to never forget that my career carries on at the whim of businesses where loyalty and hard work can mean far less than they should so you never can never stop working to build your brand through your resume, portfolio, social media and network.

KNOW WHEN TO BE AN INDIVIDUAL VS. PART OF THE TEAM
Building your personal brand is important to your success but you have to balance it with the fact that no great idea will ever be possible without the collaboration and support of a team. I have worked with too many creatives who think their brand is the only thing that matters and their ego is so out of control that they are only concerned about themselves and what they can put in their portfolio. Those people weaken the team, the ideas it creates and they never last for very long. To become a leader or even to become a great creative you need to understand how to work with people, how to inspire them, build up their skills and make every project better for your involvement. Your reputation and leadership skills will become more important than your portfolio as you go through your career because the more senior positions you take the more those skills will be what you will be judged on. If you are unwilling to invest in your leadership skills or control your ego to put others needs before your own then even the best portfolio won’t lead to a great career because you will just be a great designer no one respects, wants to work with or work for. My article ‘Creative is all about R-E-S-P-E-C-T‘ goes into more detail about the role of respect in creativity and why it is so important.

This business is filled with people who say they know how to lead creative teams but the reality is that most are merely managers that do nothing more than hand out deadlines and have no idea how to inspire a team or develop new leaders. Being able to lead a team of creative minds takes a completely different set of skills than those you will need to be a great designer, writer or thinker. Being a leader is about developing skills in psychology, empathy, and confidence that you can use to guide your teams. Just like your creative process, everyone’s leadership style is different and it takes self-reflection to understand how you can be the most effective. Here are the three key insights I have learned that have helped me evolve as a leader who can inspire teams to create great ideas and grow future leaders.

BE A LEADER NOT A MANAGER
I have found people who are in charge of teams can be grouped into two general types – leaders and managers. Managers do just what the name implies by managing their projects and focusing on individual deliverables. They hold weekly status meetings where the team slowly and painfully goes around the room reporting in on the progress of the workload. This may be great for employees who do repetitive and mindless tasks but anyone creative it is a slow, uninspired death where you increasingly feel like your career is going nowhere. Then there are leaders who are people who are sources of creativity, inspiration, leadership and make everything they are a part of better. What are they doing differently and how did they evolve to from being a manager into being a leader? My article ‘Are you a Leader or Manager?’ takes a look at six comparisons between the traits of leaders and managers to illustrate their difference and help you understand how to gain more traits of a leader. It has been the most popular article I’ve ever written and has been the basis for some of my best-reviewed talks which only proves to me that there is a serious leadership vacuum on creative teams so companies need to take this problem much more seriously if they want to retain their best talent and grow their business.environments.

SELL YOUR IDEAS
Throughout my career, I have consistently been given high praise for being really good at selling creative and it didn’t happen by accident. Early on I realized that my design skills were only going to take me so far if I wasn’t able to sell my work. The problem was that I left college terrified to talk in front of even a small group of people and hadn’t developed any tools I needed to sell my ideas. I needed to get over my fear, understand how to sell and the psychology behind all of it all. I started to hanging around with people who sell to high-end clients for a living like venture capitalists, sports agents, and PR agents to study their techniques. From there I’ve spent the past 15 years studying and learning the craft of presenting and selling so that I have been able to get innovative new ideas through the corporate red tape and have been able to give keynotes in front of thousands of people alongside presenters like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. It is a critical skill to be able to position your group for success with clients and getting your best work to see the light of day. I put everything I learned into a 3-part series of articles called ‘Presenting Creative 101‘ is one of the most popular articles I have ever written and captured everything I have learned in my career about how to sell you ideas.

BUT BE PREPARED THAT NOT EVERYONE LOVES A LEADER
As I said before, to become a creative director or a leader means developing a whole new set of skills beyond the ones of just being someone who can create ideas. For me, that has been a 20+ year journey riddled with ups, downs, insights and hard realizations that were all necessary to help me get to where I wanted to go. One of the biggest realizations that came to me out of that process is that not everyone loves a leader. It is a hard thing to accept because so much of what we read and see leads us to believe that if you stand up, try to do something new and try to lead a team that we will be celebrated for your effort. It’s not all gloom and doom by any means as there are times when you will find that happy ending for stepping up into a leadership role but it isn’t always the case for some reasons. I don’t see people talking about this problem or coaching their teams on it and as a result, a lot of great potential leaders get discouraged and shrink back to smaller roles because it wasn’t what they thought it was going to be. My article ‘Not everyone loves a leader‘ talks about some of the challenges I have found and some of the ways I have been able to overcome them trying to take a strong leadership position at both agencies and client-side companies. If you’re dreaming big and hope to be in charge of your own company then you should try to ensure you are respecting your employees and this should ensure that they end up resultantly ‘loving the leader’. A happy workspace is a successful workspace. Looking at this PTO guide may guide you on what benefits you can give your employees in order for them to stay happy and continue to want to work hard for your business.

I firmly believe that being successful is a choice and all of this comes down to one simple question – are willing to put in the seemingly endless time, studying, researching, working and self-reflection needed to become successful? And not just do it for a week or a month or even a year but do it over the course of your entire career. I have worked with TONS of incredibly creative people who have amazing talents, who have brilliant ideas, talk about their huge aspirations and end up with careers that show great promise but ultimately find little success because they aren’t willing to do ALL the things you need to do to be successful. You have to make your future happen by choosing to work hard, knowing who you are, knowing when to take a risk, being eternally dissatisfied and even a little crazy. Because as someone smarter than me once said the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world (or themselves) are the ones who do.

Short term memory loss in the ivory tower

I think the first part of the problem is a matter of perspective and being able to look at a project with fresh eyes. When a team starts working on a project they forget that when it is released what the customer experiences is completely blind to the logic, compromises and excuses that have been built up on the by the internal team over the course of the project. The consumer doesn’t know or care about why something was de-scoped to an awkward solution or that you will fix a problem when you get around to version 2.0. You have to have the ability to develop short-term memory loss and be able to see the work with fresh eyes or else those problems will be glossed over by the meaningless internal reasoning for why it is OK that it isn’t right. You have to look at it from the customer’s point of view because that is the only true reality and that will determine the success or failure of the a project.

I think this happens the most inside of a corporate structure because you live with the brands, their problems, their work and their excuses so you become desensitized to them. The symptoms of this problem are usually expressed through things like eye rolling and under the breath jokes in meetings when you try to propose a solution to fix long-standing problems that are ensnared with internal politics and problems. It is a hard place to be in when you have to be the person who needs to stand up against the apathy and frustration that lives around these issues and try to effect change.

You constantly have to work to keep a fresh view of what the outside world is seeing. I try to start with small problems that can really be solved to get momentum and then try to work up to the larger ones building on the smaller successes.

New creatives don’t lead to new ideas.

I wrote the previous section knowing full well that even if you develop the ability to rise above the internal excuses and blindness you still have to overcome a massive problem. Let’s look at the problem by creating a comparison between a website that is produced by an agency and one produced by an internal creative team. What is the difference in the process and structure between the two where you generally see the more cutting edge and powerful solutions out of the agency than what you see out of internal creative teams? The divergence isn’t in the process of how the work is created but in how it gets feedback, gets approved and the hierarchy has to travel through. At an agency the creatives are in a structure that puts them at the center of the universe and empowers them to be leaders and the voice in guiding the vision with supporting teams to help delivery of their vision. In a typical corporate hierarchy creatives aren’t the center of the universe and they have they aren’t empowered to be able to influence the final deliverable because their work has to go through a decentralized corporate approval system. This breaks the idea into multiple directions by multiple stakeholders who dilutes it into smaller and safer ideas a large group can take credit for and will satisfy the internal approval audience. This is a crime because the internal creative teams have the best view into the problems that need to be solved for the company and can bring solutions to market faster than those created by an external agency who aren’t as familiar with all the nuances.

If you ask any company they will always say how they want to be like Apple or BMW and produce these breakthrough ideas and designs but they don’t understand that better designs and ideas aren’t going to come from hiring better designers. They come from a fundamental structural shift where the people with the best ideas are given the most power and ability to execute on these ideas without having to put them through a system that robs them of their power. Hopefully, more and more people will come to understand this problem so more good ideas see the light of day.

Deadlines make you a commodity. Ideas make you essential.

The last big problem I have found between client side and agency creativity is that most internal groups have no idea how to position themselves in their company to be seen as essential to creativity and innovation. Agencies don’t have this problem because they build themselves to be seen as innovators and have spent huge amounts of time refining their pitch to sell this image into any organization they work with. I’ve found that most client side creative teams do not have the same image or presentation and instead value their ability to hit deadlines which are a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, it is certainly an essential skill but it is also one that makes the team a commodity because the ability to hit deadlines is something you can find on a million other teams so it isn’t something that is going to differentiate, elevate or empower the team. I have found success by simply focusing and showing the company that you are a team that focuses creating ideas instead of hitting deadlines. I do this because ideas have power, ideas change things and great ideas can generate a lot of revenue. If you are able to show your company that you are able to do this then you show them how you are an essential part of their business that can separate them from the competition, get them press and most importantly make them more money.

Final thought.

Over the years, I have found pro’s and con’s being on and agency side and being on the in-house side of creativity. To be successful, you need to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of your current situation to be successful. You also have to take the time to understand how you need to position your group inside of your organization to be successful and I see leaders struggle with this problem no matter where they are.

It is just that the client side often makes it more difficult to due to more of a structure that has more silos, more politics and more challenges to find ways to get great ideas to be at the center of their thinking. But the rewards can be so much more satisfying since client side gives you the opportunity to really invest in a brand, their products, and their problems. If you can solve the problems then it I something that lead to amazing work.

Developing your palette

Sitting at a table in his restaurant, Jiro talks about his philosophy that to be a great chef you need to have tasted great food so you can develop your palette to know when you cook great food. This concept of ‘developing your palette’ is something I have been trying to express to designers for years and this is a better way of doing it than anything I ever had. It is such a critical concept because to be successful there has to be a constant two-part cycle of experiencing the best of your chosen creative profession and then using that knowledge as a measuring stick to judge your work. This means that to be a great designer you have to constantly experience great design or to be a great writer you have to constantly read great copy and then you use those experiences and insights to drive your work forward.

I have found the ability to develop your palette is an essential skill that goes constantly overlooked because people think that their talent alone is enough to create great ideas or designs. I think that would be true if we were just creating art for art’s sake but since we are creative designs and experiences that are going to be used by other people we need to start with a constantly evolving context of what else those people are experiencing.  It gives you a measuring stick and insights into what works and what doesn’t. It gives your palette context. You can then use your palette to know when you have created an idea that stands out from the crowd.

But you also have to understand that this cycle consumption and developing your palette never stops no matter how long you have been in the industry. It has to continue because your palette has to be constantly evolving to keep up with changes in society, psychology, technology and design. I have seen many great creatives who think that they know it all or that they don’t need to keep up this constant evolution are the ones who quickly find their work and their careers in the dumpster.

Dedication and eternal dissatisfaction

The other theme that Jiro talks about throughout the film is his lifelong dedication to sushi and his constant work to improve all aspects of his craft. This is a trait that I’ve come to embrace over the course of my career and it’s a trait that I see shared by ever great creative mind I have ever known. I think it’s a byproduct of the fact that they constantly work to develop their palette and that palette is constantly evolving so it never lets them find any peace with their work. They constantly want to make everything they do better. There is always some aspect of their chosen creative professional in their mind, drawing inspiration and storing it away for later.

To that end, over the years, I’ve come to embrace the fact that for me there is no off switch. There is no time when a design is completely out of my mind because I am constantly looking for new inspiration, constantly tormented by the flaws in my old work and constantly looking for that next great idea. When a project is finished I allow myself 15 minutes to enjoy the work that was done and then I am on to next project. I have little use for nostalgia because when I look back I see only see the mistakes and things that could have been done better. Nostalgia is for people who’s best days are behind them and for people who look to the past for answers. I’ll be damned if I let that happen just yet.

The reason why I think these two things are such key ingredients to becoming successful is that as you move from designer to creative director your job is only going to get harder – a lot harder. More is expected of you, your ideas, your management skills, and your leadership style. You are no longer just responsible for a set deliverables and are instead asked to become a conduit for inspiration, creativity, leadership and company profit. You have to have a way to keep yourself grounded, motivated and moving forward to be successful at all of those challenges.

So if you are looking for a good documentary do yourself a favor and check out Jiro Dreams of Sushi. If you are looking for how to become a great creative thinker and leader look below the surface to see what has made hm such a success and how you can use it in your career.

The only problem is that if you have been working as a creative professional for any period of time you know that these ‘light bulb’ moments only happen in the movies. Ideas are born out of the power of a team bringing together different viewpoints to work on one problem, they are born out taking the time to understand your creative process to make connections no one else sees and they are born out of working through the obvious answers to find something new and unique. The creative process can often be exhausting and, sometimes, good ideas never come. When looking for that next big idea, some people have actually used CBD pre rolls, and other products similar, to help them increase their mood and creativity. This allows them to increase their chances of coming up with a good idea. Perhaps that could help some people who may be struggling for inspiration.

Lately, I have seen a trend in a lot of designers I interview where they want their entire creative process to be based on the instant gratification of those ‘light bulb’ moment. Maybe it is a result of the new millennial mindset but none of them seem to understand or want to hear that this approach is a trap that will stagnate your creativity and your career. I’ve spent years working to get to know and sharpen my creative process, working to be able to summon my creativity at will and coming to understand that being creative takes a work ethic and approach that makes it a blue collar profession.

I have found that through working with my team, speaking with other creative leaders and speaking at design conferences, there are two areas that come into play when it comes to being a great creative who can solve real problems.

Every creative process is different

When I speak at design conferences the questions I’m always asked is ‘what is the secret to coming up with great ideas?’. My answer is always the same and always disappoints the crowd – there is no secret and there are no magic bullets to creativity. The fact that I even get asked this question shows just how little people understand what goes into creativity and how little time they have spent trying to understand it. Here again, they are looking for the instant gratification of an easy answer that will solve everything.

The reality is that getting to know and understand your creative process is work because everyone single person has a completely different creative process. This happens because creativity comes out of your personal life experiences, opinions, emotions, strengths, weaknesses and personal emotional baggage that you have accumulated over your lifetime. All of that variable come together to create your point of view and it drives what happens in your brain when you sit down with a blank piece of paper to start to work through a problem.

As a creative director I feel that it is my job to work with my team to get them to start to be aware of all of those variables so they can start to pay attention to what exactly happens when they have a great idea but also what happens when they get to a place where the ideas just aren’t coming. It is this self-awareness that is the mental foundation of every great creative mind I have ever known. It gives you the ability to start to understand how to have ideas, to understand what do you need to do mentally to let those ideas happen and then start to work on how you can make it happen faster and with great regularity.

Some people have this self-awareness come naturally but I have found that the majority do not. This means that you have to hone your craft with what is the definition of blue collar work – the investment of a lot of time, repetition and a relentless work ethic to hone your craft.

Divergent and convergent creativity

Once I have started to work with a designer so they can start to be more self-aware about their creative process then the next thing I work with them on is to understand the critical need to be able to do divergent and convergent thinking in their creative process.

Divergent thinking means that you can work quickly to create a lot of different ideas. In my group we do through a process called ‘riffing.’ I took the term from someone my musician friends I saw would regularly sit with their instrument and quickly experiment with a lot of different musical directions based on a central chord or harmony. I took this into the design world where I want designers to quickly put out a lot of different designs around a problem. Depending on the talents of the designer and their creative process it can be done through sketching, wireframing or even done in Photoshop. One of the tricks I use with younger designers is to start the riffing process as sketches but I give them a very thick Sharpie marker because when you are drawing it forces you to keep to bigger picture ideas since you physically can’t draw small details. I am very clear that I do not want them to take one idea and do a lot of minor variations and a theme because that isn’t going to help the final design and it isn’t going to help them get a better understanding of how they can improve their creative process.

Once we go through that riffing process then it becomes important to understand convergent thinking where you can take all of those ideas or all of the riffs and combine and extract the best parts into a great result. The focus of the riffing process is to keep constantly building on your ideas, to push yourself into new thinking, to work through a lot of different ideas and to embrace the fact that not all of those ideas are going to be great. I think they can learn just as much from those failures as their success during this process. Part of the convergent phase is them to make sure that they are self-aware enough to understand what you did when you had a great idea and what you did when your ideas went bad. We then take the best ideas and go through the entire riffing process again to make those ideas stronger and more refined.

Final Thought

I have found that the most highly creative people are the ones who are very good at getting their brains into a bilateral mode of divergent and convergent thinking and the more creative they the more they can do it at the same time to dual-activate the process. But that takes a lot of work and a lot of blue collar like dedication to the art and science of ideation. I think that creative directors need to understand that they are only going to get better work out of their teams if they invest the time to understand their process, put concepts in place like ‘riffing’ which will help them grow their creativity and stop taking the lazy route of hiring a stream of new designers thinking that will fix the problem. No one teaches a class on how to be a great thinker and it is about time that we all understand that they never will. The problem is personal so the solution has to be personal. It is up to all of us to own our creative process and own the daily and never-ending work it is going to take to make your ideas go from good to great.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

On the one hand, the audience is getting useful information, but on the other hand, that information was generating a lot of questions as they tried to figure out the best way to apply it to their jobs and companies. I knew I had to rethink this conference format after one of my session at Adobe MAX last year when I stood in that hallway answering questions for nearly 2 hours.

I am excited to announce that I am going to pilot this new approach to my talks at HOW Design Live in Boston on Tuesday, May 1st with a two part format.

The first part will be a traditional 45-minute talk at 11:15 am on May 1st called ‘In-house powerhouse: Creating empowered in-house creative teams’ which will share everything I know about the challenges, insights, and strategies I have found to be successful for in-house design teams.

After that session, we are going to do something different where I am giving the control of the next 30 minutes completely over the audience for an ‘In-house Design Therapy Session.’ You can submit the questions you want to be answered and then everyone can vote on them to see which ones will be answered in the session. This new format makes sure that I will answer all the questions that people want to know about and make sure that they are walking away and making the biggest impact they can on their team and company.

I got things started with some of the questions I get asked most often but submit and vote on the questions you need answered for all things in-house design here – https://sdgates.canny.io/how-design-live

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You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Sticker, TuneIn and all other major podcast platforms.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.