This has been a long time coming.
Blogging, that is.
I’m a visual thinker and a verbal processor, so blogging is a bit of a stretch for me. Not that I don’t enjoy writing, it does feel a bit daunting to finally capture all the different processes and approaches I have learned in my 10+ years of creative leadership.
My journey into creative leadership was a wonky one. I graduated with a degree in Marketing, discovered design early, and fell in love. I spent the next 7 years learning all I could, taking any available job so I could do the one thing I loved. To create. Before I knew it, I found myself leading a team of creatives, and was completely unprepared for what came next.
Along the way, I made a ton of mistakes and learned a lot. But one thing I always found tough was finding a place where I could find practical advice for how I should lead my team of creatives. I found myself struggling to connect with many of the articles I found, or oftentimes, I found them to be more fluff than actual substance.
To add to this, in most companies, being a creative leader can be a lonely and confusing existence. Most often you end up the only creative leader in the company and reporting directly to someone with zero creative background (though we all know former bosses would disagree mightily with that last part).
So, for many of us, the journey into creative leadership looks a bit like this: An eager, high-performing creative with no managerial experience gets promoted into a managerial role only to be led by someone with no experience for themselves in the new role you just received.
Not throwing shade at my past managers. Many of them have been wonderful leaders, teaching me a great deal about business strategy and navigating complex corporate environments. But, when it comes to creative operations, and developing the systems and processes that help creatives thrive, I’ve been on my own to figure that out.
Which leads us back to why this has been a long time coming.
The time feels right to try my best to give back to a community that has given me so much. Over the past decade, I have developed a creative leadership practice that I am truly proud of. One that not only helps to meet the needs of the businesses I have supported, but also creates an environment that allows creatives to thrive.
This feels more important than ever. Change is a constant in our work, but over the last few years, with the introduction of AI, that change feels supercharged. There is so much fear and uncertainty around what the new world of AI will actually look like, that I believe it’s more important than ever for us as creative leaders to lean into the human component of our work. That can’t be replaced.
My goal with this blog is to provide you with actionable and practical advice to help you build your creative leadership practice around. For you to balance the needs of the business with the needs of your team. To build a scalable and sustainable team where everyone is bought in on the mission and vision through empathy, consistency as well as co-created systems and processes.
My other goal is to also grow from this as well. As creatives, we know the value of input and feedback from our peers. So, it’s my hope that this could become a community where fellow creative leaders can weigh in on this conversation and challenge my assumptions (in the same direct and respectful way that we want our teams to provide feedback). Like I said, I’ve been doing a lot of this on my own. I’d love to hear what people think and grow together.
I hope you stick around for the journey. I promise it will be worth it.