Essays on creative leadership,
culture, and the human side of work.
Becoming
These are personal essays about growing up as a fostered, then adopted child — and about what that does to a person over the course of a life and career. The passivity you develop to survive. The shame that shows up uninvited in elevators and conference rooms decades later. The moment you finally recognize the bully pattern, in a boss, in a father, in yourself.
The most-read piece opens with a meat cleaver. My wife, coming down the hall. Me, curled under the covers at thirty years old, having just been fired and not yet told her. It’s not a comfortable essay. But by the end, it explains — more directly than anything else I’ve written — why I understand what happens to people when they’re made to feel small at work, and why that understanding is the foundation of everything I do professionally.
These essays aren’t separate from my advisory work. They are the source of it.
Advisory Notes
These are essays about the emotional realities of creative professional life — the anxiety of leadership, the psychology of negotiation, the particular ways creative people get in their own way, and the particular ways organizations let them down.
One of the most-read pieces, “Why Creative Firms Break Differently,” argues that creative firms don’t fail from bad strategy — they unravel from the inside, through fatigue, misalignment, and a gradual loss of trust no one can quite name. That piece captures what all of these essays are reaching toward.
I write from four decades of experience inside creative firms, but I write the way I talk: directly, without jargon, with stories. Each piece includes one of my own illustrations. If you work in a creative firm and ever feel like the game is rigged against you, this series is for you.
Hold those dates and please join us… With Covid, negotiations have become completely virtual. Jessica and I have always recommended strongly for conducting negotiations in person whenever possible. But here we are in a Covid dominated world. So, we created our seminar – Negotiations for Creatives – to help all of us become better at getting what we need in spite…
Struggling with asking for what you need? Jessica Knapp and I created this seminar to answer the burning need… Negotiations for Creatives – January 11-15, 10-noon, and only $200 per attendee – has been structured to help creatives understand how to turn our natural discomfort asking for the money into a strength. A discomfort increased during Covid.…
Negotiation in the age of Covid-19 I could see that he was already flipping through a document when the Zoom window opened. Then he took off his glasses as if in deep thought. Must be my proposal, I thought. Shit. I could feel the perspiration beginning to form. I’d planned to walk him through my…
We’ve never experienced trauma like what we’re experiencing now. When you’re negotiating, and you’re in some level of panic, it can feel like it would be so easy to tell a little lie to advance your position, or to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation. Maybe your work has dried up. Or you’ve been let go and…
Yes, I’m creative. But I have to make a living, too. How? When I was running The Leonhardt Group and waxing fancifully about some new opportunity, our CFO Tracy Wald used to say, “show me the money.” That always jerked me back into the reality that we were a cash flow business. If the cash…
Hierarchical System We live in a hierarchical system, where we’ve been trained from birth to respect those who are in charge. To be deferential. To respect authority. To do as the authority tells us to do. To be afraid to not do as we’re told. Pleasurable work We love the work that we do. In…
Standing between you and the offer is a hard-driving recruiter who’ll decide whether you get to meet with the hiring manager. What now? As soon as Mike walked into the room, the recruiter opened with, “I can’t believe you’re 15 minutes late.” Then, in a louder voice: “Don’t you have any respect for the company, for…
New essays, every week.
With an illustration.
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Also available on Substack.
You never cease to amaze me with your willingness to make your life an open book — especially the more hurtful parts. And I'm amazed by the lessons you draw from all of it.
— Larry Coffman, PublisherYour writing has revealed some very intimate, powerful lessons. You are a source of inspiration both professionally and, increasingly, on a personal level.
— Rick GoreWe can discuss the ugly, uncomfortable truths while always circling back to what matters: the people, the underdogs, the work we get to do, and the magical existence we get to share as creatives.
— Sarah EskandarpourI loved your article about how clients' emotions affect briefs. It's a huge part of the creative industry and it's always good to see somebody so knowledgeable write about it.
— Vuk Bojovic, JKR Account Director, Singapore