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.
I interview Kevin Veatch, who has led a multifaceted creative life. Kevin Veatch is a creative who started his professional life as a fourth-grade teacher. An excellent beginning for a creative career that includes being a teacher, graphic designer, photographer, retailer, environmental designer, home and interior designer, electrician, songwriter, musician, and sound engineer. You can…
In order to negotiate better, freelancers need to learn to love the fear of asking for more. (It’s not bravery or some magical power that helped me become a better negotiator; it was raw fear.) Fear can make us unable to think, unable to move. I’ve been so gripped by fear that my feet felt…
This evening a grade school classmate of mine arranged a Zoom reunion call. Thirteen of the eighty-five of us who graduated from Maple School have signed up for the call. A good turnout considering our graduation was in 1958. We’re all in our seventies, and seventeen of us are dead. My first memory of those…
News flash. Fast Company asked me to write for them again. Thanks to Arianna O’Dell, who introduced me to a new editor there, I’ve been asked to write a piece on how to get a raise if you’re freelancing. Well over 30% of Americans are now considered freelancers, so it’s a near and dear subject…
Branding ins the Age of Cat Videos, the power of leveraging intimate connections, was presented to the Marketing Executive Roundtable on October 27, 2021. Let’s start with branding Branding is the process of building an emotional relationship between the consumer and a product, a service or an organization. Branding derives from recognizing needs and expectations.…
Awake. Suddenly awake. I remembered the noise I’d heard in the dream. I’d been running, running hard, and he’d been gaining. Awake now, soaked in sweat, I heard the noise again. Someone was in the apartment. I sat up and focused solely on listening. I heard it again. The moon was full, and I looked…
The city had changed. “We’ve only been gone a few weeks,” thought Brie as she watched the smoke rise from the homes burning above Shilshole. They’d heard about the rise of violence from others anchored around them in Gig Harbor. But it really didn’t sink in until they’d rounded West Point on their way to…
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