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.
Mutual Mentors, Bellingham, 10 AM to Noon, Saturday, May 4, 2024 Recent issues from my advising practice… Whole creative groups of laid off by giant corporations. Dealing with difficult clients, bosses, and coworkers. Finding new business and growing existing clients. Responding to RFPs, dos and don’ts. Three have signed up so far. $25 to attend.…
Acting out as a fostered and adopted child was my norm. “The lights are out.” “Teddy! Wake up, wake up. The lights are out; we can go.” Larry was shaking me awake, eager to get going. I must have drifted off. Lights out meant parents were in bed and out of the picture on the…
Sometimes avoidance, is key to survival. Just like home. I’d arrived. Twenty-one and a newly hired design illustrator at Boeing. Newly married and fully escaped from my adoptive family. I was now part of a group supporting management’s effort to sell Boeing’s whole Turbine Division to another company. Our little creative group — seven of…
Mutual Mentors: Saturday, May 4, 10 to Noon One has signed up as of today, Wednesday, April 3rd. We’ll talk about: All the things that we deal with as professional creatives The upside and the downside of being addicted to the work. Collaboration with clients and teams. Negotiating fees, deliverables, and schedules. Building a community…
“If I fuck this up, my family will hate me forever,” was the thought. And with it the project stopped cold. “Ted, we’re terrified that this whole assignment is going to blow up in our face!” This from the owner of a London package design firm. (I’ve changed details in the story to protect those…
I was fostered at birth and adopted at five months by the Leonhardts. I meant to make him feel bad. And I’ve felt guilty about it ever since. I was twenty-one and walking as fast as possible out of our wedding reception in the parish hall where Judy and I had cut the cake and…
The world is messing with one of the greats. When bad things happen to creative organizations, I try to understand what happened and how to learn from it. So, what lessons can creatives learn from IDEO’s dramatic drop in revenue and massive layoffs? My take is that two primary things changed at IDEO. First, leadership changes…
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