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’m very happy – actually, “thrilled” is more appropriate – that Joe Biden is our new president. I wanted Bernie Sanders, but I understood he might not be acceptable to enough U.S. voters. It was Bernie who nudged me into thinking about these larger issues that affect us all. Bernie who gave me the courage…
Note: Yesterday (8/20/20) at the suggestion of Larry Coffman, editor of Marketing NW I sent the following to Seattle’s Mayor and each member of Seattle’s City Council. Goal: We must get the 12,000 or more homeless people off the streets and into housing. We must do this now. We must do this to make the…
“We’re out of masks.” “We’re out of hand sanitizer.” “We’re almost out of aspirin.” “Generic and brand?” “Yep.” Tommy remembered it well. The conversation happened just as he was walking into the Tell’s executive conference room. He was about to present the plan assembled by the Overture team to the Tell’s board and senior executives.…
Billionaires. Got the money, wanna keep it. Tommy left his seat and began walking up the aisle as the train slowed. Living in a police state. Amazing how quickly things changed. Stock market continuously going up. Unemployment shrinking to almost nothing. And yet, 40% of us living below the poverty line, real wages shrinking, thousands…
“Why are we at war all the time? Has it always been like this?” Brie was on the line with Elizabeth, Purple Morn’s resident historian. “Not always, Brie,” she said with a sigh. “There’s now strong evidence that we sapiens lived without war for something like 3,000 years in the Fertile Crescent, just before ag…
Brie’s dreams all played to her fears. Only partially awake, Brie could feel the fear. Taste it, actually. That metallic taste. “I’m doing the right thing.” And again: “I’m doing… I mean, we’re doing the right thing.” Brie facing it now. Knowing the fear. Thinking through the risk. “We’re living in a time where we…
The life as advertised. Happy shoppers surrounded by abundance. Abundance for the affluent few. “Remember magazines?” This from Tommy. They were in GM’s Detroit planning bunker, waiting for the AI engineering report on Project Bella. They knew it was going to be a long wait. “They were wonderful,” he said reverently. “I helped create a…
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