Daily Creative with Todd Henry

In order to confront uncertainty every day, creative pros need to muster the ability to be clear even when they are not positive their idea is the right one. This requires bravery, because creative risk means the potential of failure.

How do we as pros, as leaders, and as organizations foster an environment within which bravery is likely to occur? In this recording from my STORY Conference talk, I share a few qualities that lead to creative courage and a few tactical things we can do to ensure we are positioned to act in the face of our doubts.

At the beginning of the episode, I also share some strategies for tackling your 2023 goals with more precision.

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On this episode, I answer several questions sent in by listeners.

Want to ask a question? If we use it I'll send you a Daily Creative t-shirt. Ask your questionHere's what we cover on today's episode:

How do teams better take into account the execution of an idea at the moment when that idea is being selected?

What principles from my books should teachers (or parents of children) focus on implementing with kids?

What year-end rituals do I recommend for prepping for a great new year?

Are generalists and specialists both valuable in the workplace?

What should you do when you're thinking about giving up on a project or idea?

How do you motivate people who aren't being paid for the work they do, but you still need to lead them?

A few resources mentioned in this episode:

My 2023 4 Questions guide

Emily Wapnick's talk on Multipotentialites

Range (book)

The Dip (book)

Austin Kleon's 100 Things post

Readwise

Also, my new book Daily Creative is available now.

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What does it take to lead talented, creative people effectively? This is an important question to all of us because either (a) we are in the position where we have to lead others every day and what they need from us is often a mystery, or (b) we are being led by someone and we really REALLY wish they understood us better.

As you may know, I wrote a book about this topic a few years ago called Herding Tigers. My ambition in writing that book was to be as direct and practical as I possibly could be about the realities of creative leadership. I dislike theory and I crave practical wisdom.

That’s why I invited today’s guest on the show - there are few people with more practical creative leadership experience than Adam Morgan. Adam is an Executive Creative Director at Adobe, with experience in creativity, strategy, and storytelling for 24 years. In 2020, AdWeek named him one of the “Creative 100”—the top inspiring creative minds in marketing, media, and culture—in the world. He’s the author of the book, “Sorry Spock, Emotion Drives Business,” that proves the value of creativity and design with hard science. He’s a keynote speaker at conferences and events on the topics of creative leadership and content creation. And the host of the podcast, Real Creative Leadership, that offers inspiration and guidance on the day-to-day job of being a creative leader.

In this episode, Adam and I have a free flowing conversation about the nature of leading teams in this present reality. 

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I was nine years old when my grandfather died. I still remember the funeral, not really understanding exactly what was happening, but knowing that I wasn’t going to get the chance ever again to throw football with, watch cartoons with, or make something cool with him ever again. Ever. That’s a tough concept for a nine year old to grasp.

After the funeral, we all filed to our cars for the procession to the cemetery. It seemed like we were barely creeping along, through our small town, around a corner, and up a hill to make our way out to the small country church where he was to be buried. As we turned the corner I saw – in the distance – some curious activity on the side of the road. It looked like a crowd had gathered to watch a parade, but it wasn’t a holiday. At the time it seemed like hundreds of people, though I now realize it was probably more like a few dozen. As we neared the crowd, my parents had difficulty containing their emotion. I noticed that many of the people gathered on the side of the road had removed their hats and were holding them over their heart. Others were simply standing at attention, paying one final tribute to my grandfather.

After we passed the crowd, I asked my father “Dad, who were those people?”

My father replied, “That was Pennington Bakery, son. Your Grandpa worked there every day for thirty years. He was the hardest worker I’ve ever known.”

My grandfather didn’t have a college education. When he graduated from high school in 1945 he immediately enlisted in the Navy and was sent to the Pacific. Upon returning he married my grandmother, and after a few other jobs, landed at the bakery. He wasn’t a formally trained electrician, yet according to my father he wired the entire bakery and did many things that would make engineers scratch their heads in wonder. (And probably things that he couldn’t get away with today!)

Everyone who knew him would testify that he set the bar for excellence. He demanded a lot of others, and of himself. He poured himself fully into whatever he was doing, whether that meant his job, his family, or as a volunteer coach of many sports teams over the course of his life. Even as he was ravaged with late-stage cancer, he never complained as he joyfully helped me complete a woodworking project and went about life as usual. His final concerns, as expressed to my father, were not about himself or the pain he was experiencing, but about ensuring that his many outstanding commitments to others would be covered. My grandfather’s grave marker is very simple, with no fancy epitaphs. If you’d have asked him what he wanted on his tombstone, he would have laughed at you.

His legacy wasn’t his work at the bakery, and wasn’t his service in the navy, or any of the other things he dedicated his life to.

His legacy was people.

My children never met my grandfather, yet in many ways they see him daily. I was deeply shaped and informed by his patience, his work ethic, and his entrepreneurial drive. They see him in me. I am part of his legacy.

Leadership and legacy are not just what you do, but also how you do it. It will be determined by a series of choices you make over your life about how to spend this moment – here, and now. The challenging thing is that each moment feels like a throwaway, because another one follows closely on its heels. How you choose to engage here and now speaks more to your character than whatever residual stuff you leave in your trail.

Rather than asking “what do I want on my tombstone?”, which is nothing but a cold, dead piece of stone, ask yourself “who will gather by the road just to catch a glimpse as my hearse passes by?” 

Who will you impact so deeply that they will continue your work even after you are gone?

Who will you...

Time is the currency of productivity. How we spend it is - in effect - how we spend our lives. But often we can allow time to simply slip through our fingers and find that no matter how hard we may work, it feels like we’re simply falling behind. It’s almost like we’re running on a treadmill that someone occasionally comes and moves slightly closer to our objectives, but we never seem to arrive.

Today’s show is all about leveraging time effectively. In the first part, I’m going to share why some common advice we hear is not entirely accurate.

In today’s interview, we have return guest and best-selling author Laura Vanderkam. Laura’s work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, City Journal, Fortune, and Fast Company. Her new book is called Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters, and it offers specific strategies for carving space for what’s most important. 

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Some of the most effective ideas are those that solve a problem you are personally experiencing. If you have a need, it’s likely others have the same need as well. But often, we gloss over those moments of insight because it seems too daunting to act, or maybe we assume that someone else is probably working on it anyway.

But, what if they’re not? What if your idea is truly an opportunity, if you’re willing to do something about it?

Today’s guest didn’t just let his idea sit on a shelf. Instead, he acted and founded a company that has now grown into a multi-billion dollar company. His name is Mike Evans, and on today’s show he shares how an unfortunate encounter with an armpit on a bus ride home from work turned into the motivation to found the company Grubhub.

Mike’s new book about his entrepreneurial journey is called Hangry, and is available now. 

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If you were to choose just one metric by which to measure your success, what would it be?

Revenue? Well, we all know that revenue can be a tricky KPI because it doesn’t say anything about profitability. If I make a million dollars while spending two million, it doesn’t really mean much.

Product shipped? Again, this doesn’t speak to the efficiency of my operation.

Today’s guest argues that for any organization, there’s only one metric that truly matters. It’s what he calls Idea Flow. His name is Jeremy Utley. As the Director of Executive Education at Stanford's renowned d.school, his courses have been experienced by nearly a million students of innovation worldwide. On today’s show, he shares why Idea Flow is the one thing you should be paying attention to in your organization. 

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The stats on the amount of information we encounter each day are staggering. And, the effects on adult humans are substantial. Researchers estimate that the adult attention span has decreased by about 12 minutes in the past decade.

You have an average of 70,000 thoughts in a day.

According to research cited in an article in Fast Company, in 2011 Americans took in five times as much information every day as they did in 1986—the equivalent of 174 newspapers.

So, it’s no wonder that those of us who have to synthesize all of that and turn it into something valuable for our clients or organization might feel a little… overwhelmed. How could we possibly begin to organize all of that data?

Today’s guest will help us begin to do that. His name is Tiago Forte and he’s the author of the best-selling book Building a Second Brain. On today’s show, we discuss a practical way to collect, organize, and share information in a way that allows us to retain our sanity and become more effective as creative pros.

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Everyone can see success coming well in advance, right? Of course not. When you're in the fray, you're often just trying to hold things together and get through this project, this week, or this year. It's only in retrospect that success seems inevitable.

On today's episode, I share an essay from the Leader List (sign up for free!) about Mick Jagger's assessment of the future success of the Rolling Stones and how it relates to our own creative work and leadership.

Then, we have a fascinating conversation with Joey Cofone, founder of Baron Fig and author of the new book The Laws of Creativity.

My new book Daily Creative is available now wherever books are sold.

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We have heard the phrase "back to normal" often over the past year. But, is there really any such thing as normal? Now that we have had a taste of virtual and hybrid work, will we ever return to the way things were pre-2020?

Today's guest is Mitch Joel. He's the author of several books, the host of the Six Pixels of Separation podcast, and an acclaimed thought leader on the future of work. On this episode, we discuss where we have been, where we are, and what the future might hold for creative pros as we try to reconcile remote work with all of its possible tradeoffs.

My book Daily Creative is available now wherever books are sold.

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