Real Creative Leadership

It’s time to connect khakis and creatives.

Professional relationships are key to better execution of your creative ideas. But it can be difficult to strengthen those relationships when you struggle to communicate effectively outside of your creative sphere. John Knightly, CMO of BlueJeans, has great insights on how creatives can better communicate with their business peers — or with “khaki,” as we introduced in our last episode — to make it easier to achieve the business goals you have in common. 

In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, join Adam Morgan and John as they compare notes from two different sides of the creative process, and discuss the best ways to communicate across departments and break down those language silos.

Tune in to learn:

• Best practices for creatives when interacting with marketers
• How creatives can branch out into other leadership positions
• What creatives need to learn to start speaking in business terms
• More resources to learn about marketing

Learn how and when to start speaking business.

As a creative leader, you now have a lot of new hats. Not only that, but you have new, non-creative peers. This means you need to learn how to talk business in business terms — or “talk khaki” as Adam Morgan calls it — to make sure everyone understands you and how you represent your creative team.

Talking khaki means you know how to convey your ideas and needs effectively to your higher-ups and your business peers — in a way that helps them see the value of your creative input. Watch this episode of Real Creative Leadership to learn more about how to and when to speak business.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The four business departments where you’ll need to talk khaki
• The best methods and materials to help you learn the language
• Why understanding your organization's business is foundational to business language
• How talking khaki will help you better manage up and sideways

It’s easy for creative departments to get so bogged down in delivering on requests that they lose sight of the big picture — the real WHAT behind the work they’re doing. When that happens, creativity takes a hit.

Katie O’Brien saw the impact first-hand. As head of creative for luxury & specialty brands at Wayfair, Katie’s first priority was to shift her team from acting as reactive order-takers to becoming strategic and collaborative design thinkers.

In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, Adam Morgan and Katie discuss what it took to make the transformation happen and how her creative team continues to iterate and evolve — and it’s benefitting not just Wayfair, but also their dedicated customers and partners.

In this conversation with Katie, you’ll learn:

• Why many creative departments settle into the role of ticket takers and the problems that creates
• How to shift your mindset from efficiency to long-term growth
• Why creatives should always tie ideas back to the business and include business partners in their process early on
• How embracing mistakes can help creativity flourish

Get strategic with your creative team.

In the old model of creative agencies, there was a combined strategy and writing team to brainstorm the brand messaging, and then a creative team to take the messaging and “make it pretty.” But with the teams being separate, the actual execution of the message suffered. 

In this webinar, Adam Morgan shares all the benefits of combining creative with strategy. You'll learn:

• Why keeping the teams closely linked will yield better creative results
• The importance of developing strategic skills
• How to build strong partnerships throughout your organization

Too much frustration can arise from a language disconnect between creatives and business leaders. But both the creative and business sides of a company must learn to speak each other’s language if they want to succeed. 

Tune in to our next Real Creative Leadership episode to join Adam Morgan and Douglas Davis as they discuss how designers can become fluent in the language of business and strategy — and how it will transform your company.

In this conversation with Douglas, you’ll learn:

• Why creatives struggle in business environments
• The value of putting yourself in the shoes of non-creative peers
• Tips for learning the language of business 
• How strategy-fluent creatives can help transform businesses

Whether you’re the one giving it or the one receiving it, feedback can be a hard pill to swallow. It’s natural to respond emotionally to insufficient work, but it’s also natural to respond negatively to your work being critiqued. This emotional clash can put a strain on creative relationships in the workplace.

Luckily, the feedback process doesn’t have to be painful. In this episode, Adam Morgan provides helpful advice on how to give constructive feedback—and how to receive it.

During this session, you’ll learn:

• The best way to give feedback, especially when it’s negative
• How to avoid getting defensive about receiving feedback
• Whose feedback to value the mostHow to rate and rank feedback
• How to diffuse tension during a feedback session

Every team is different, but with the right combination of talent, technology, and strategic planning, you can determine the best way to flex and scale your team for positive results and creative inspiration. 

In this episode, Adam Morgan sits down with AJ Herrera, vice president of Brand and Advertising at VMware, to discuss how he structures his team and what scaling looks like for them.

Discover more about the actual practice of scaling:

• Learn some methods for maintaining communication between teams
• Examine how real companies tackle strategy and managing projects
• Learn about the realities of working with agencies and how to maximize those relationships

Strong teams don’t develop by accident. 

A good manager doesn’t control every facet of a project or try to accomplish everything themselves. In fact, that mindset is a barrier to growth. In part four of How to Scale Your Creative Team, learn how to delegate responsibility so team members take ownership of their work and learn how to gauge whether each member is feeling over, under, or perfectly “whelmed.” 

Listen to part 4 of this series to gain more specific insights, like: 

• Different methods for assigning responsibility, and how to find the one that’s right for your team.
• How to evaluate a team member’s workload and notice signs of burnout.
• The value of the right technology when it comes to internal scaling.

Scale smart.

Parts one and two of How to Scale Your Creative Team covered the why, how, and when of scaling and finding new team members. Part three tackles how to make sure your efforts to scale are most effective. Creative leaders sometimes think of scaling as linear, but really it’s a set of careful steps you take as you regularly evaluate your resources and your workload. 

Listen to part 3 of this series on scaling your creative team to gain specific insights like: 

• Solutions when you hit a wall with efforts to scale.
• How to balance taking on new work and taking on new employees.
• How to calculate how much new talent I can afford?

Get the talent you need.

In part one of How to Scale Your Creative Team, we discussed why scaling is important and how to know when it’s time for change. Now, in part two, dive into what skills you might need to add and how to find the best new talent. 

Learn about the many different avenues you can explore when scaling, and get the answers to questions like: 

• What skills should I focus on scaling? 
• How do I decide between hiring full-time employees, contractors or an agency?
• Where do I look to find creative professionals for my team?