How To Release Control Of Your Team’s Work
Let your team do what you hired them to do.
How To Release Control Of Your Team’s Work
Articles about herding tigers
How To Channel Your Attention
How To Channel Your Attention
Focus is the most valuable tool you have as a creative professional. How you define problems, and allocate attention to them will often determine your success or failure. However, many organizations allow significant "attentional drains" to infiltrate their culture and rob team members of much needed mental bandwidth. On this episode, we share three valuable strategies for building attentional buffers to protect the bandwidth of the team, and ways to talk to your manager about protecting your own attentional bandwidth.
Getting The Small Things Right
Getting The Small Things Right
It's tempting to gloss over small areas of misalignment or misunderstanding because they seem like no big deal in the moment. However, those small areas of misalignment can become big problems later. On this episode, we share a few ways this happens to leaders and teams and a handful of questions to help you stay ahead of them.
Focus, Function, Fire
Focus, Function, Fire
What exactly does a great leader do? There are three key things that an effective leader of creative people provides for the team consistently and well. On this episode, I share the importance of focus, function, and fire to the creative process.
Protecting Your Team’s Time and Attention
Protecting Your Team’s Time and Attention
The two most precious resources you have as a creative pro are your time and attention. They are under a constant onslaught from organizational needs, client demands, and personal anxieties. As a manager, you must commit to protecting these finite resources at all costs. On this episode, we share three principles for doing so from Todd Henry's book Herding Tigers.
The Art of Completing Conversations
The Art of Completing Conversations
A simple strategy for bringing alignment to your team.
10 Things Creatives Wish Their Manager Knew
10 Things Creatives Wish Their Manager Knew
It is a reality that managers and creatives often speak different languages. Each has a different set of responsibilities and perspectives they are bringing to a project, and often the collision of these forces is enough to create massive waves within the organization. With that in mind, here is a list of statements that could begin to spark dialogue between organizational leaders and creatives.
The Big Idea: Herding Tigers
The Big Idea: Herding Tigers
What do highly creative people really need from their leader? Two things, primarily: stability and challenge. On this episode, I dive into the big idea from my latest book Herding Tigers, and explain why these two forces are the key to unlocking performance and brilliance in the team you lead, in your relationships with your clients, and in any complex collaborative relationship.
Two Things You Need To Thrive as a Creative Pro
Two Things You Need To Thrive as a Creative Pro
Creating under pressure is challenging. This is especially true when you're creating inside of an organization, and you have all of the unspoken expectations, dysfunctions, and conflicts to deal with just in order to get around to your work. On this episode, we...
How To Quit Your Approval Addiction
How To Quit Your Approval Addiction
Which do you value more: being liked, or being effective? For many creative pros, they'd say that being effective is their highest ambition, but the reality is that they do many things simply for the sake of approval from others. You can be both liked and effective, but you can't chase both at the same time. On this episode, we share three ways in which you can quit your approval addiction and unleash the work you're capable of.
How To Measure and Monitor Creative Work
How To Measure and Monitor Creative Work
Effective creative leaders maintain both a scoreboard and a dashboard for their work. These tools help them track important aspects of their team’s progress, health, and culture. On this episode, we share how to establish both a scoreboard and a dashboard to help you guide yourself and your team toward brilliant work.
Navigating Your Team Through Failure
Navigating Your Team Through Failure
After a failed project, don't just move on. Do this instead.
Make The Most Of Your Meetings
Make The Most Of Your Meetings
Meetings are necessary to a healthy team, but when you spend most of your day in meetings, it makes it challenging to accomplish any of the real work for which you’re accountable. Worse, when meetings are stacked one after the other, it sometimes means little time to think or be strategic about them. On this episode, we share five quick tips from Herding Tigers about how to make the most of your meetings.