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Bonus episode: 3 creative leaders live from Adobe MAX 2022
January 26, 2023 Brand Leadership Business Growth Career Growth Creative Agency Design Leadership Strategy
Guest Speaker

Jess Kirkman

Executive Creative Director, Taco Bell

Jess Kirkman is the Executive Creative Director at Taco Bell. Prior to this, she headed up the design department at digital and social agency MRY, working with clients like Visa, JetBlue, Adobe, and Neutrogena. She has a BFA in Communication Design from Syracuse University as well as a background in branding and print design. She is also a prolific visual artist and teacher.

Guest Speaker

Andy Vitale

Executive Vice President, Rocket Companies

Andy Vitale is the Executive Vice President of Design at Rocket Companies, where he leads Design, Research, and Brand teams focused on creating experiences that help millions of people achieve their dream of financial freedom and home ownership. He co-hosts the Surfacing Podcast, is a member of Adobe’s Design Circle, and is an international keynote speaker.

Guest Speaker

Nathan Dill

VP of Integrated Production & Innovation Director, Digitas North America

Nathan Dill is a Production Director that combines creative technology expertise with the latest digital innovations to help creative partners achieve their vision. His proven track record includes delivering transformative solutions for global brands such as McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, PlayStation, Amazon, Whirlpool, Maytag, Sprint, Bank of America and many more.

Live insights from Adobe MAX 2022.

This special bonus episode of Real Creative Leadership comes to you from the floor of the Community Pavilion at this past fall’s Adobe MAX, a leading global creativity conference and immersive virtual event. Real Creative Leadership host Adam Morgan had conversations with several creative leaders during the week, and we are excited to share some highlights.

Adam and Jess Kirkman, Executive Creative Director at Taco Bell, discuss embracing trends by leaning into design moments and creating inclusive teams where even non-creatives contribute to design ideas.

With Andy Vitale, Executive Vice President of Rocket Companies, the conversation digs into collaborating without being in the office and the magic that happens when you look at your business through a creative lens.

And Nathan Dill, Vice President of Integrated Production & Innovation Director at Digitas North America, talks with Adam about how a celebratory company culture that incorporates time for innovation and creativity is one secret to keeping morale boosted when teams are spread all over the globe.

Tune in now, and get inspired by these creative leaders.

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RCL Episode Season 3, Bonus Episode
3 creative leaders live from Adobe MAX 2022

Jess Kirkman, Executive Creative Director, Taco Bell
Andy Vitale, Executive Vice President, Rocket Companies
Nathan Dill, VP of Integrated Production & Innovation Director, Digitas North America

 

Transcript

MAX 2022 Interviews

Adam Morgan (Recording 1): Hello, everyone. Today we’ve got a special bonus episode of Real Creative Leadership. We’re sharing parts of three conversations I had with creative leaders at Adobe MAX this past fall — which was back in person, in Los Angeles, for the first time since before the pandemic. First up, you’ll hear from Jess Kirkman, the Executive Creative Director at Taco Bell and a past guest on the show. I started out by asking her about some of the unwritten rules that create her team’s culture — which can be especially tricky in our new hybrid and remote environment. ​

Jess Kirkman: I think we do a couple different kinds of exercises and activities that I think help. So one of the things we do, we do it once a month, but we do something called design wars, and it is actually for everyone on the team. Account managers, project managers, copywriters, whatever, where we pick a topic, you have 20 minutes, and you design around that topic. And then we send that packaged up document to our marketing partners — our people across the wall.

This kind of lends itself a little to what you were talking about earlier of how to make the entire marketing team, or the entire organization, feel involved in the atmosphere. And so that’s just something we do for fun. But they choose a winner. We crown them every month. We do something different like that.

We also do something during our team meetings every week called Share Some Shit. Mm-hmm. It’s something I’ve been doing since my agency days where we’re sharing inspiration. Our team’s a little too big to have everyone share — it used to be when it was 12 people, everyone could go around and share.

But now, we pick two to three people. Whether it’s an Instagram site, a mural they saw, a haiku they found, just something that inspired them recently and we share that out and just kind of talk. It could be a playlist. We have a collective playlist as well, just so if people do wanna feel like they’re connected during the workday.

So things like that really kind of reveal what’s getting people into their work. 

Adam Morgan: Oh, that’s interesting. We do a thing called Creative Workshop every Friday morning for one hour. Over the whole year, just one person per session shares. Like a book they read, a TEd talk they watched, uh, whatever it is, bring in a guest speaker, whoever. And it’s really awesome. 

So beyond just the creative team, many of us have been doing this long enough that we know how to inspire fellow creatives. But how do you inspire the adjacent? Let’s talk more about that. 

Jess Kirkman: So we started calling, uh, the non-traditional creative roles creative adjacent because these are people that grew up loving art, loving design, having all creative friends, but never really learned the technical skills, didn’t go to school for design necessarily. Maybe they’re other types of marketers or again, our project managers, our account managers, our strategists.

We try our best to make sure that we’re not treating anyone on the team who’s not in a traditional creative role any different. So whether it’s a brainstorm and we have an account on the line taking notes, contribute and be a part of the conversation. Debate. I think we’re encouraging everyone to speak up.

We say good ideas come from anywhere. I think that’s a classic, but we honestly follow that. So within the organization, our hallway conversations, for example, if that sparked an idea from someone in the mailroom, we’ll ladder it all the way up. We’re trying to give everyone an opportunity to have a voice.

And I think when everyone feels like what they say is actually being heard and matters, it gets them excited and then they wanna see like where the execution ends up going. So they feel invested in a way. And I think when you feel invested, whether you’re the person making the creative or even making the calls or not, you feel like you had something to do with it.

Adam Morgan: But loving creativity — in the days past, they would like want to have their desk near the creative department just to feel the vibes. So I like that you’re including them in more virtual meetings and other things. And I know a lot of times, you know, many people on the teams will be like, no, I don’t want to invite others, because then they’ll try and creative direct us and we don’t want them to do that.

So I think there’s probably a clear line of like contributing versus creative directing. And as long as you keep those, those lanes safe, yeah. Then people feel like they want to open it up to everyone. 

Jess Kirkman: I think in general, some of the struggles I would say that my internal team has had when working with the rest of marketing has been that line.

When everyone is considered a creative, you know, we make a joke. Everyone’s a creative director. 

Adam Morgan: Yep. Everyone’s a writer. 

Jess Kirkman: Everyone’s a writer. Everyone’s a designer. You know, people are making presentations, but I think it’s about educating how people can be most helpful. And that’s where we’ve had to have a lot of conversations.

We even had a presentation at one point, which was all about how to give helpful feedback that is not prescriptive, but more inspiring. Yeah. And it’s all about solving problems at the end of the day. So we always say, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve? And let us find a million ways to solve it.

And instead of saying, make it blue, say, what are you trying to accomplish here? So we’ve had to have those conversations as new people come in and really draw the line between creative direction and not, which is never overly fun. But if you can make it so someone else feels more helpful, I think you’re, you’re providing something invaluable for the rest of their career, hopefully.

Adam Morgan: Oh yeah, that sounds so familiar. And for us, it’s been like, when you’re giving good feedback, just think of your experience and your emotions that you’re having, so that you’re not prescriptive. It’s like, here I felt lost, or here I felt confused. Or here I really like this because of whatever.

That kind of feedback is great for creative because we’re like, oh good, I can fix this transition. I can do this here, or I can move on without it. You just told me to change it to blue and that’s not helpful in the least, so that’s really good. 

Jess Kirkman: It’s funny cuz the way that I tend to lead is maybe non-traditional where I, I’m a gut person.

And so I know a lot of people are like, I don’t wanna go with my gut cuz I might change it to a more technical answer. But I think there’s something to be said about your initial reaction in your initial gut instinct to reviewing work. And so the way that I lead or give feedback is not necessarily super technical, but more about how it’s making me feel and the shift in how I want to feel from the work, and I let someone else interpret what that means to them.

And I find that I get a better result of reviewing creative when you let your creatives really try to find you where you’re at instead of being told what to do. And so I, I really will try to say, Hey, I’m feeling like this is taking me to this place, and I wanna be over here. And so what can you do to get me over here?

I’m not gonna tell you, but help me in this direction. Oh, that’s so fun. Trying to keep it high level a little bit. 

Adam Morgan: As creative people, it’s all about emotions and putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and empathy and those journeys.

So now let’s move on to customers. So beyond just helping adjacents feel creative, how do you stay Forever 21? How do you help the audience feel like they’re part of that creativity of your company and feel that energy? 

Jess Kirkman: I love this because we actually call our consumers fans. We have people that love Taco Bell.

They’re nostalgic for it. They get tattoos. You know, there’s probably Wendy’s or McDonald’s tattoos, but people, people really go crazy for Taco Bell. And that inherently makes it automatically so much more fun to engage because people want to engage. They don’t feel like they’re being sold to or marketed to.

So it already gives us a platform where people are like, what do you guys have for us? What’s next? And so I think we’re constantly trying to reach the younger generation. Not necessarily because they’re young consumers, but because they’re the ones setting trends telling us what’s cool. I’m all of a sudden way past cool.

So I think we have to listen and not just do what they’re saying to do, but understand like what, where their head space is at, what they’re thinking about right now with the Gen Z demographic. That pretty much evolved during Covid. The 20 year-olds were millennials at one point. And millennial was picture perfect, very much about individualism. Um, what was in it for them. 

And then it shifted to Gen Z and there’s nothing that makes me feel older than talking about Gen Z. But we shifted to Gen Z, and what that is all about is authenticity. Being raw, being real standing for something. Community. It’s way less about curation in the individual and more about what you’re part of and what feels good. 

So I think as we talk about starting to come into this new generation, it’s less about marketing to someone and having them do something in a solitary kind of way. It’s what kind of community are we creating? What kind of platform are we creating for other people to have voices and for them to tell us how they want our brand to react and respond. And it’s actually, I’m learning a lot, but we’re letting other people kind of drive and that’s a new hat to wear. 

Adam Morgan: Oh, that’s interesting. And even if you think about like how technology has changed us in the last few years, how this pandemic has changed in the last few years, but you’re talking about how the audience is changing you.

Yeah. So tell me a little, let’s dig into that a little bit more. How is that affecting creativity? How are the different design trends and things? 

Jess Kirkman: What I’m viewing and what I’m seeing is because we’re coming from this place of authenticity and rawness. Rawness is in, if you look at, there’s apps like Be Real and a bunch of things that are like, stop putting filters on, stop making it picture perfect. Stop making it pixel perfect.

What are the trends? And so I think it’s affecting design in what I’m calling anti design. Things that don’t match. Stripes and plaid and put it all together. Typefaces you wouldn’t normally pair. Colors you wouldn’t normally pair at first. 

In traditional design, where I’ve come from, there were so many rules, and I think we’re getting to the point where we’re breaking the rules purposely. And that’s what we’re starting to see in design, where it’s like, no one can tell us we can’t put this font with this color. And we’re starting to see some really interesting aesthetics. Um, it’s, it’s getting me outta my comfort zone.

Adam Morgan: we’ve been trained to make it look nice. 

Jess Kirkman: Exactly. Um, but I think there’s something to learn from the anti-design. And when I say that, it’s not “we don’t like design,” it’s that we’re not following the traditional design rules that have been set up for 60 to a hundred years, and we’re creating new things coming out of that.

So I think that even lends itself to people learning the tools and the platforms and you know, kind of bringing it back to Adobe. I was traditionally trained and had certain ways to do things, and I think people are starting to really mess with the rules that even Adobe is setting up. It’s like, how can we stretch this?

And I guarantee, from the way that they’re flexing and playing with the tools, [Adobe’s] gonna say, now we need to do something different. So I definitely think the new aesthetic is a little anti-tradition and a little wacky, a little weird and a little off in the best way. So we’ll see what gets created from it.

Adam Morgan: But yeah, we’re going through that same phase with Adobe Express of how do we reach, you know, other audiences that aren’t the traditional pro designer. Right. And it’s tricky. Yeah. It’s tricky to figure out what they want and like in, and not just in design type and color like you’re saying, but even in like photography.

Jess Kirkman: Yes. Well, it’s funny you’re bringing up photography. So food photography is a huge part of what Taco Bell does, and I actually have a couple of my photographers here today. We have gone from the perfect posed food styling — tacos standing up on their own and the magic of more studio-based photography — to what’s authentic to our product.

Our product is messy, crunchy, saucy, melty, cheesy. These are the words we’re constantly evaluating our photography against. Are we feeling a visceral reaction to when someone’s biting into a taco instead of like the bite and smile that I think everyone’s used to. So we’re actually getting to a place with photography where we’re breaking ourselves.

When I started even five years ago, if there was a crack in anything, I mean start over, we would Photoshop it out. Or you’d have to start all over. But I think now we’re at the place where it’s like, how far can we push photography? How real can we make this look? And it’s actually been a struggle to make things look real.

And so what we’re doing now is just having people interact with the food and just shooting it. Versus “pretend you’re eating the food.” So we’re just totally reframing how we’re approaching photography, styling, design, everything. And then you get into social platforms and even what’s expected on there when it looks too curated.

When it looks like there’s too many design elements, like you couldn’t create it on Instagram itself. We’re actually kind of backing into like, what would this look like if you created it on your phone versus spending six hours on the computer. So we’re kind of like undoing a lot of what we’ve learned.

Adam Morgan: Well then here’s the next question, and maybe getting close to our last, is how do you not cannibalize that with other audiences and other more traditional people who like design? When they look at it, is it just like, oh, that’s not for me anymore, or is the young group of audiences leading the pack, and we’re all just gonna follow and like that trend as a whole?

Jess Kirkman: I think trends come and go. And design aesthetic and classic kinds of cases of design will ring true forever. Personally, I think that, I think we’ll look at this as a moment in time, the same way we looked at teased-out hair and neon of the grunge age. I think we’re in a trend period, and it’s a little uncomfortable and a little different, but I think we’ll always come back to the true elements of design, which is why I do feel it’s important as a creative to understand the basics, the 101, the history, the people that have gotten us to now, um, how typefaces are made instead of just going rogue. 

I think you’re always gonna go back to that before a new trend develops. I think we’re a lot of people that are into design and tradition, traditional ways of design are viewing right now. We’re the viewers. We’re learning, we’re witnessing, but um, I think it’ll be a moment before the tides turn and we’re onto the next trend. 

Adam Morgan (Recording 2): What a great conversation with Jess Kirkman, Executive Creative Director at Taco Bell Design. If you missed Jess’s first appearance on the show, head to realcreativeleadership.com, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice to find it. Next up, let’s hear part of my conversation with Andy Vitale, Executive Vice President of Rocket Companies — parent brand of Rocket Mortgage, which I’m sure is familiar to you. I started by asking Andy to give his perspective on the design-led movement. 

Andy Vitale: You know, I think it happens, like we’ve learned to put humans at the center of what we do. So the design-led moment movement is really the days of like putting out a product once in a while and expecting, based on who you are, that people are gonna come and use it.

We’re starting to see that shift through technology on people that want problems that are relative to them. So designers, or the design thinking at that time, or designing human centered, has really taken that person, that human and put them in that center of everything. Understanding the jobs that need to be done, understanding their intent, their outcomes that they’re looking for, and really through collaboration, identifying ways to ideate and to take like something that’s not just a screen, right?

We’ve moved from screens into entire ecosystems, so we’re designing every single touch. Brand touch points. So really that shift has proven to be successful for companies. Obviously if you put the client at the center, the person that you want to solve problems for, you’re going to make their tasks easier. They’re gonna purchase your product. 

So we’ve seen, there’s lots of studies on how design-led companies outperform the S&P 500 and what that looks like over time. So companies have wanted to adopt that and have started to adopt that over the last 10 years. That product thinking, that product design, has really driven tremendous outcomes and has been great for the design industry. 

Adam Morgan: Yeah, let’s, let’s emphasize that part. It’s been great, right? Because in the past we were always, you know, back in the creative cave, and they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe we’ll listen to your designs. And now that we’ve proven it out, and we know that design makes a big impact on business, now we have a seat at the table, which is what the fight has been for, for decades.

Right, exactly. Okay, so now if we’ve got the seat, here’s the next big question. What are we doing with it? That’s the question. People are always like, okay, you’ve got a seat at the table. So what, what are you doing? How are you impacting business differently by being in a leadership position rather than just being finance or operations right? And all of that. 

Andy Vitale: So I think the seat at the table that everyone talks about is really just having a voice in this discussion and adding a different lens of value. So when you look at things through a designer lens, you open up collaboration, you look at infinite possibilities, and you start to figure through prototyping and testing and learning how you can drive outcomes.

So in my position, what I’m able to do with that seat at the table is amplify the voices on the team. The people that typically are like, like you said, in that cave that never really get to come out, and what they’re doing is really like doing some amazing things. And how do we put light on some of that?

How do we help what they’re doing show the value to the company? Years ago, if it didn’t come out of like a specific department or wasn’t an initiative that was driven from the top down, it was like you never really saw it. You’d fight and struggle. So having that voice really allows us to say, “Hey, have you taken a look at this? What if we did something a little bit differently?” 

That designer lens that we are able to look at things through has been so different and helps people think outside the box. And when you do that, that inspiration that we create is contagious. So you start to get people on board, and it’s a great way for us to be able to take a design-driven initiative and get it in front of the right people and inspire them, not just through what it can be, but really start to show how it generates business value. 

Adam Morgan: Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you really think about it, we’re in the era of experience today, right? Right. Like the big differentiator for businesses is how are you gonna give that customer experience your special spin, and how are you gonna create some special, you know, moment for those customers?

And, and who better than designers and writers and creatives who have empathy and understand people and watch people and understand what they’re going through and everything that they’re doing. Right? Right. So with great responsibility comes great power. Right? So what are we doing now that we’re there?

Let’s talk a little bit more about, more than just creating great experiences, how are we being responsible with it? Right? What, what about responsible design? 

Andy Vitale: Yeah. So I think, you know, designers, the industry shifted where we’re more interested now on the impact that we have long term than ever before because the stakes are greater than they’ve ever been.

So being responsible, making sure that we don’t make the mistakes we’ve made. And the number one thing that we can do for responsibility is inclusivity. We know that bringing different perspectives to the table, whether it’s someone that didn’t come from a design background, someone that comes from a different ethnographic background, someone that just has different education, just every different perspective that we can bring to the table and involve them in building the solution means that when we put it out there, we will have tested that and have gotten those perspectives.

So we’re not putting something out there that excludes someone. And we’ve seen lots of that over the last, I don’t know, 20 years of digital on the web. So we’ve come a long way, I hope. We’re learning from our mistakes, but things like algorithmic bias, it’s still very real. And especially as we start to lean on technology, it’s easy to say, well, the algorithm or something like that.

Right. But really it’s, it’s humans that are designing that algorithm. So we have to pay attention to those things. And that’s another thing that, like being in my position gets like that responsibility is front and center.

Adam Morgan: Well, you mentioned the last 20 years, but the last couple years right, have been very different.

Yes. So let’s talk about just in the current environment now, how are things changing with design in, in terms of, you know, us going more digital and because of the pandemic and changing the way we operate and how teams. Let’s talk about that and then also how technology has changed that. 

Andy Vitale: Yeah, those are, those are two big questions.

Yeah. So the pandemic has really focused on how we can collaborate without being in the office. Now, there are still benefits of being around people and collaborating in person for sure. Like this, right? Seeing people at MAX for the first time in a few years has been incredible.

But there’s also, we’ve proven that we cannot be in the same location and tools enable us to collaborate asynchronously and still get the job done. So I see the shift going to definitely more like flexible work environments. And the other thing though is technology, right? We’re seeing technologies are able to support that workflow.

Technologies in general are, technology has been this like achilles heel for designers because there are always emerging technologies and new things that are coming out. And sometimes we don’t have the opportunity to understand the impact of that technology. We just have to design it in.

It’s like, oh, here’s web three, like let’s get going on it. How harmful can this be over time? We don’t know. We won’t know until a couple years down the line, but if we actually incorporate that responsibility into our best practices, then we’ll make sure that what we put out there is gonna be successful.

But technology’s always gonna change, and we’re gonna have to stay ahead of that because all of us, our companies wanna stay in front. 

Adam Morgan: Okay, so now let me get into questions at least that are a big part of my world right now of like, is there a right answer? You may not have a right answer and that’s okay, but, um, it’s this controversy of what leads, okay, is it brand leading and then design and design systems just kind of follow whatever the big brand is, or is it design systems are the ultimate truth and brand needs to just kind of follow suit on that.

Is that something in your world that happens? 

Andy Vitale: At the end of the day, it’s how well the teams collaborate together because design systems are an extension of the brand.

Now, sometimes the design system has a little bit more leeway than a brand. Like my brand, we work commercials. Super Bowl commercials, those are some things with the brand that are kind of set in stone. Now how we represent that in the digital space, the design system gets to inspire that and gets to push back on that.

So we’re seeing our design system, especially as we look into conversational design, the way we communicate the voice and tone is starting to impact and shift the way the brand leverages voice and tone. So we’re leveraging the design system, things like pictograms and icons, and there’s an opportunity to advance and enhance and add onto the brand that we get to test at that smaller digital scale and then roll that out further.

But our design system in general is relatively new. We launched it this year and we’re still figuring out full implementation across all the areas. So it’s that collaboration with engineering, getting out on product roadmaps. How we’re working with our program managers to figure out how that all comes into play and how that sees the light of day is a wild experience to see.

Now I think that the greater opportunity for us is to think about every single interaction that we have with a person as a brand experience. Absolutely. So the brand is promoting that awareness in different channels. And once we get them into that ecosystem, whether it’s a phone call that they have with a banker for us, or it’s just, you know, a mailer that they get in the mail, a text message, whatever it is, like that is the brand experience end to end.

Adam Morgan: I love your answer. And it’s the truth. Even though we want like a silver bullet, the answer is you better work better together. Right, exactly. So we have the brand team or the design team. It’s like that collaboration is critical even though, I mean that’s the rub, right?

That’s where there’s gonna be friction. Cuz we all have different views and ideas of what the system should be and what the brand should be, but all right, fair enough, 

Andy Vitale: And it’s the healthy debate that pushes each other that really drives us forward. 

Adam Morgan: So last question. As we think about design systems and as we do all that user research, they always come back to us and say, oh, make it simple. Make it easy to find things. And I think a big part of the latest trends in design systems has been to make it more human and understandable and easy and intuitive, right?

But that’s the big question of like, if we all keep pushing towards this same goal of the design system disappearing and it just becoming completely fluid, are all design systems just ending up the same? Like, are we all vanilla? Are we all just so simple and clean and white with nothing else getting in the way that we’re all, there’s no longer a brand differentiation? So how do you deal with that situation?

Andy Vitale: So when we think about the design system and how it can really enhance the brand, we do worry, can this create such a level of consistency that the designers don’t have the ability to really push.

And the way we look at our design system is it’s a huge collaboration and contribution model. So we wanna solve for things like buttons, but we also want to allow a little bit of flexibility so that the designers can do what they do and continue to push because that’s where the innovation will happen.

And then by testing and learning those best practices that we find out, we’ll make their way to the design system so we can roll them out at scale. So we think about things like conversion rate, or just in general, like what patterns will start to impact our business metrics. 

And once we identify those, we test them, and we validate. Then we’re gonna roll them out at scale. So we always want to promote that continuous learning so that the design system doesn’t become stagnant and all of our properties look the same and feel the same. 

Adam Morgan (Recording 3): Thanks to Andy Vitale for that great discussion. Finally today, let’s hear part of my conversation with Nathan Dill, Vice President of Integrated Production & Innovation Director at Digitas North America. We started out by talking about how he and his colleagues are working to maintain strong morale and culture amid the stresses of working at a busy global agency with teams distributed across the world.

Nathan Dill: When you’re in this environment where we’ve been the last two years where everyone is just grinding and grinding and there’s been long days — I’m sure we’re not the only ones, I’m sure it’s everywhere and I bet, I know it’s everywhere.

We’ve had to take a focus on teams and morale and celebrating cultures and teammates. It’s really easy to lose sight of that, or the days just kind of bleed into another and sometimes you’re, you’re working until eight o’clock at night or you might take an hour off during the afternoon, but then you find it, it’s so easy to just work and, and jump into another call, answer another email, respond, do a brief, provide another estimate.

It’s so easy just, just staying in that mindset. But what we tried to do and make more of a focus is also we can’t lose sight of our culture. We gotta celebrate the culture. You gotta celebrate the wins, you gotta celebrate like even the lows and give recognition, right? That’s really been important to not only just retain your good talent, but to keep the morale up.

And it’s cuz we are still a team even though we don’t really see each other and we’re not side by side. So you really have to lean in a lot on that. 

Adam Morgan: It’s kind of funny to think about that way. It’s like we’ve become too efficient, right? We’re just so good at getting stuff done.

We gotta back off a little bit and put back into the system some of those inefficiencies, but the humanity in it, right? Where we’re still having little chats and conversations. 

Nathan Dill: Totally. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times one project ends and there, in your inbox, are three requests for brand new estimates and projects.

It’s so hard to take that beat and actually congratulate one another. Or go outta your way to lend the recognition for someone going the extra mile or providing a creative idea or speaking up on a call when otherwise they would’ve never done that. You’ve gotta make that time to, to really. and appreciate that and give the recognition. 

Adam Morgan: So what are some of the purposeful things you’ve done to create that culture, to create that environment where it’s not always just about being super efficient, it’s about who we are as a company or who we are as a team. What are some of the things you’ve done? 

Nathan Dill: We call it the Third Wednesday. It’s a work in progress title, but it works. It’s really like a monthly showcase about celebrating culture, so things like anniversaries, new hires, things like life events. We put together a pretty lengthy deck, and it goes out to teams who are all over the world. And everyone gets together. We block an hour out of the calendar, and we try to gain as much participation. The follow through rate’s been pretty good by making sure that the calendars are free, getting the full adoption from all the managers and senior leadership to say, this is really important.

And then through that, you’re also sharing, like, “I went and took a trip and here are some pictures of my trip and here’s where I gain inspiration,” or “I’m leaning into these new ideas, and this is where I gain inspiration to cultivate work in my own craft for what I do every day.” So also making time to celebrate the work.

So we’re, we’re about four months into that, and it’s totally a team effort. And like who has the idea? What does a deck look like? Cause we have all these great designers and uh, in a way it’s also like another way for them to like work on their own skills, um, you know, soft skills or design skills.

And even at the end, we leave 10 minutes for like a pause for kindness and it’s really great.

Adam Morgan: What’s that? 

Nathan Dill: Usually we’ll get feedback like, I’ve been working with so and so, and they were so fast, and they were so responsive. Just giving those little moments of kindness and then even opening it up in the moment like, does anybody wanna speak freely?

And you know, like, I wanna recognize Heather, I want to recognize Michelle, or I wanna recognize Andre for X, Y, and Z. And it’s, it’s pretty touching. 

Adam Morgan: Well, and part of what you’re doing is building culture. Right? And the problem we’ve had during the pandemic is lack of culture. So pausing for kindness and moments like that — it’s the unwritten rules of culture that really influence, right? 

Well, I wanna dig back a little bit cuz this is almost like what we’ve been talking about is not just culture, but it’s also training or learning. You know how we’re growing. But you’d mentioned how part of your team has to be on the cutting edge — like your value you’re bringing is “how are we better at all these tools?” or “how are we better at all these things?” So what are you doing in that area of prepping for the future? How are you getting your team to be the best at all these new things? 

Nathan Dill: Well, you have to lean into it pretty heavily. And we carve out time to do R&D. So if we find something, how, how quickly could we work up a prototype? How quickly could we work up a proof of concept? So we make time where it’s not always about, sure we all wanna stay billable as an agency, but also where we can rely on usability.

So if we have time baked into a 40 hour work week, and if you need to be billable 32 hours, we can still use eight hours to go out and explore. Trying stuff and bringing stuff in, you know, in-house where we all have admin rights, where we can download software and tinker and test and tinker and test and draw up a quick proof of concept, put it into a deck, and schedule a meeting for any initial thoughts or feedback.

Adam Morgan: How do you force that to happen? Cause I’ve, I’ve talked about that for years and years and we always have like a plan for it, but it just disappears. Like how do you make that sacred, so it really works? 

Nathan Dill: I should say it’s tough to do that week over week. So a lot of times client work still trumps.

Client billable is always gonna take priority, but there are always gonna be pockets when there’s just downtime, right? Ebbs and flows. And there’s a lot of that throughout the course of the year. But you really have to make an emphasis and really it takes just some foresight and some advanced planning.

And then it’s an exercise in thought leadership. And a lot of our clients are demanding that, you know, from us. So it also kind of satisfies and checks that box as well. 

Adam Morgan: That’s interesting. We’ve actually come to a similar place where it’s like if we want to create an innovation labs, we almost have to like put it as part of the schedule where it’s like so and so you’re, this is a project and it’s actually kicked off and you’ve gotta get rolling on it and kind of force our hand a little bit so that people actually work on some of these things.

Nathan Dill: And we used to have an innovation lab again when we were all coming to one location, and that’s unfortunately probably no longer going to happen. So now you really have to say, okay, well if we have this dedicated space that we all invested in, we bought all this cool tech and software and built this good workstation to bring into clients and to create ideas.

And if we’re not gonna have that in-house physically, then we have to take what we would normally take that time for and still bake it in like we’re at home. So we gotta still take those hours and still make those investments to sell and work that way as well.

Adam Morgan (Recording 4): Alright, thanks to Nathan Dill for that interesting chat at MAX. And a final thanks to Jess and Andy. And thanks to all of you for watching and listening to this special bonus episode. 

As always, you can find us at realcreativeleadership.com. We’ve got a full catalog of past shows. And you can also email from the site to ask a question or suggest a future topic. You can watch and subscribe to Real Creative Leadership on YouTube at youtube.com/realcreativeleadership. And we’re also on all the social channels. 

You can find me at adamwmorgan.com, and you can learn more about The Stoke Group — the digital marketing and content agency that produces this show — at TheStokeGroup.com.

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So thanks again. We’ll see you on our next episode as we officially kick off season 4 of Real Creative Leadership.