Creative Leadership Roundtable with Adam Morgan

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April 25, 2023 Brand Leadership Business Growth Career Growth Creative Agency Design Leadership Strategy

Guest Speaker

Jess Ivy

Head of Global Creative Services, Samsung Ads

Guest Speaker

Katelyn Mueller

Associate Creative Director, SiriusXM

Guest Speaker

Stefan Woerle

Creative Director, Sherwin-Williams

The creative leadership struggle is real.

In this episode, Adam Morgan is joined by three guests, winners from a drawing at Adobe MAX and creative leaders themselves, for a group chat about the tricks of the creative leadership trade. This conversation pulls from everyone’s experiences, touching on topics from creative constraints to virtual team-building secrets to addressing the realities of imposter syndrome that have us all second-guessing ourselves.

You won’t want to miss this jam-packed discussion with insights from many corners of the creative leadership universe.

mentioned in this show:

Adam Morgan

Creative Leader and RCL Host

The Stoke Group

Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency

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Episode Title:

Creative Lunch and Learn with Adam Morgan

Guest Titles:

Jess Ivy, Head of Global Creative Services, Samsung Ads

Katelyn Mueller, Associate Creative Director, SiriusXM

Stefan Woerle, Creative Director, Sherwin-Williams

Adam Morgan

Welcome to Real Creative Leadership, a video podcast produced by The Stoke Group and hosted by me, Adam Morgan. On the show, we explore how creative leaders can have a bigger impact on their organizations and in the business world. And today is a special episode.

So this last fall we were at Adobe MAX, and we had a presence there with a booth for Real Creative Leadership and got to meet a lot of wonderful folks at Adobe Max. And we set up a special Lunch and Learn for a few lucky people to be on the show and have some, you know, important questions asked and just have a discussion.

So super excited to give this new format a try. And today I’m joined by three amazing winners and also awesome creative leaders. It’s Jess Ivy, Head of Global Creative Services at Samsung Ads. Katelyn Mueller, Associate Creative Director of Sirius XM and Stefan Woerle, Creative Director of Sherwin-Williams.

Welcome to the show.

And maybe let’s just take just a second so that the audience understands a little bit more about you. Let’s start with Jess, Katelyn, and then Stefan. Just give us a quick minute about who you are, where you come from, and, and what you have to do with creative leadership.

Jess Ivy

Sure thing. Thanks so much. So I’m Jess Ivy. I head up Global Creative Services for Samsung Ads. And in my career I’ve had such a great honor to work with creative people at Hulu, at Disney, at a number of big brands, at a lot of startups, helping them to pitch their stories. My team at Samsung Ads, we really partner to help make the Samsung Ads brand unmistakable and globally consistent and really talk about those challenges and the challenges that creatives have to do that. That’s one of the things I love to do. So this is exciting. I appreciate the opportunity.

Adam Morgan

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Katelyn.

Katelyn Mueller

Uh, so I’m Katelyn Mueller. I am an Associate Creative Director at Sirius XM, and the team I’m on is called Studio Resonate, and we are an audio-first creative agency, so we consult with brands about how to bring their brands to life in audio. I have a pretty long history in the audio space.

I started out as a sound designer and composer. I worked in the video games industry for about seven years, and then the past seven or so years I’ve been in advertising. So I started as an audio producer and kind of worked my way up. And now I am in this ACD role, audio- first.

I really love talking about the power of audio and telling brands how to sort of bring it all to life because audio is such an emerging area of creative.

Adam Morgan

Oh, that’s awesome. And we are living it right here. Love it. That’s great. All right, Stefan.

Stefan Woerle

So, um, I’m a Creative Director, one of three in my division at Sherwin-Williams.

So our stuff is about the consumer experience, right? Our products are the ones that are going into stores and things like that. So my world is really all about how we communicate, the benefits of the products to the consumer and help them make a decision, from the opening price point product to the premium products. How do we kind of spread across that gap? So it’s all about communicating color and the complexities of a product and how to do that. So it’s been good.

My career has been in-house for almost 20 years at this point. A brief stint on the agency side, but, uh, yeah, the creative leadership kind of part of it is just, you know, I think you have spoken about talking khaki in the past, right? How do we deal with the people who don’t talk creative, and how do we deal with getting our message to them as well as to the consumers.

Adam Morgan

Well, excellent. Welcome all to the show. So what we’re gonna do is we’ll start with one person and go around the room and just ask a question. Then we’ll chat about it and then go from there.

So I think we’re gonna start with Jess. Jess, you’re up first. What’s your question?

Jess Ivy

All right, let’s go with one of my favorite questions. Adam, do you feel like constraints drive people to be more creative or less creative?

Adam Morgan

Yeah, I’ll answer it. And again, everyone feel free to jump in.

This is just my lived experience. It’s been, I don’t even know, 27 years in the industry. I feel like there have been times if I look deeply about what creativity is, it’s really just making new connections, right?

It’s like collecting a whole bunch of fodder in your head and making new connections around whatever strategy or product or thing that you’re working on. But I found that when you are constrained, when you make a smaller box, what it makes me do is think a lot deeper about, if I was trying to make an association between cars and pillows, right?

Like thinking about all those little details as deeply as I can, and then make more subtle connections that I wouldn’t have thought of before versus if it’s wide open — and I have times when it’s like we can do an ad about anything. And it’s just like you go so broad that the fodder you’re picking up all around is still pretty low hanging fruit, and it’s pretty broad.

And so there are sometimes that, like, could you do it either direction? A hundred percent. You can come up with a brilliant idea either way, but I feel like when you are constrained, it just puts you in a smaller area where you have to think a lot deeper and a lot quicker, and make more interesting connections than normally.

Stefan Woerle

I think to that point too, like what it’s always done for me, and what I’ve seen in other people, it causes me to focus, right? To your point, Adam, like if it’s wide open, like my thoughts wander to completely unrelated things and things that don’t quite connect properly, and I spend a lot of time trying to make those things connect even if that connection is inappropriate.

But if I have a constraint, then I think it forces me to go like, oh, I can’t go over there. That’s not right for this particular task or this project or whatever we’re working on. I think that seeing that it clears the noise out a little bit or at least some of the noise. And then you can make the choice of, okay, do I jump over that constraint and grab something from over there and bring it inside this box we’re creating?

Or do I just leave that on the side and it’s not worth the effort? I can make that assessment at that point, but if it’s open, then I don’t really make that sort of judgment call. It’s all on the table. And that’s, you know, overwhelming the paradox of choice, right?

Jess Ivy

I love those answers. I wanna hear what you have to say too first. Katelyn, go ahead.

Katelyn Mueller

I really agree with that sort of decision paralysis or choice paralysis that comes with having, sort of a broad open blue sky.

I find blue sky brainstorms the most challenging. And I think part of that is also similar to what everybody has said. When you have constraints and when you’re in a smaller box, those constraints cause you to think a little bit more creatively or more unconventionally and maybe come up with a solution that if you had all the choice in the world, you might not come up with because you would go in the more conventional or more straightforward direction.

And so I really love that about constraints. I think constraints are wonderful.

Jess Ivy

They’re wonderful. Well, you know, and if we think back to sort of maybe earlier in our career, when you start out, constraints are like, ah, don’t pull me back. But I love that comment, you think about the purpose.

What is the purpose, you know? My background’s in entertainment, right? The movie Deadpool is an example of how constraints can really focus you on doing great things.

The original movie had a really, really tight budget, and they had to choose absolutely what they were gonna do for every single second in order to make it work, and in order to make it work without the giant budgets or all the things. And it’s a really, really tight, wonderful movie that made, you know, more than 10 times of what they spent on it.

Deadpool 2, they doubled the budget. Still a lot of fun, but did they double the quality? Not really. Sometimes I think that really focusing on the story you’re trying to tell, or the connections you’re trying to make, that makes us more creative. It’s exciting.

Stefan Woerle

I feel like when you don’t have constraints, it’s like working without a brief.

Jess Ivy

Oh no.

Stefan Woerle

Right. Exactly.

Adam Morgan

The dreaded non-brief project. Well, let’s move on to another topic. Let’s move over to Katelyn.

Katelyn Mueller

Adam, I’d love to hear what sort of suggestions you have for somebody to develop themselves creatively in an area that’s different from their expertise area. So, I come from an audio background. A lot of creatives in similar roles usually come from copywriting or visual design. And so, I’m not either of those by trade, but I’d love to learn more about them, become more confident in them. Love to hear if you have any suggestions on how best to do that.

Adam Morgan

Sure. And I don’t know if I have a silver bullet answer for that, but it is an important truth, especially when it comes to creative leadership. Early on in your career, let’s say you picked audio, like you’re really gonna dig deep in the craft, right? And you did that by reading a whole bunch of stuff, being passionate about it, caring about it, working on assignments around it, whatever that was, that gave you more and more experience and exposure to that.

But as you become a creative leader you suddenly have to be an expert on all of those things, right? You have to be good at writing and design and videography and photo shoots and all these other things, and you may or may not have had that experience building those skill sets. But I think the way to do it that I’ve seen is just to think about it the same way you did in the beginning. Just get passionate about it and care.

Let’s say you were a designer and suddenly you need to start managing writers, or you want to become a creative leader. It’s exposure. You’ve gotta start reading things, trying things, practicing things, doing whatever you can. Now here’s the good news. It’s not like, oh, I’ve gotta start 20 years of doing this in another path. And a lot of people get overwhelmed. They’re like, I’m already deep in this career. I’m not gonna start over. I’m just gonna stick with this and maybe just be a visual artist.

But I think that you learn catch-up tricks as you’ve [already] been through it all, like, what to really focus on and what to care about. And you can just go back and just start studying highlights and bigger moves rather than all the minutiae, because you may not have to be the expert expert.

You just need to be able to understand it well enough to guide it and bring all those pieces together. So, that’s how I’ve done it in my world. I started out as a designer and then I moved over to writing and then, you know, I made sure I kept up with do I understand all the programs? Can I design stuff? Can I bring things together? And now I’m sure we’re gonna talk about generative AI and all these other crazy things with tools changing and on top of us.

But it’s just a matter of like, yeah, am I gonna sit down and learn After Effects so I can do motion design even if I was a writer? Absolutely. You just need to get some exposure. Go watch some masterclass or whatever it may be. But I don’t think it takes as long the second time around, fortunately, but it is the same. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle. You still have to get on there and you still have to pedal a few times.

Stefan Woerle

I agree. I think it’s about getting out there. It’s trying, right? I think the big thing a lot of people have is they don’t have the courage to fail. I have a seven year-old and he’s trying things. And he gets real frustrated—he won’t admit it—that he’s not 100% perfect at anything right outta the bat.

And it’s like, no, you have to be bad at something to be good at something. So I think it’s, to your point, it’s the passion. It’s all that, but it’s really about the trying.

And I don’t know, Katelyn, if your question is about getting to that next level and then advancing in your career, or if it’s you personally trying something new. But for me, one of the big things as I grew in my career was a lot about oh, I don’t need to actually be perfect at all this stuff.

Right? Like, I manage project management teams and that is like, not my, my forte at all. Like, it is a part of my team, you know, but it’s not my history. And I just have to trust that the people that report up into me, like that’s their expertise.

I have to kind of be smart enough to know, like, that doesn’t feel right. And then ask the questions. It took me a long time to realize I didn’t have to be perfect at everything.

Katelyn Mueller

That definitely resonates a lot. In my role before when I was an individual contributor, just doing audio, like you really want to be as regimented and do it all. When you jump into more of a creative leadership position, I find you really just have to embrace that failure.

Jess Ivy

If I were to add one note to that, where is the lane to try to be perfect? It’s in being willing to try, being willing to learn, being willing to listen. You know what I mean? And that makes those relationships so rewarding and it makes our creative so much better, you know?

Stefan Woerle

Yeah. And, and I think to that point too, like, it’s asking the questions, right? Ask the dumb question, and just be okay with asking the dumb question.

Adam Morgan

You know something you said Katelyn, which was like, “I’m not a writer.” And I think the imposter syndrome with creatives is crazy real. And I feel that same thing too getting nearly two-and-a-half plus decades in the business. Like we’re all creators, and we absolutely probably just need to own that and then be okay with that because that’s gonna help us get past that fear of worrying about, oh, I’m not that title or that title, but just go for it.

That was a good discussion. Let’s learn some new skills for sure. Stefan, you’re up. What question do you have for us?

Stefan Woerle

Yeah, this is one I struggle with daily. So obviously there was the pandemic and we’re kind of coming out of that, but as part of that, what are the strategies we’re seeing that people are using to maintain their relationships amongst their teams, with their partners, with their vendors, their clients?

I only call someone if I have something that I need from them. I don’t have the building of those relationships that happen in the hallways, the water cooler chats, and things like that. I just didn’t know what people’s strategies are beyond that. I consider myself an extroverted introvert, meaning I find it much easier just to sit in my own little bubble at home and do things.

But, it’s hard and it’s taxing for me to constantly be making the steps to set time aside to call this person and that person.

Adam Morgan

Here are some of the things I’ve done, and maybe y’all can talk about what you’ve done with your teams to help get there. I have made specific meetings with the team that are just called water cooler meetings, where we would just like half an hour every week on a Thursday morning, just at least for certain teams to just get together and just chat and just kind of connect on some things. That was okay. I think some of the introverts didn’t like it cause it was like forcing them to be into something. But the thing that’s been really, really helpful for us to create community is we have a weekly meeting called Creative Workshop.

And every Friday morning people all around the country, we all join and it’s just a meeting just to be inspired. And so for years and years, I did this for like eight, it’s been eight-and-a-half years that I’ve been running at Adobe, where it’s like at the beginning I maybe like, here’s a cool book I read, I’m just gonna tell you about and do a book report. Or here’s a great TED talk, let’s watch it real quick and then have a discussion. Or let’s bring in a guest speaker to come talk about a certain topic.

But then I ran out of all the stuff that I care about and so I opened it up to the team. And now you know, I have a calendar for the whole next year, where it’s just every week someone else on the team is in charge and they have to share some passion that they’re working on.

Some cool new trend or technology, some new book, whatever it may be. Just they have to be in charge of bringing it together. And it’s been phenomenal. I think everyone loves Workshop because there’s no pressure or stress unless it’s your week, obviously, but it’s just so great to come in and be inspired and look at some great work.

I think the end result is that it creates a little more of those connections that are not part of just a project or a work or whatever it may be. So that’s just one thing I’ve done.

Let me open it up. You all see if you guys have done other ways to make those connections a little more natural.

Katelyn Mueller

I love that. We kind of do something similar on my team.

We have monthly team meetings and part of the meeting is set aside for just general updates and admin and work showcases and things like that. But we have two alternating things every month, and one of them is called Spark, and that’s just someone volunteering to share something that has sparked their creativity or inspiration.

And that can be anything from a museum exhibit to a design principle to an ad campaign. Just sort of anything that they have been creatively really interested in. And it’s usually just a 10- minute discussion/presentation about it. And I love that because it’s a way to learn things about different areas of expertise that I may not know about.

And then the other alternating thing is what’s called My Musical Journey. Because we’re an audio company, audio’s in our DNA and music’s in our DNA, someone volunteers to go through their life in the music that they’ve listened to throughout their life. And it’s a really cool way to learn about somebody in a different way. I’ve learned so much about people that I’ve worked with for years and years just by the music that they listened to as a kid, teenager, college student, you know. Sometimes it’s not what you would’ve expected out of somebody. And I love that.

Jess Ivy

Oh my gosh. My musical journey. That’s so cool. I love that. So those are really bigger things, Adam and Katelyn, that you both came up with that I love.I kind of wanna adopt both of them. I’ll actually drive it really way down and be tactical for a minute. That concept of maintaining relationships, some of the things that seem stupid when we’re in this virtual world are really important, right?

I will start every day reaching out to my team that’s in multiple countries or whatever and saying, “Hello. Happy Wednesday. I’m excited about this. And the weather is terrible. How’s everybody doing?” And that’s a teeny, tiny, little tactical thing. And you say, does that matter?

But I actually try to start every day with some kind of dialogue. Because it breaks that seal, and it gets people more open in talking to each other.

And the one other thing I love is when we do full team meetings, we start them basically with applause. Before we jump into what we’re doing and what our challenges are, we take a look back from there to the last time we met, and call out something amazing—what you’re proud of, or the voice of our customers, the kudos we’ve gotten, or something that was well received, and we start every meeting with that. It allows you to have that conversation that’s going back to individuals.

Adam Morgan

Yeah, that’s awesome. And even though audio is one way, like there’s certainly other ways to do it.

You could do it through like the books that have influenced your life. You could do through the movies that have made you, or any other medium.

Let’s head back to Jess if you wanna ask your next question.

Jess Ivy

Well, I think this keeps building on what we’ve been talking about for designers that are more in the corporate world, right? The times right now are so challenging.

Changing teams and org structures, and a lot of folks are dealing with uncertainty, you know? And what do you think, Adam, are some of the best ways for creatives to adapt and to thrive within all of that?

Adam Morgan

I’m gonna start first with just trying to relate personally to that. Because it is a real thing. This uncertain environment is not just new to right now. Like, those of us who have been in the industry for a long time, it’s a cycle and it’ll come and go and come and go constantly.

In fact, my first exposure to it was back in, what was it, ’96, ’97. One of the first agencies I worked for, they laid off like 60 people. And so, as being one of them, I have a lot of PTSD from that experience because I went in kind of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed excited, and it had only been like a couple years that I’d worked at this agency and then it was like, shazam! You’re all gone. And even to this day, when recessions come or things are tight, I get into that fight or flight mode and just get worried.

So how do you survive and thrive in all of that is a great question. I’d say things that have helped me personally over the years — and maybe this is terrible, just because back in the agency days early on it was like there was no security. Zero security in this world. And so the only security I had was in my own skills and portfolio and who I am. And I think the number one step is to take solace in knowing what you’re capable of. Take solace in knowing that you’ve got a good set of work or good skills or skills that can get you jobs and money.

Just to start with that, and if you don’t have that, that’s a good place to build right in the beginning. How do you thrive? Build the better skills. Make yourself viable.

After that I would say the next step that I would look to is relationships. There will be some people who have your back and some who don’t. Who are the relationships that I’ve built trust with over the years? The people who know my skill set. And it’s not that it’s like the old boys’ club of relationships and that’s how business works, but business is a matter of connections and trust and relationships. So how do you work on those and build those so that you’re feeling more safe and connected. And then beyond that, I think it’s a case by case basis for every company.

Don’t get so hung up that this is the only problem out there in this world. This time will pass and this will be a great moment just to get ready for whatever the next move is that you’re gonna go after.

The only person holding you back if you really think about it in true terms is yourself. You’re the only person holding yourself back from everything that you want to do. And so once you can grasp onto that kind of hope, then it’s like you can ride the wave of all the turmoil of things that are up and down, because in the end, you’re gonna be charting your path, you’re gonna be charting your career and going where you want to go and making sure you’re building relationships and skills to get to that path.

Jess Ivy

Adam, I love that because what you just did, so succinctly, is to boil that down to the things an individual can control, right? So there’s all kinds of things we can’t control, but you really sort of focus on controlling the things you can. Your skills, your relationships, you know, that kind of thing.

Awesome. Anyone else wanna talk about that?

Stefan Woerle

Yeah, you talked earlier about, I think you made a comment like, as creatives it seems like we all have some level of imposter syndrome. And I think my answer to that, Jess, has been always that I have tried to weaponize that imposter syndrome.

Because I’ve never fully felt comfortable in any role I’ve ever had. Mentally, you know, you can do it, but like, inside you’ve always got that imposter thing. Like, I weaponize that and so I work 10%, 15, 20% harder than I probably need to just to make sure that I’m ahead. That puts you in a good position, it makes you valuable, it makes you just that much further ahead than those people who aren’t putting in that extra 10, 20% that they need to.

My team, in our organization, changed a lot of roles in the last year. My MarComm team specifically has stayed very consistent, very stable over the last couple years, but the marketing org around us has changed a lot, and that has caused a lot of people to worry. And I think as a creative director, as a manager of my team, I think it’s about transparency and knowing these are the reasons this happens.

Just the transparency, like, yeah, business has been tough, especially the last year, right? Recessions and inflations and all this stuff. And everyone’s worried. But, you know, we can only control what we can control. And if I can tell my team and give them as much information as I can about what’s happening, then they get to make their decisions. So I’m just trying to give them the tools to do that with.

Katelyn Mueller

I love all of this and this discussion is obviously very relevant right now. It’s something that’s been on my mind. It’s on everybody’s mind. And I think something that helps me is just acknowledging that the only constant is change, no matter what the situation is.

Whether it’s the instability within tech right now, whether it’s a reorg, whether it’s just a team redefining itself. You know, thinking back on my career at Sirius XM — I started at Pandora, which was acquired by Sirius XM, and that was a very unstable time. And so there’s always gonna be something. And so I think learning to sit with that and be okay with that is a really valuable skill. It’s something I still struggle with at times, but it’s important. And because I think it’s always gonna be there.

And then additionally, just being open to other possibilities and opportunities.

When I was in the games industry, I went through a layoff that was hard at the time, but it was what led me on my current path. I saw an opportunity for a job in audio advertising and even though I had never really considered that before, I was open to it, and I looked into it, and it ended up being a place where I could really grow and develop as a creative and in ways that I never would’ve expected.

I’m so thankful in retrospect for that layoff because it put me on a really different path. I mean it’s easy to say now years, years later, but I think you kind of never know what’s gonna happen, and it might feel really scary in the moment, but it’s an opportunity. Going back to our constraints discussion, you’re faced with this constraint, but it might just cause you to think differently about what you wanna do next, or what you wanna explore.

Stefan Woerle

I think that’s a great point, Katelyn. I mean, I look back at previous positions I’ve had, and there’s one in particular where I wasn’t laid off, but the writing was sort of on the wall heading in that direction, and I left that company.

And actually took a step back in my career even for various reasons. But I took a lower level position and through that, like I have advanced several steps beyond. And I look back at that original company, and I don’t think I would’ve had that growth in that company. Like this situation that was very stressful and filled me with a lot of nervousness and anxiety in the end has really worked out for me and allowed me to be where I’m at today.

So to your point, there’s a need to be open that whatever comes of this churn is an opportunity, and how do you grab that opportunity to make it into something that works for you?

Adam Morgan

I think a couple things, just playing off of what you two were just saying. Number one, just know that we all as leaders or individuals or whatever it may be, have a lot more skill than what I think we give ourselves credit for.

You have more control over your career. You don’t have to live in the fear. I think we need to stop thinking that we’re victims of all of this and be more intentional about our careers and what we are going after and what we’re gonna learn and grow and where we’re gonna go. I think the more intentional you are about that at any level, the fear kind of dissipates. It goes away a little bit more when you have a plan and you’re really working on something.

I think for me, the message would be first trusting yourself that you know a little more than you think you do, and you don’t need to be worried. It’s all up to you where you can go. And if you have that glass half full kind of a mentality and start charting your course and really figuring it out, then the world is your oyster. Like, just go for it. There’s opportunity at every level to do something creative and exciting, and you have the power within yourself.

I think we have time for one more question, and we’re back to you, Stefan. So let’s hear the closer.

Stefan Woerle

It’s been a tough last year, you know, recessions and inflation, all that stuff. And companies, I’m sure it’s not just mine, are asking us to do more with less and more with less and more with less constantly.

And I’m just wondering what you guys see in your teams with yourselves, you know, how do you prevent burnouts? I’m asking people to do more and not giving the resources they really need to do that. So it weighs on me a lot at night how to keep my team from collapsing in on themselves.

Adam Morgan

That’s a tough question.

I think the first step that I usually take is how can I not get them to burn out by fixing the processes — streamlining something, taking some of the swirl out of work so that they’re not getting hit by that. You know, getting it into bite size chunks — at least the work or the meetings or the process. And I mean, there’s been so many discussions about how many meetings and when and where and who needs to be there. Just trying to fix some of that.

And I think it’s helped, but you also gotta be careful that you don’t streamline it so much that people are just all off on their own and they’re not feeling the connections. So I think that’s where I’d start, probably.

And then I think the second half is introducing more humanity, like Jess is saying. Moments and meetings and connections so that you don’t feel isolated and you don’t feel like that you don’t have a voice or you don’t have an opportunity to share any of those things. And I think the more we can get those feelings and that opportunity to connect, I think it helps a lot more.

Jess Ivy

How do you avoid burnout? Right? What a question. I don’t have the answer to the question. You know, I have some things that I think are important, but that is the daily struggle of leadership — how to help folks to recognize that they’re human too. Like sometimes you gotta give a moment of a safe space for somebody to be human. Sometimes we will have a meeting, not very often — a couple times a year, and the sole purpose is for everyone to say okay, this is the biggest thing that is driving me nuts right now. Sometimes that allows us to come back and be passionate, be enthusiastic, et cetera. Recognizing we’re human is great.

I’ll tell you as creative leaders, the things that Adam said first is the ongoing battle that is so important to us. Those processes and the systems and trying to get that work to a manageable thing? Well, I struggle with that every day, but that is the goal, that’s the inspiration is to get us to a reasonable amount of work where people are pushing themselves and they’re pushing themselves hard, but not just to such a place where they can’t create great things.

That’s what we’re here for.

Katelyn Mueller

I echo everybody’s sentiment that this is kind of just the ongoing struggle. I can’t say that I’ve solved it or come up with perfect strategies, but the things that I try to do in my day-to-day are creating those boundaries for myself and modeling them for others.

So making sure that I block out time for lunch every day on my calendar. And, you know, that time is flexible. If somebody needs to meet with me at that time, I can make it work. But, just making sure that I’m not working through lunch and that others see that my Slack status switches to having lunch and that I’m not responding to slacks during that break. Things like taking my PTO — and our team encourages everybody to take the PTO that they’ve accrued — and not checking email during that time. If you do that for yourself and others see that you’re doing it, I think it encourages them to be able to properly unplug and take the time that they need because that rest is so important.

But yes, I think process is a big part of that. And then also something that I’ve learned is sometimes you have to let that process fail in order to prove that it needs to change or something needs to be done. Or to make a case for extra headcount being, you know, assigned to a project that sometimes we just do have to do more with less, but sometimes you just can’t. And it has to sort of break down a little bit, as uncomfortable as that can be, in order to be like, “Hey, this isn’t working, and we can’t sustain this without some sort of change.”

Stefan Woerle

I agree. Like the processes are important. I think a lot of times, what we try and do is really define the type of work we’re doing and the type we’re not gonna do. Cause I think a lot of times it’s like, oh, you guys are so creative. Could you do this thing for me that’s not a part of your normal daily thing and, and whatever. So I really try to keep those [as a leader]. And, and to your point, Adam, I’m finding the efficiencies in the process and stuff like that.

I think we all kind of talked about it’s people keeping people as humans in the process, right? And knowing that you’re not a robot. You can’t work 40 hours, 50 hours now, 60 now 70 hour, 80 hours a week. Because that’s a different career. That’s a different career path, right? I can’t do that.

Talking about hybrid workplaces again, like, I used to be really good at, this is work, this is home. And they don’t cross. But now there’s a blurry, blurry gray line on those two. And so to your point, Katelyn, like you gotta really make sure that you’re keeping that line as hard as you can.

Adam Morgan

Well that’s the whole beauty of all of this, right? None of us have answers for everything perfectly, but we can at least just share our lived experience.

Jess Ivy

One last note I’d put just on that last little bit you said about work-life balance and where that line is, you know, that’s really tough. Sometimes that’s really tough for me because I’m a little bit of an open book, so I see it go back and forth.

But I think, again, as leaders, if we are seeing our people as individuals and really respect those folks that like to keep it totally separate and make that a safe thing, and respect those folks that like to share the other aspects of their lives and like to share and talk about it and just make it okay for people to be coming and presenting themselves in their work world in a way that they perform best at.

And I think that as creatives. If we really want them doing great work, then, you know, meeting them where they are is sometimes part of the job.

Adam Morgan

That was fantastic, and bringing the humanity to it, and just getting to know you three a little bit better today. I appreciate it. I appreciate your time hanging out with us here on the show, just sharing your thoughts, your lived experience. It’s been awesome. So thank you.

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