Herding Tigers: The Creative Leader Podcast

In 1995, Bill Gates disappeared into a cedar cabin in the Pacific Northwest for a week — no meetings, no family, no distractions. What emerged from that silence was a memo called "The Internet Tidal Wave" that repositioned Microsoft for the internet age. He called it Think Week. And it changed everything.

Most of us can't take a week off-grid. But the principle behind what Gates did is available to every leader, every single d...

In this episode of the Herding Tigers podcast, we take a deep dive into the real heart of leadership: people. We discuss the complex, often unpredictable nature of leading teams and explore how leadership is less about administrating tasks and more about owning responsibility in three crucial areas—culture, talent, and work.

We outline the difference between merely managing these areas and fundamentally owning them. Culture is...

In this surprise revival of the Herding Tigers Podcast, we kick off a new direction with an exploration of what it means to "optimize" as leaders. We discuss the invisible drivers that cause organizational tension, challenging the idea that conflict always comes from personality clashes or miscommunication. Instead, we unpack the reality that everyone—ourselves included—is optimizing for something different, whether it&...

There are five process-related conversations that can help your team maintain better focus, dispel fear, and manage expectations. In this episode, I share the five conversations and how to implement them effectively.

First a few ground-rules. Do not steamroll your team with these and if you're a team member, don't barge into your manager's office demanding to have these conversations. This is about relationship and relationship is a...

The hardest transition to make when you step into a leadership role is the one from maker to manager. When you are early in your career, you are primarily evaluated on your ability to do the work - to control it, shape it, and make it great. However, once you transition into leadership your job is no longer to do the work, it's to LEAD the work. This is a fundamentally different responsibility, and one that many managers get wrong.

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There is a big difference between telling the actual truth and telling people what you wish was the truth. Some leaders think that to inspire their team they must always have a positive vision, so they translate that belief to “I must ensure that team members feel like everything is going great.”

However, this is not driven by a desire to do what’s in the best interest of the team, but by the neediness of the leade...

In many ways, leadership is about risk mitigation. You want to channel resources and team effort in the direction most likely to generate the results you want, while at the same time minimizing the potential downside of getting it wrong. This is especially challenging when doing creative work, because the downside of getting it wrong can be significant. If you make the wrong decisions early in a project, the net result can be days ...

One of the more concerning dynamics of the “everything is on the record all the time” world is that changing your mind – especially in a highly public way – has become SIN NUMBER ONE. If a politician or business leader evolves in their understanding of a topic, we call them a flip flopper. If someone alters their once-fierce perspective in light of newfound information, we call them a hypocrite or a traitor....

It’s human nature to want to assign blame. Since the dawn of time we’ve assigned unseen causes to effects that we can’t explain. We even find ways of off-loading blame for our vices (the devil made me do it!) and our shortcomings (it’s just my nature.)

Much of this blame-shifting is in the effort to protect ourselves. We don’t like being seen by others as a failure, or as lacking self-control. There are...

After a failed project, many teams simply move forward to the next one, without a postmortem. This is a huge mistake. It’s important as a leader that you seize those failures and mistakes and turn them into growth moments for your team. Otherwise, people are likely to commit the same mistakes again. Some of the biggest coaching opportunities you’ll have are in the moments when an individual or your team has failed, and ...

As a leader of a creative organization, your job may be to tell your client’s story through the work of your team. Your team is in the business of positively shaping the perception a market has towards what your client is selling. You are attempting to gain the market’s trust through creative storytelling and branding. If effective storytelling is as much a part of selling your client’s image to the market then wh...

Leadership is hard. It’s a lonely role, you face crushing uncertainty with elevated stakes, and you’re expected to deliver not only on your own work, but also to corral the creative minds of others and parade them into the promised land. (Oh, and did I mention that it’s often thankless?)

However, leadership is also a tremendous opportunity. You get the privilege of helping others unleash their best work, and you ge...