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It’s easy to know what your next career step is, but it’s not so easy to know how to get there. The best way to plan your creative career is to learn from the paths paved by creative veterans. In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, Adam Morgan chats with Joe Esposito, creative director at IBM — and asks him hard-hitting questions to help you pave your own way to a fulfilling creative career.Real Creative Leadership is building a community to address the issues, challenges, and benefits of creative leadership. The webinar series is produced by The Stoke Group (@thestokegroup), a full-service digital marketing and creative agency. Our host Adam Morgan (@askadmo) is Adobe’s executive creative director, an Adweek Creative 100, and author of Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business. For more information, go to realcreativeleadership.com.

Gone are the days of traditional, linear career paths. To build a successful and satisfying creative career, you have to chart your own course — and develop a whole set of leadership and business skills that complement your creative craft. In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, host Adam Morgan shares the top 3 leadership skills you’ll need, along with other tips for planning your dream career.Real Creative Leadership is building a community to address the issues, challenges, and benefits of creative leadership. The webinar series is produced by The Stoke Group (@thestokegroup), a full-service digital marketing and creative agency. Our host Adam Morgan (@askadmo) is Adobe’s executive creative director, an Adweek Creative 100, and author of Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business. For more information, go to realcreativeleadership.com.

To guide you to your next creative career milestone and beyond, Adam Morgan has tailored a new curriculum for Real Creative Leadership Season 2. In this mini-episode, you’ll get a detailed overview of what’s coming up, including where to find an outline of topics Adam will cover this year. Get ready for more intriguing guests and more wisdom from Adam — everything you love about RCL, with some exciting new parts, too.Real Creative Leadership is building a community to address the issues, challenges, and benefits of creative leadership. The webinar series is produced by The Stoke Group (@thestokegroup), a full-service digital marketing and creative agency. Our host Adam Morgan (@askadmo) is Adobe’s executive creative director, an Adweek Creative 100, and author of Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business. For more information, go to realcreativeleadership.com.

Artist and entrepreneur Chase Jarvis says planning your creative career isn’t about the map — it’s about the compass. In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, Adam Morgan shows how to plan the next direction in your creative career, reminding us that it’s not a linear journey. You might bounce all over the map as a creative, but it doesn’t matter — as long as you know where you’re going.Real Creative Leadership is building a community to address the issues, challenges, and benefits of creative leadership. The webinar series is produced by The Stoke Group (@thestokegroup), a full-service digital marketing and creative agency. Our host Adam Morgan (@askadmo) is Adobe’s executive creative director, an Adweek Creative 100, and author of Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business. For more information, go to realcreativeleadership.com.

Content experts will tell you that consumers will only pay attention to short, fast content. But our customers aren’t goldfish. That’s why anomaly matters more than other factors like length and speed, as Adam Morgan explains in this episode of Real Creative Leadership. Memorable marketing content doesn’t have to be fast — but it should be unique.Real Creative Leadership is building a community to address the issues, challenges, and benefits of creative leadership. The webinar series is produced by The Stoke Group (@thestokegroup), a full-service digital marketing and creative agency. Our host Adam Morgan (@askadmo) is Adobe’s executive creative director, an Adweek Creative 100, and author of Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business. For more information, go to realcreativeleadership.com.

Your journey to become a creative director isn’t easy. But there might be some key practices you’re missing that could make all the difference. In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, learn how to tackle learning strategy, ask the right questions, and have purpose while working toward that promotion.Real Creative Leadership is building a community to address the issues, challenges, and benefits of creative leadership. The webinar series is produced by The Stoke Group (@thestokegroup), a full-service digital marketing and creative agency. Our host Adam Morgan (@askadmo) is Adobe’s executive creative director, an Adweek Creative 100, and author of Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business. For more information, go to realcreativeleadership.com.

We’re about to take away the mystery on how creatives build successful leadership careers.We invested some decent dollars into a survey firm that polled hundreds of creative leaders … and we’re ready to reveal the exclusive results into what it takes to craft a career in creativity. In this episode we explore the research along with a panel of top creatives from world-renowned brands — Google, Microsoft, CreativeLive, Adobe — in a real, raw and honest webinar produced by The Stoke Group and hosted by Adobe Executive Creative Director Adam Morgan.We’ll explore answers to:How much does education factor into creatives’ success? What skills are needed to succeed as a creative director? How long does it take to land a creative director position?Can someone from, say, a photography background be a creative executive, or do you need to be from a design or editorial background? Is there an age ceiling to a creative career? How do top performing creatives prevent burnout?How do you stay at the top of your game — and lead others to do the same?And … more.

It’s not enough to just be a rockstar.Here’s the hard truth: even if you’re the best writer or designer in your agency, it doesn’t mean you’re cut out to be a creative director. To lead a creative team you need to have a handle on everything from managing relationships to controlling workflow to, according to Adam Morgan, “making things happen.”In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, Adam Morgan shares how he became a creative director and how, by mastering both the hard and soft skills, you can, too.Tune in to learn:Nine critical skills to become a creative directorHow to manage relationships, even outside your teamWhat it means to resource, talk khaki, and “hustle”How to know you’re ready to become a creative director

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 marketersHow creatives can branch out into other leadership positionsWhat creatives need to learn to start speaking in business termsMore 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 khakiThe best methods and materials to help you learn the languageWhy understanding your organization's business is foundational to business languageHow 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 createsHow to shift your mindset from efficiency to long-term growthWhy creatives should always tie ideas back to the business and include business partners in their process early onHow 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 resultsThe importance of developing strategic skillsHow 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 environmentsThe value of putting yourself in the shoes of non-creative peersTips 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 negativeHow to avoid getting defensive about receiving feedbackWhose feedback to value the mostHow to rate and rank feedbackHow 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 teamsExamine how real companies tackle strategy and managing projectsLearn 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?

Make your data work for you. Part one of Why Creative Directors Should Care About Data tackled why creative directors should care about data. Now, in part two, learn how to use that data to its best advantage. The right data can inform your creative decisions, but you have to know what the right data looks like and understand what it’s trying to tell you. In this webinar, discover how to read the data to make the right creative decisions: Learn why the numbers themselves sometimes don’t tell the whole story.Understand the impact of emotions on the customer journey.Get tips for quantifying the success and value of creative projects.

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?

Get ready for change.Change can come in an instant and navigating your team through growth or scaling back, or outsourcing projects or bringing them in-house, is the sign of a great leader. Many resources exist to help you as you scale, and knowing the right option for your situation will make your job easier. In this webinar, discover insights about the process of scaling up or down: Why you shouldn’t handle all the projects yourself. How to know when it’s time to scale. The advantages and disadvantages of working with various professionals and agencies.