Smart Creative Leadership

For the past few weeks, I've been running the first cohort in the Smart Creative Leadership course that I've designed. Once we wrap it up, I'm going to do a full retrospective which I'll share here.

In the meantime, though, one of my favorite things in the course has been the interviews I've been doing with smart creative leaders. In practice, it means that once or twice a week I set up some time to talk with one of my friends about something that I know they are extraordinarily good at. As you might imagine, the wisdom and insight that emerges from those conversations is breathtaking.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to introduce you to some of these incredible people by pulling out some short clips from our conversation and sharing them here. They'll be pretty short - usually 1-2 minutes a piece. If you dig them, I'm going to plan to share even more of them on the newly minted Routine Chaos Twitter & LinkedIn accounts1. If you really dig the short videos, well...a little birdie tells me that there may be a second cohort of the course happening later this year2.

This week, let me introduce you to my friend Keno Omu, the Co-Founder and Chief Academic Officer at Kibo School. In the clip below, she discusses how leaders face their own insecurities.

• First of all - damn, that is so relevant for anyone engaged in the process of building new things. The work of creating, it just has so much potential to play on all of a person's insecurities.

• Second of all - listen to that 2 minutes. Wouldn't you want to work with Keno? You can see the impact that smart creative leaders bring to their teams and their companies in the way they build this muscle of navigating deep challenges.

• Third of all - if you didn't click that link for Kibo School above, here's another chance to. Keno and the whole team there are really building something special. They're worth keeping an eye on.

Two links to share this week:

• Edward Nevramont on the book Talent and on finding smart creative talent - his insights about people who can drive projects and on how to find them really hits home.

• A fun depth cut - Several years ago, Keno and I actually co-wrote an article together for The Conversation on opportunities for new university models...this was before Kibo was even an idea3. It's so cool to see how some of the ideas in there have evolved in the work she's doing now.

Back next week with another short video.