Confessions of a Creative Leader

Strategy season is here, which means I’ve been living in decision-making land. And the more workshops I run, the more one question keeps nagging me: why do the tools work great, and the decisions still don’t stick? Today’s post is part lay of the land, part confession. If you’re new to facilitation, you’ll get the toolkit. If you’re a seasoned pro, you’ll get what’s been bugging me, and an invitat...

Heads up: This one is very vulnerable. It’s worth a listen if you’re a working parent, or if you lead, manage, or facilitate working parents and want to understand their world outside of work. It’s cathartic, it’s unrehearsed, and there are tears and some explicit language. When I told my friends on a walk what I’d written in my journal, they said I needed to share it. So here it is. Raw vulnerabi...

We finished the book club today, y’all. After almost two months in Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus, we landed on the conclusion — “How Ambitious Are You?” — and it’s a short chapter, but it hit different than the rest of the book. It’s more direct, less framework, more gut-check. So this one’s less me paraphrasing and more me reading it straight to you and telling you where it landed. Wha...

Hey y’all! We’re almost through Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus, this time on Chapter 8, Landing on New Planets. This one is about what happens when you try to build on a platform that doesn’t have any rules yet, whether that’s AI, robotics, or whatever comes next, and it landed right in the middle of me actually wrestling with some of this at work. What you’ll learn: * The core problem t...

Hey y’all! Full transparency: this was one of those weeks. I barely carved out the time to hit record, so today’s episode is short and unpolished, even by my “raw and unedited” standards. But Chapter 7 of Life at the Speed of Play couldn’t have landed at a better moment, because it’s all about keeping your product or service actually good while you’re growing your team. What you’ll learn: * Why “s...

We’re on Chapter 6 of our Life at the Speed of Play read-along, and this one’s about Bold Beats, Mark Pincus’s term for the fast, high-impact moves that sit between two traps most product teams fall into: endless tinkering on small “mouse nut” features, or getting swallowed by a massive “boil the ocean” project that takes years and never quite launches. This chapter hit close to home, since I’ve l...

What Mark Pincus taught me about turning a roadmap from a checkbox into the heartbeat of a team, right as I’m avoiding building one myself. This week in our Life at the Speed of Play read-along, we hit Chapter 5: Roadmapping Is Your OS. It could not have landed at a more inconvenient time. I recently moved into a new role as Senior Director of Product Growth, I’m building a brand new AI-native pro...

Hey y'all! In this episode we're continuing our book club series on Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus , and we're getting into chapter four: Proven, Better, New. This is honestly one of my favorite frameworks so far, the idea that you don't earn the right to build something new until you've mastered what already works. I'm sharing why I think this shifts the whole "copying is bad" mindset w...

Continuing our summer read-along of Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus, this week’s chapter goes after a term most of us in product have used without question for twenty years: MVP. Pincus’s argument is that the word “viable” is the problem. It’s become an excuse to overinvest before you’ve ever learned anything, when the actual odds that your first version succeeds are close to zero anyway....

Continuing our summer read-along of Life at the Speed of Play by Zynga founder Mark Pincus, this week I’m digging into Chapter Two: Instincts vs. Ideas. Pincus’s claim that stopped me cold: our instincts are right about 95% of the time, but our ideas are only right about 25% of the time. Once I sat with that, it changed how I think about my own ideas — and the ones my team is generating right now...

Life at the Speed of Play, Chapter One: The Book of Life How creating a Book of Life makes your life worth living, and scaffolds you as a strategic leader Continuing our summer read-along of Life at the Speed of Play by Zynga founder Mark Pincus , this week I’m digging into Chapter One: The Book of Life. Pincus’s core idea, “know your goal or suffer death by 1,000 compromises,” comes from his own...

Let’s get started with our new book series. I’m kicking off the Life at the Speed of Play read-along, starting with Reid Hoffman’s foreword and Mark Pincus’s introduction. This is a short intro episode to help you decide if you want to journey through the book with me. I’ll be doing roughly one chapter a week through the end of September. What you’ll learn: * Why I’m anchoring this next stretch of...

I’m back after an unplanned couple-months break, and I wanted to catch you up on life! I’m talking about what I’ve brought back into my full-time Senior Director of Product Growth role after my stint as a part-time entrepreneur. I’m in throws of building a new AI-native product, and about to soft launch it next week. Also, the new book I’m picking up as my next read-along is Life at the Speed of P...

Hello! Really short podcast today. I cleaned my office today, and opened up a box I have been avoiding for nearly 3 months! Listen to learn more, and I have a little video of the unboxing below. Unboxing Video 1 Unboxing Video 2 The Guides Hat Get full access to Confessions of a Creative Leader at creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com/subscribe

This week I’m showing up without a plan, and that’s kind of the whole point. I was supposed to continue the AI in facilitation series, but I wasn’t feeling it. And rather than not show up at all, I decided to just tell you what’s actually on my mind right now. In this episode I talk about: * Why I’ve scaled way back on how much time I spend preparing these episodes — and why that’s intentional, no...

This week I switched things up a little. Instead of my usual audio-only format, I recorded a Loom video so I could actually show you what I’ve been doing. In this episode, you’ll learn: * What the Differentiators activity is and why it’s one of the most valuable — and time-consuming — exercises in a Foundation Sprint * The “AI in the seams” move: how to use natural white space in your agenda (sile...

Note: This post is a quick recap of the episode. The podcast is richer — more stories, more texture, more of the real stuff. It’s about 10 minutes at 1.5x speed and worth the listen. After a month away and a year and a half as Confessions of a Facilitation Artist , this show has a new name, Confessions of a Creative Leader. Why “Confessions” stays: It traces back to my Catholic roots — my dad is a...

This week’s episode is an unscripted, straight-from-the-heart update — no notes, no rehearsal, just me on a Saturday afternoon with something to share. And yes, I recorded it a few days ago, but share in the podcast why I delayed sharing. Also, this is not an April Fool’s joke. :) Consider this my One Thing reveal. Here’s what I covered: * The personal and professional journey that led me to go ba...

This week’s episode is a wrap-up, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. If you’re looking for the deep insights and big frameworks from The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, head back to the earlier episodes in this series — that’s where the real meat is. This one is more of a send-off. Go ahead and give it a quick listen, but here’s a snapshot of what I covered this week: * The final two cha...

Note: Thanks to Claude (with me in the loop), the AI blog version is back. All of it is derived from the podcast — which goes deeper if you’re so inclined. Also, any pulled quoted are excerpts from the book. We’re still in Part 3 of “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Last week covered the why, what, and how — purpose, priority, and productivity. This week is about what happens after y...

Note: Hey all. Thanks to Claude (with me in the loop), the AI blog version is back again. All of it is derived from the podcast — which goes deeper if you’re so inclined. We’re into Part 3 of “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan — and this section is called Extraordinary Results: Unlocking the Possibilities Within You. Today we’re covering the first three chapters: Live With Purpose (the...

Note: Hey all. The blog version is back this week. All of it is derived from the podcast — which goes deeper if you're so inclined. This week we’re diving back into part two (chapters 10-12) of “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. This post stands alone — no book required, no previous episodes needed. “There is an art of clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters. It is simp...

Right now, my priority is the podcast over polished Substack posts due to time constraints as a busy working mom—listen for the full, unedited conversation! In this episode of Confessions of a Facilitation Artist , I dive into chapters 8 and 9 of The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, busting the myths of “a balanced life” and “big is bad.” What I Talked About I share raw reflections on shi...

Quick Note: This Week is Podcast-Only Hey everyone. I’ve decided NOT to create a blog version in Substack because writing that is just not my one thing right now. If you really want to follow along, definitely I encourage you to listen to the podcast. Maybe I’ll bring back the full Substack, but I’m just giving you the cliff’s notes today. In this episode, I share how I’m applying The One Thing by...

Hello, everyone! If you are reading this in real time, Happy Valentine’s Day. Last week I kicked off a series on The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. We discussed the first three chapters. This week we are talking about chapters 4 and 5, which is part of Part One: The Lies: They Lead Us and Derail Us. Don’t worry, you don’t need to read the book unless you choose, and you don’t need to li...