Counterargument

“Results are the job. Relationships are nice to have but the work speaks for itself. Soft skills are called soft for a reason.”

Why I still think this

No brief gets approved, no budget gets unlocked, and no difficult conversation gets resolved on craft alone. The people who dismiss relationships as soft are usually the people who've never had to move a skeptical executive, coach a talented IC to the next level, or keep a cross-functional team from fragmenting mid-project. Relationships are the infrastructure the work runs on. I've never seen excellent creative come out of a broken dynamic.

Where this came from

Every in-house role I've held. Greenhouse and Articulate most of all, where getting buy-in and working in collaboration was critical. The best initiatives always required someone to believe in it before the work could move. Craft got me in the room, but relationships got the things made.

Counterargument

“AI is the most powerful creative tool in a generation. Resisting it is fear dressed up as principle. The best creatives will use every tool available.”

Why I still think this

I use AI daily. I've built custom AI skills for my team. I’ve trained my team on AI. But I use it the way I use a good creative ops system: to reduce friction, optimize mundane tasks, and surface better decisions faster. AI helps with repetitive tasks when you have a set framework. And while you can use AI as an idea mirror, creativity is best left to human judgement. The work that comes from AI-assisted production looks like the person who directed it.

Where this came from

Building AI resources for creative/brand at Articulate, and watching what happened to briefs when AI went into the ideation layer versus the production layer. The difference in the output was immediate.

Counterargument

“Awards create standards, elevate craft, and give the industry a shared vocabulary for excellence. Dismissing them is contrarian for its own sake.”

Why I still think this

Work wins awards when it's legible to a room of peers in a short window of time. That's not the same skill as making something that works in the market, outlasts the campaign, or changes how a brand is perceived. The best work I've been part of never made a shortlist, and half the reason is the entry fee. The entrant fee filters out the startups and in-house teams too busy building the business to parade their creative; that's not a flaw in their work, it just means their priorities were in a different place.

Where this came from

Sitting on the jury for the New York Festivals Advertising Awards, and being part of a team that won a Webby. Watching what got votes in that room and then watching what actually worked once it was out in the world. Those two lists were never quite the same.

Counterargument

“Middle managers who facilitate communication between exec and IC voices are the connective tissue of any organization. Remove them and you get communication breakdowns and independent contributors with no advocate in the room.”

Why I still think this

What happens to a manager whose only value is relaying information up and down without adding judgment? AI tools, better async systems, and flatter org designs are already replacing that job. What's not going away is the player-coach: the person who does the work and develops the people doing it. If your value is summarizing the IC's work for the exec above you, you're already in a precarious position.

Where this came from

The market. AI makes narrow, single-function output cheap, so this role has less to offer. What's scarce now is someone who can be strategist, operator, and coach at once, with the judgment to know which the moment calls for. Restructuring the creative org at Articulate into a three-pod model made that concrete. The people who kept their footing weren't specialists in one lane; they flexed across craft, ops, and people at the same time.

Counterargument

“Strategy sets the direction. Creative executes it. Asking creative to shape strategy conflates two distinct functions and puts intuition where rigorous business analysis belongs.”

Why I still think this

The traditional briefing model produces work that's technically correct but strategically inert. Creative thinking surfaces what might be overlooked by cross-functional partners: what the audience feels, where the message breaks down, which frames are already occupied in the market. When creative comes in after other players define strategy, you must backtrack to fix problems the strategy created. When creative has a seat at the strategy table, you solve problems before they cost you anything.

Where this came from

Articulate, where every project that brand/creative got pulled into early ended up with a sharper strategy. Hally, where as part of the founding team, no decision moved without me in the room. The results were the proof.

Counterargument

“Treating budget constraints as a creative feature normalizes underfunding and eventually asks teams to do more with less indefinitely.”

Why I still think this

Constraints force specificity. When there's no budget to correct a mistake, every decision has to be intentional the first time. Constraints ask you to solve the real problem instead of padding around it. Rather than reducing creative freedom, they sharpen your starting point.

Where this came from

Building Hally from zero, on a startup budget. Watching it attract freelancers, production partners, and retail buyers who believed in what we were building more than they cared about the money behind it. Well-resourced brands around us kept producing work that was technically accomplished and completely forgettable.