Highlights of the Week in Creative Leadership –February 28, 2025

In Rethinking Work, former Publicis CGO and long-time creative industry thought leader Rishad Tobaccowala identifies five interconnected forces remaking the world of work: generational shifts as Gen Z enters the workforce, AI and emerging technologies reshaping knowledge work, new digital marketplaces enabling flexible talent models, evolving work arrangements including side hustles, and COVID’s lasting impact on work perspectives. In response, and amidst the increasing obsolescence of traditional organizational models, Tobaccowala argues for a fundamental reimagining of creative workplaces: more fluid and adaptable, powered by meaning as much as metrics, and led not by conventional managers but by leaders who excel at growing talent, learning continuously, and navigating uncertainty. His analyses of the “fractionalized employee” and the rise of portfolio careers hold particular relevance for creative industries. Perhaps the book’s greatest value lies in its practical framework for transformation, examining everything from physical workspace design to leadership approaches to performance metrics, making it an essential playbook for anyone leading creative teams through this period of profound workplace reinvention.

Rishad Tobaccowala, Rethinking Work: Seismic Changes in the Where, When, and Why (HarperCollins Leadership, 2025)

On the “Real Creative Leadership” podcast, host Adam Morgan (VP of Brand, Twilio) closes the fifth season by identifying three defining shifts facing creative leaders in 2025: global growth, creative vision, and the future of design. The discussion features compelling insights from industry leaders like Delta Airlines’ Maya Dukes, who has integrated team development into business strategy and, operationally, into creative roadmaps with measurable metrics. Likewise, Jen Lai Stern’s concept of “sidecar leadership” at PayPal emphasizes trust-based, collaborative leadership that supports teams while maintaining accountability. The discussion of creative vision (“the differentiator between execution and leadership”), highlights the evolution from purely aesthetic direction to comprehensive brand experience orchestration, illustrated through Music Collective founder Laura Monterosso’s insights on how sound design must reflect core brand values. Finally, the exploration of design’s future features Oracle’s Jod Kapton’s compelling argument for moral imagination in the age of AI, which suggests we need to resist reducing AI-enhanced creativity to a formula and, instead, adopt a leadership approach to using these new technologies that not only serves brands but innovates and offers ethical foresight about the world we want to live in.

“The Rise of Creative Leadership: Trends to Watch in 2025,” Real Creative Leadership podcast, December 17, 2024 (Season 5, Episode 9)(27:49).

Media narratives and public health campaigns routinely frame being alone as harmful, potentially amplifying rather than alleviating feelings of loneliness. But new research published in Nature Communications reveals that people’s beliefs about solitude powerfully shape their experience of being alone. Those holding negative beliefs about solitude experience increased loneliness after time alone, while people who view solitude positively often experience it as beneficial. For leaders concerned with team wellbeing and positive organizational culture, these findings offer an opportunity to rethink how we talk about and structure alone time. Rather than reflexively maximizing collaboration and social connection, leaders can reframe solitude to acknowledge both its challenges and benefits, including being (for some) a potential source of restoration and personal growth. Based on their studies across nine countries, the three University of Michigan psychologists (including Ethan Kross, author of the valuable Shift: Managing Your Emotions – So they Don’t Manage You), point to concrete ways leaders can nurture healthier relationships with solitude – from normalizing the need for solo time to openly communicating its potential benefits for psychological wellbeing and creative vitality. In an era of hybrid work and growing awareness of workplace mental health, understanding how to help people engage positively with solitude is ever more important to building more sustainable and psychologically healthy creative organizations.

 Micaela Rodriguez, Kathryn E. Schertz, and Ethan Kross (2025) “How People Think About Being Alone Shapes Their Experience of Loneliness,” Nature Communications, 16:1594;

While degrowth has emerged as a compelling critique of endless economic expansion, Parsons School of Design professor Raz Godelnik’s thoughtful analysis reveals why it has failed to gain traction as a viable business model. For leaders exploring alternative approaches amid far-reaching workplace changes, he points to three key barriers: the challenge of translating policy-driven agendas into business reality, the hurdle of deeply embedded cultural narratives about growth and success, and the traditional business assumptions and systemic constraints that make degrowth nearly impossible within current market structures. Yet rather than simply critiquing, Godelnik points to emerging pathways that leaders might explore: small, democratically-controlled enterprises, tech-enabled solutions that reduce consumption “unintentionally,” and hybrid models that synthesize growth and degrowth principles. As creative leaders and businesses grapple with reimagining work and business models for a more sustainable future, the analysis provides a clear-eyed look at why radical alternatives often falter while nevertheless still suggesting practical ways to incorporate their valuable insights into both transformative and achievable business innovation.

 Raz Godelnik, “Rise and Fall of Degrowth,” medium.com, February 12, 2025.

The summary of the BCG Henderson Institute’s recent “Meeting of Minds” on democratic fragility offers to leaders vital insights into navigating today’s complex business environment and, potentially, systemic upheaval. The expert discussions illuminated how intertwined forces – from economic inequality and technological disruptions to social polarization and eroding institutions – are undermining democratic institutions that have historically enabled business success and growth. For creative leaders, the analysis provides four crucial principles for action: strategic political engagement coupled with ethical participation, active coalition-building across social divides, meaningful commitment to economic opportunity creation, and thoughtful support of weakening institutions. Most valuably, the summary presents these challenges as opportunities for creative leaders to recast how businesses can strengthen social cohesion, foster constructive dialogue, and build more sustainable models of success. For those seeking to lead creatively through today’s uncertainty, the insights provide both clear warning about systemic threats and practical guidance for contributing to democratic renewal while building more sustainable enterprises.

Left unspoken in the BCG discussion is a troubling disconnect in broader popular leadership discourse that merits deeper examination. While corporate and creative sectors are experiencing intense pressure to adopt more participatory, transparent, and emotionally intelligent leadership models – with traditional hierarchical approaches increasingly viewed as outdated and ineffective – we simultaneously witness the rise of centralized, strongman leadership in many political institutions globally. This stark contrast creates profound challenges for creative leaders trying to navigate evolving stakeholder expectations develop coherent approaches to what constitutes effective leadership – and what various stakeholders might expect or value. On one side, they face mounting demands for collaborative decision-making, authentic engagement, and distributed authority within their organizations. Yet this push toward more democratic and collective leadership exists against a backdrop of resurgent authoritarian political leadership that often succeeds through exactly the opposite approach: consolidating power, limiting transparency, and emphasizing decisive individual control. Beyond everyday and operational complexity, the contradiction raises fundamental questions about how to build leadership trust, credibility, and influence across contexts where basic assumptions about legitimate authority and effective leadership are increasingly divergent, particularly across different contexts. Rather than a clear evolutionary path toward more democratic and distributed leadership models, we face a more nuanced reality where different sectors send dramatically different signals about leadership’s future.

BCG Henderson Institute (2025) “What the Fragility of Democracy Means for Corporations – a Meeting of Minds,” February 19, 2025.