Creative Leadership Is a System. Are You Designing It—or Just Running It? (EP. 44)
You got the title. Now what?
You’re no longer the one making the work. You’re leading the people who do. And suddenly… Everything that made you successful stops being useful.
No one teaches you how to lead a creative team. There’s no playbook for designing trust. For giving feedback that doesn’t kill morale. For building culture that doesn’t burn people out.
Unless you’ve read Raising Creative Teams— Kevin Frank’s new book, and the episode you’re about to hear.
Kevin led global creative at Apple. He was Executive Creative Director at LinkedIn, where his team won AdAge’s In-House Agency of the Year. But his real education in creative leadership came when he realized: The most creative thing a leader makes… Is the environment.
This conversation is for anyone who’s ever wondered: Am I leading the work—or the conditions that make the work possible?
Key Insights
1. Creative Leadership ≠ More Creativity → When I stop doing the work myself, what am I actually supposed to do instead?
2. Systems Create Culture → Are our rituals and norms fueling trust—or just enforcing compliance?
3. Feedback Isn’t a Gut Thing—It’s a Designed System → Do our feedback loops scale confidence, or confusion?
4. Hiring Sets the Trajectory, Not Just the Talent → Who you hire shapes what the team becomes—so what am I really optimizing for?
5. Gratitude Isn’t Soft—It’s Infrastructure → What would change if appreciation was baked into the operating system?
6. Creative Systems Need Co-Architects → Kevin doesn’t say this directly, but his framing of leadership raises a bigger question: Are creative leaders building systems alone—or should they be partnering with ops as force multipliers?
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Guest Information
Name: Kevin Frank
Kevin Frank is a creative leader, author, and team coach with three decades of experience building award-winning teams across tech, media, and marketing.
He spent years leading global creative at Apple, then as Executive Creative Director at LinkedIn, built an in-house agency that earned back-to-back AdAge Best Places to Work honors and the title In-House Agency of the Year.
Now, Kevin runs Doing Interesting Stuff—a Paris-based consultancy where he helps creative leaders build better teams, scale trust, and lead with vision. His new book, Raising Creative Teams, distills those lessons into a hands-on guide for anyone navigating the messy, meaningful leap from creative to creative leader.
Relevant Links
Raising Creative Teams → Buy on Amazon
Kevin’s Consultancy: Doing Interesting Stuff
Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn