Welcome back to Season Three of The Stories of Creative Leadership featuring our first guest, William “Bill” Childs, Creative Director and champion of fearless creativity.
Bill is a seasoned creative with many award-winning campaigns under his belt. As you’ll hear in this conversation, his best work always seemed to happen in the presence of exceptional creative leadership.
Highlights from our interview include:
- How pressure can both stimulate and stifle the creativity of employees.
- “Creativity isn’t just about output, it’s about input.” It’s critical to feed your brain with new information so your brain can make novel connections.
- Let’s rebrand failure as an “unintended outcome.”
- “Good ideas often come on the way back from a bad one.” The utility of bad ideas is that they can inspire better ones.
- The “yes, and…” improv rule inspires teams to build upon each other’s ideas rather than merely critique them.
- How authenticity might be the best antidote to the big ego in the room.
About William “Bill” Childs: Mediocrity is not Bill Childs’ friend. He refuses to be pals with “good enough.” Will never be besties with “just O.K.” And “phoning it in” is not part of his #squadlife. As a marketer and a creative, Bill believes in pushing projects as far as they can go – then pushing them a little more. He’s also someone who believes that good is the enemy of great and that we should all strive to be anything but mediocre.
He previously held the position as the Director of Marketing and Communications at Trifecta Technologies, a web and mobile technology firm based in Allentown, PA. He’s also the former Creative Director for The Media Arts Group at The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, PA. Prior to that he was the V.P., Creative Director, at RM2/Forge Marketing Communications, a full service marketing and advertising firm for six years.
Bill is an accomplished creative leader with a history of delivering award-winning ideas across multiple platforms. He’s relentlessly dedicated to the skillful and creative translation of strategic business objectives into revenue-generating campaigns. Known as a collaborative mentor and champion of fearless creativity who celebrates and develops team talent.
Connect with Bill on Twitter, LinkedIn or reach out to him via email.
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You can follow your co-hosts, Todd Schnick and Tony Vengrove on Twitter: @ToddSchnick and @Tony_Vengrove. For more information about how Miles Finch Innovation can help train your organization on Creative Leadership, email Tony Vengrove.