In-house creative teams often have no idea how their work is performing. No data, feedback loop or connection between the assets they're producing and the business outcomes those assets are supposed to drive. Jess Abdulnour kept running into this problem, and eventually built a system to fix it.

In this episode, Jess shares the Creative ID system she developed to connect creative output to performance data without custom software or expensive integrations. But the deeper problem goes beyond data access: it's about how creatives see themselves and their role in the business, and why getting them to claim ownership of performance is harder than solving any technical problem.

Jess Abdulnour is the founder of The BrandNuè Agency and has spent 15 years working in brand strategy and creative operations for companies in regulated industries including finance, mortgage, healthcare, and legal. She has held senior brand and creative ops roles at companies including New American Funding and Camino Financial. Her work focuses on helping regulated businesses build brands that drive growth when paid acquisition channels plateau.

• The Creative ID system: how a simple field added across existing tools connected creative output to performance data
• What changed for the creative team once they could see results: from subjective approval to data-backed decision-making
• Why the mindset problem is harder to solve than the technical one, and what it takes to get creatives to see performance as their responsibility

• Download the free Creative ID Guide here: www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-id

• Take the free Creative Ops Assessment at www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-ops-assessment
• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessekrinsky
• Have a creative ops challenge you're facing? Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out at jesse@infocusconsulting.net

When your output is no longer the work: that's the shift that defines creative leadership. But most creatives who move into leadership roles struggle to make it. They still measure their value by what they produce, not what they enable others to produce, and that quietly undermines their teams, their influence, and their own satisfaction.

In this episode, Tyler Mitchell shares what that transition actually looked like from the inside: the late-night doubt, the identity crisis, and the moment he realized that the distance between leader and doer isn't a failure of connection, but a necessary condition for good leadership. We also discuss the leaders who got it wrong, what he took from those experiences, and what he's doing differently right now to develop the next generation of creative leaders on his own team.

About the Guest

Tyler Mitchell is the Director of Video Strategy at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., one of the largest insurance brokerage and risk management firms in the world. He has spent his entire career in-house, moving from product photography and print layout to video production to leading a globally distributed video team. As a creative leader, Tyler has developed a people-first philosophy rooted in empathy, intentional development, and the discipline of staying connected to the creative without being involved in every step of the work.

Key Topics Discussed

• The identity shift that catches most new creative leaders off-guard: moving from measuring your value by what you produce to what you enable
• Why seeing the person behind the work, not just the output, is both the right thing to do for them and for the business
• The functional lead track that Tyler created to develop future leaders without loading them down with administrative overhead

Connect with Jesse

• Take the free Creative Ops Assessment at www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-ops-assessment
• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessekrinsky
• Have a creative ops challenge you're facing? Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out at jesse@infocusconsulting.net

Most companies' hiring systems weren't designed for creative work. Internal recruiters don't usually have the creative industry expertise to evaluate tone, craft, or cultural fit. And creative directors end up stuck in approval processes that take weeks when they need someone tomorrow.

Steve Potestio has spent 20 years in creative staffing. He's watched companies build systems that make it harder to hire the right creative talent. In this episode, we break down why creative staffing breaks down, what gets lost in translation, and what creative leaders can actually do to get the flexibility they need.

Steve Potestio is the Managing Director of Harvester Talent, a creative staffing firm focused on direct-to-client relationships and deep creative industry expertise. Over 20 years in the industry, he's built and scaled multiple staffing companies and watched the staffing landscape evolve from direct hiring manager access to complex vendor management systems. He's seen firsthand how procurement-driven processes strip away the subjective evaluation that creative hiring requires, and he built Harvester Talent specifically to solve that problem by working directly with hiring managers who understand what creative talent actually needs.

• How to make the business case for staffing flexibility
• Why the best recruiters push back on job descriptions instead of just executing them
• Understanding potential over immediate fit: evaluating the gray area beyond resumes and job descriptions
• How to build relationships for future roles, not just immediate openings

• Take the free Creative Ops Assessment at www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-ops-assessment
• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessekrinsky
• Have a creative ops challenge you're facing? Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out at jesse@infocusconsulting.net

RACIs are one of the most fundamental frameworks in creative operations, but most teams struggle to make them work. In this episode, creative ops leader Elissa Strell breaks down why RACIs fail and exactly how to implement them successfully.

Key Topics

• Why the definitions of Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed matter more than you might think
• Why creating a RACI in a vacuum guarantees failure
• What to do when your RACI loses traction
• Where to start if you're implementing your first RACI (hint: don't pick your biggest campaign)
• Why iteration matters more than getting it perfect the first time

About the Guest

Elissa Strell is a creative and marketing operations leader with extensive experience spanning both agency and in-house environments. She specializes in building the systems and structures that bring clarity to how creative work gets done, from defining roles and responsibilities to helping teams align on ownership, streamline decision-making, and operate more efficiently and strategically within the business.

Connect with Jesse:

• Take the free Creative Ops Assessment at www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-ops-assessment
• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessekrinsky
• Have a creative ops challenge you're facing? Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out at jesse@infocusconsulting.net

Shannon Duncan, Chief of Staff for Marketing at DoorDash, explains how to build creative operations that scale with hyper-growth without becoming bureaucratic. She shares why understanding your team members comes before implementing any tool or process, how to use incremental changes to build trust while introducing new systems, and why internal creative studios need to stop being treated as free resources and start operating with “creative currency” that protects their capacity and positions their work as expertise.

Shannon Duncan is Chief of Staff for Marketing at DoorDash, where she previously built the company's creative operations from the ground up. She joined DoorDash in 2021 when the internal creative studio was just beginning to take shape - a few creatives, freelance project managers, no established processes - and transformed it into a strategic partner serving one of the most dominant players in food delivery. Before DoorDash, Shannon spent years in creative ops and project management at independent agencies, where she learned that the most important variable in creative operations is people…not tools or dashboards. Her people-first philosophy has shaped how she approaches everything from process changes to stakeholder management to building a culture where “1% better every day” is the standard.

• Why creative leaders need to earn team members’ and stakeholders’ trust before implementing new systems
• How to use the "1% better every day" philosophy to make incremental changes that stick without overwhelming teams
• Why in-house creative teams hit an "abuse state" when treated as free resources, and how to protect their capacity
• Why creative ops leaders need to understand business priorities beyond their own team to position their work strategically

• Take the free Creative Ops Assessment at www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-ops-assessment
• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessekrinsky
• Have a creative ops challenge you're facing? Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out at jesse@infocusconsulting.net

Bill Shander, author of Stakeholder Whispering, explains how to shift from reactive execution to strategic partnership by uncovering what stakeholders actually need before starting work. He shares the Socratic method for guiding conversations without creating defensiveness, why bringing external expertise (not just creative talent) builds credibility with business stakeholders, and what CMOs can implement tomorrow to build cultures where strategic thinking becomes the default.

About the Guest

Bill Shander has spent 30 years bridging the gap between creative work and business strategy, specializing in data visualization and storytelling. He teaches organizations like the World Bank, multiple US government agencies, and major consulting firms how to transform complex information into compelling narratives. His book, Stakeholder Whispering: Uncover What People Need Before Doing What They Ask, addresses the fundamental problem that keeps creative teams reactive: stakeholders rarely know what they actually need, and most creatives don't know how to uncover it. Bill also teaches courses on LinkedIn Learning and speaks internationally on data storytelling, stakeholder alignment, and strategic communication.

Key Topics Discussed

• How to get stakeholders to understand and reveal what they actually need
• Why hitting pause before execution is one of the most important skills creatives can develop
• How CMOs can use "useful paranoia" to run weekly 15-minute sessions where teams question one underlying assumption
• Why AI executes orders perfectly but only humans can read context, body language, and ask the unexpected questions that lead to better work

Connect with Jesse

• Take the free Creative Ops Assessment at www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-ops-assessment
• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessekrinsky
• Have a creative ops challenge you're facing? Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out at jesse@infocusconsulting.net

Why do creatives assume stakeholders don't care about good work, while stakeholders assume creatives are precious artists who can't handle feedback? That fundamental misunderstanding damages relationships, undermines creative quality, and keeps teams stuck in reactive, order-taking mode.

In this episode, Jen Perry, Executive Creative Director at Vagrants, shares what she learned by doing something most creatives never do: going in-house, then returning to the agency world. That dual perspective gave her rare insight into the pressures both sides face. She explains how to build genuine empathy with stakeholders, why information sharing is a core leadership responsibility, and what it takes to position creative teams as business partners instead of service providers.

About the Guest

Jen Perry is the Executive Creative Director at Vagrants, a creative studio in Boston. She spent 15 years at traditional network agencies including BBDO, Deutsch, and Hill Holiday before moving in-house to build and lead a creative team at a tech company. Unlike most creatives who go in-house and never return, Jen went back to agency life with a fundamentally different understanding of stakeholder pressures, business constraints, and what it takes to connect creative work to business outcomes.

Key Topics Discussed

• Why traditional agencies separate creatives from clients and how that stunts professional growth, especially when creatives go in-house
• The empathy gap: what creatives misunderstand about stakeholders and what stakeholders misunderstand about creatives
• Practical ways to build empathy
• Why information-sharing is a core part of creative leaders’ jobs

Connect with Jesse

• Take the free Creative Ops Assessment at www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-ops-assessment
• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessekrinsky
• Have a creative ops challenge you're facing? Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out at jesse@infocusconsulting.net

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If you found value in this episode, please subscribe to Creative Ops Compass and leave a review. Your feedback helps other creative leaders find the show and shapes future episode topics.

Why do some in-house creative teams thrive while others get caught in an endless cycle of being brought in-house, then outsourced, then rebuilt, then eliminated again?

In this episode, Lisa M. Watts, CEO and Founder of CREE8, explains why infrastructure designed for velocity looks completely different than infrastructure designed for cost control. She shares practical frameworks for reframing conversations with IT departments, scaling distributed teams securely, and proving strategic value through metrics that actually matter to the C-suite.

About the Guest

Lisa M. Watts is the CEO and founder of CREE8, a cloud-native production platform built around a “Studio-in-a-Box” infrastructure designed to give creative teams visibility into their work, control over their assets, and the velocity brands now demand. Before founding CREE8, Lisa spent nearly 25 years at Intel, where she pioneered initiatives including the first VR esports league and Intel's first virtual CES booth. She's a member of the Television Academy (Emmys), Forbes Business Council, and Hollywood Professionals Association. Under her leadership, CREE8 won the 2025 NAB Show Product of the Year Award and has executed three strategic acquisitions to build an end-to-end platform for creative production teams.

Key Topics Discussed

• The IT department disconnect: why creative infrastructure needs look like "apples and oranges" to IT
• How to reframe infrastructure conversations from cost control to velocity and business outcomes
• Where technical infrastructure steals time from strategic creative work
• Why "velocity minus control plus AI equals chaos"

Connect with Jesse

• Take the free Creative Ops Assessment at www.infocusconsulting.net/creative-ops-assessment
• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessekrinsky
• Have a creative ops challenge you're facing? Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out at jesse@infocusconsulting.net

Subscribe & Review

If you found value in this episode, please subscribe to Creative Ops Compass and leave a review. Your feedback helps other creative leaders find the show and shapes future episode topics.