Creative Leadership Retreat: Paul Dichter

This episode kicks off a special series recorded live at our Creative Leadership Retreat in Sonoma, which we co-hosted with our friends at September Works in late September. We gathered 40 leaders from design, business, the arts, and politics for two days around the theme of coalition building.

Our first guest is Paul Dichter, who first came on Design Better for Episode 173 this past Spring. Most of us think of a coalition as something you build once. Paul had to keep one alive for a decade. He joined the Stranger Things writers’ room as a writer’s assistant in season one and left as co-executive producer at the finale, writing three of the show’s most memorable episodes along the way.

We asked Paul what he learned about moving ideas forward as a junior writer, before he had the authority to push them, and how conflict over creative direction gets sorted out. He tells the story of the final season, months of arguing and pitching under the weight of ten years of work, and a fanbase waiting for the ending.

Then the audience took over. Attendees, many of them leading creative teams of their own, asked what you do when a team loses its mojo and how you rally it back. They asked which personality types flourish in a collaborative room, and how you build alignment when there’s no clear user to test against.

They also asked how he sells a creative idea to people on the other side of the table, and how he made peace with the show ending after investing so much of himself in it.

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This series is presented in partnership with September Works, a product design studio. They envision, evolve, and reinvent digital products. Learn more at september.works or reach them at [email protected].

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