Toolkit

How to get the best from collaborating with Tim Brunelle

Updated - January 2025

👋🏽 HELLO

Wouldn’t it be great if we could just read each other’s minds, and act accordingly? Since that’s not possible, I’m providing you with this toolkit, my “user manual.” This is a living document, meant to introduce my personality and working style to you. (More info on this concept at the end.)

🚀 QUICK SUMMARY

I’m an optimistic, extroverted, future-focused leader who values candor and focuses on helping organizations leverage creativity to achieve audacious goals. I’m a writer first and foremost, a forever-student who likes to get involved and help build the work. I’ll dive in, but I’m not here to micromanage anyone. I’m fascinated with root causes—keen to understand history, context, vision, goals, process, budgets and a brand’s DNA—to help motivate whatever my teams create. My leadership style seeks transformative results, fosters autonomy and respects time boundaries (i.e. no team comms 7PM-7AM). Other leaders find me curious about their goals, a trustworthy collaborator, and especially inventive in challenging circumstances. Email’s my go-to. I want feedback straight and actionable, and I’ll give you the same. Above all, I believe in effecting real change—if we’re not doing that, why bother?

🍿 THE DIRECTOR’S CUT

This page might take you six minutes to read. But it’s written carefully, with details about (and here are direct links to): My Work Style, How I Decide, Meetings & Communications, and Feedback.

🚫 THIS ISN’T MY BIO

That’s here. No, this is something much better. This toolkit is meant to reduce friction, shorten learning curves, eliminate unnecessary surprises, and most importantly—help create trust quickly. I’d rather not be a mystery, or frustrating, to you.

That said, I have an amazing family. My wife Haley helps lead research at Gillette Children’s, Maks (right) is a freshman studying music industry at Loyola New Orleans, Eli (left) is a senior playing many instruments at the St Paul Conservatory for the Performing Arts, and Felix is an astute second grader navigating medical complexity with various devices, chairs and the help of Dutch the dog.

You might have seen me play drums around town with RetroFizz, one of Eli’s bands, or a Tom Waits tribute. I’m on the Board of the Twin Cities Jazz Festival.

⚙️ MY WORK STYLE

These characteristics are not in any particular order, and certainly not prioritized. Like you, I contain multitudes. If we haven’t worked together before, it’s worth noting my career has been focused in the subjective realm of marketing, advertising, strategy, technology, and design. I’ve led 15+ person teams 4x in entrepreneurial startups as well as established, highly-matrixed orgs.

I am a fan of human diversity and eccentricity and passion. I want to know what makes you tick.

I seek to understand the cultures I’m joining, so I can respect and encourage their growth. You’ll find me very curious about the DNA of a brand’s founders, visionaries as well as its pivotal moments. What ingredients, circumstances, contexts created the circumstances we face?

I adore candor. I prefer the truth, told directly, and without hesitation. You can expect the same from me. My enthusiasm for candor has been fueled by De Mello’s Awareness, Catmull’s Creativity, Inc., and Patterson et al.’s Crucial Conversations. 

I am an extrovert. I enjoy talking as a process of thinking. Please don’t hesitate to interrupt me. 

After several decades of leading teams and freelancing, I am equally comfortable in vision and integrator roles. And I welcome your opinion about which one I should take when we work together.

I’m comfortable amidst chaos. I aspire to understand it, address it and even leverage it when possible. If you’re in a chaotic scenario I’m a good person to call. 

I think a creative brief might be the most important document in the world. Written properly, nothing else matches its potency to change the course of events.

I believe effective creative leaders blend many roles. Inspiring. Questioning. Persuading. Navigating. Educating. Collaborating. Translating. Nurturing. Doing. Curating. Protecting. Empowering.

I believe all marketing is meant to effect change. And all change is rooted in human behavior. If what we’re creating doesn’t seek to change something, why are we making the effort?

Leaping to tactics annoys me.

I assume positive intent. I’m an optimist. I appreciate where audacious, weird, challenging ideas might lead. I know the people I collaborate with are capable of remarkable, behavior-changing work.

I’m not a micromanager. If I’m doing your work for you that’s not a good sign for either of us. My preference is to ensure you’re as briefed as you need, then I’ll protect your time and space so you can achieve great things.  

I appreciate deadlines. Even more, I’m motivated by understanding what’s driving the necessity of a deliverable.

I have shiny-object syndrome. New challenges, technologies, people excite me. Also, I’m a Gemini. When you’re talking, I am listening to you. I am also probably trying to solve your challenge at the same time.

I’m a fan of the Vedic philosophy of Creation, Maintenance and Destruction. They are equal; ebbing and flowing as needed, without end—which is a pleasant way of saying I think the status quo has its limits and benefits from being challenged. 

⚖️ HOW I DECIDE

As mentioned, most of the work I produce or lead can be pretty subjective. What makes one headline “better” than another? Why is Design A “more effective” than Design B? In my opinion, a big part of evaluating creativity is to root decisions in clear, reliable, repeatable criteria connected to measurable business issues. And yes, over time, in a hurry, this can look like a gut decision.

Also, please don’t “present” to me. Formality is unnecessary. I respect and care about ideas most in their earliest, roughest forms.

Here’s how I evaluate:

1) Who’s it for? What’s it for? In the most important sense, I make creative decisions based on the established behavior the work—the idea—is meant to change. Do I believe the given concept, design, or execution will properly effect the intended audience’s actions? (Worth noting: I believe in testing and articulating the assignment long before creative work begins, so we have a clear foundation for evaluating the work. If we can’t agree what success looks like beforehand, how will we know it when it appears?)

2) We’re making art in the service of business. Which is to say, creative decision-making might not always be clear. Plenty of world-changing and fortunes-changing ideas fought rational decision-making, then worked like gangbusters. Part of the business of creative decision-making is having hope and playing the odds.

3) Evaluating creativity isn’t proofing. Deciding why a particular idea, headline, or layout works best isn’t rooted in grammar, spelling or the brand style guide. Those criteria are givens; of course we follow them. But they provide little utility in discerning the potential effect or impact of an idea, headline or layout.

4) I love well-crafted design and writing. But craft really only works well when it supports a keen insight and brilliant idea. Otherwise, why polish a turd? Let’s focus on the core concept first, then make it shine.

5) If I say, “yes,” I mean it and I’ll support you. I’m not going to belabor an approval. And I’ll defend the work I approved and advocated for.

🕖 TIME, MEETINGS & COMMUNICATIONS

If we’re collaborating—I do that best with coffee, between 8AM and 3PM. Wherever and however you prefer to collaborate works best for me; in-person or via video are all perfectly fine.

If I’m focused alone on a task—I will block my calendar, isolate myself, and turn off comms (and turn on “out of office” notifications). I try to make it clear to others when I need time for myself.

I appreciate meeting agendas sent ahead of the meeting, the more specific the better. If I get to a meeting and its purpose is unclear, I’m likely going to ask if we really need to be meeting. If we can solve the meeting beforehand with an email or message, even better.

My primary communication tool is email.

I’ll respond to texts, but not as urgently as my teenagers prefer.

I use Teams, Slack, Chat as needed but I don’t live in those tools as much as email.

I use whatever means of communication the team prefers. If it’s up to me, I’ll lean on email, Zoom, and Google Docs.

WITHIN TEAMS I MANAGE: I prefer no one on my team emails, messages or calls anyone else on the team for work between 7PM - 7AM. We need to protect time for ourselves. (Write and use the scheduled-send function as much as you like. I certainly do.) If it’s an emergency, obvious call/text. 

💬 FEEDBACK

As I said, I adore candor. I’m also a proponent of Heen and Stone’s definition in Thanks for the Feedback. They say feedback is really three distinct purposes intermingled: 

• Appreciation — motivates and encourages.

• Coaching — helps increase knowledge, skill, capability, growth, or raises feelings in the relationship.

• Evaluation — tells you where you stand, aligns expectations, and informs decision making.

If you’re giving me feedback, I want it straight, and actionable. I appreciate being coached.

If I’m giving you feedback, I aspire to help you understand context, and to provide you with useful, actionable perspective. I’m not interested in doing your work for you, rather, to coach you towards success.

🙋🏼‍♂️ WHERE I STILL NEED HELP

I can read a P&L, but I’m slower than those fluent in finance.

I will gladly hand off process and systems tasks (i.e. scheduling, project management) to those who thrive in them.

I can talk too much. If you think I am, I’d appreciate a look or word to suggest I take a breath and listen. 

I’m trying hard to be present. The shiny object and solve-it-now challenge is real for me. Related: I said leaping to tactics annoys me, and yet I will occasionally leap to tactics.  

It takes me a long time to remember people’s names. 

🧐 WHAT’S A USER MANUAL OR “MANUAL OF ME?”

I first ran across the Personal Owners Manual or User Manual or “Manual of Me” concept about six years ago. Here’s some handy background.

Interview - Tim Ferris and Claire Hughes Johnson dive deep into the utility of the user manual or “work-with-me document”

Interview - Tim Ferris and Sam Cocos discuss the role of the user manual for onboarding and team work (@01:58:58)

Presentation - Industrial Psychologist Ben Dattner talked about creating a personal User Manual back in 2003

Perspective - Author Michael Loop, aka Rands, offers his “How to Rands” 

Video - Adam Bryant outlines a leadership “User Manual” at this 2017 New York Times Higher Ed Leaders Forum

Examples - The team at Psychological Safety have curated 72 examples; Here’s one more intriguing approach 

Got your own toolkit or user manual? Please share.