The Art of Making Space for Creativity
Hiring talented creative people is only the beginning. The real question is whether a business lets their thinking change what it can become.
When Tomorrow Management turned five, I had every intention of marking the occasion with a showcase of everything we had produced: the campaigns, the editorials, the portraits, five years of beautiful work gathered in one place. It would have been a handsome thing to look at. But I have always preferred living in the moment to admiring the past, so instead we started a journal, built on the creative freedom of the artists who contributed to it. The pages were theirs, to tell their own stories and show their own vision.
That choice was entirely in character for the agency. Tomorrow began in 2005 as a collaboration between three photographers and me, and the photographers shaped what the business became from the very first day. I have since come to believe that this is where many companies fall short with creative people. They hire them readily enough. They are far less willing to let them change the business itself.
Who is in the room early enough?
Many companies expect originality to appear inside systems built for predictability. The brief has been agreed, the budget allocated and the direction approved, and only then is someone asked to bring a fresh perspective. There may still be room for a beautiful photograph or an unexpected campaign. There is far less room to ask whether the company is solving the right problem.
A business reveals its priorities through the order in which it asks people to contribute. Imagine a fashion brand that wants to reach a younger customer. Management agrees a new campaign and then brings in a creative team to make it relevant. The team may well produce excellent work, yet the more valuable observation might have concerned the product, the shopping experience or the assumptions being made about that customer. Had the creative people been part of the earlier conversation, they could have questioned the diagnosis before everyone committed to the treatment.
That invitation asks more of them, too. They need to understand the commercial problem, listen to colleagues and explain why an idea deserves attention. Being invited into strategy carries a responsibility to engage with the business, and commercial knowledge, in turn, tends to make creative thinking sharper.
The business around the talent
More than twenty years of representing photographers, stylists, hair and make-up artists and illustrators have taught me that understanding how a creative person thinks is only half the job. The other half is building a business model and client relationships that do not crush that thinking.
If I had to name what set Tomorrow apart, it would be matchmaking: putting the right talent together with the right business. Even under clear briefs that left little room for the unpredictable, we almost always found a way to let inspiration and instinct guide the process. And on more than one occasion, the strongest campaigns were the ones that took an unexpected turn.
A client needs confidence that the work will answer the brief. A photographer needs enough room to bring something to it. Making those two expectations compatible is the agency’s real work, and it happens long before anyone picks up a camera: in what is promised, how the work is priced and how much time is allowed. Agree to an unrealistic scope or leave the purpose vague, and you have created a problem that no amount of talent can quite repair.
Giving unfinished ideas a hearing
The most interesting contribution often arrives before its author can make it look convincing. A polished presentation can make a familiar idea feel reassuring, while a rough proposal may hold something genuinely original and still be awkward to explain. Leaders need enough curiosity to tell an undeveloped possibility from an idea that simply does not work.
Ed Catmull’s account of Pixar’s Braintrust describes colleagues reviewing films in progress and speaking candidly about the problems they saw. What strikes me most is how much effort he describes going into protecting those conversations from fear and intimidation. Openness, in his telling, had to be maintained. In any company, the clearest signal is how the most senior person responds when a favoured idea is questioned. If the answer is irritation, the team has learned exactly how far the invitation extends.
What leadership makes possible
Making space for creativity has consequences for the people at the top. It costs time, and that time has to come from somewhere: an agreed chance to question the brief before production begins, or room to explore two approaches before choosing one. It means occasionally reconsidering an assumption or backing a proposal that was never part of the plan. And it means saying no with an explanation, because an idea quietly ignored leaves people to invent their own reasons.
The journal was meant as a modest alternative to a retrospective. It quickly became much more. It gave Tomorrow a global audience, supported our image and international recognition, and soon became a magazine that attracted both established names and emerging talent. We had given the artists the pages, and they gave the agency a reputation in return.
That is the lesson I take from it now. A company that employs extraordinary people should let them shape what it becomes as well as how it looks. Making space for creativity begins with being willing to hear something that changes your mind, and it becomes valuable when the organisation is prepared to act on it.