you need to work for you. The best of them now are driven by curiosity. They are not excited by status or by money or by conventional badges of success, but they are insatiably curious – and their curiosity will drive the restlessness, the ferment, and the inventiveness which are in themselves intrinsically rewarding. Can an organization learn? If there is a tipping point at which curiosity at least corrects the natural tendency of organizations to conform, then it can. And, when it does, it will gather to itself a kind of differentiating charisma that kills the addiction to the comfortable, which will always drag it down. Partners and Servants Of course, all the above, however true I believe it to be, does not mean very much unless it is put in the context of why we are here at all. “Wouldn’t this be a wonderful business without clients?” is the age-old question of the agency folk, in all agencies, at all levels. Maybe it would. But it’s probably more helpful to our survival to consider how we turn our clients into supporters rather than wishing them away. It’s easy to oscillate between contradictory views about what constitutes the ideal relationship of an agency with a client. Clients get the advertising they deserve. I know some who are a malediction, and others who are an inspiration. Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself. Any fool can 2 write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one. Since that era, the industry associations in both the UK and the US have worked hard to project the image of advertising as a profession, worthy of taking its place alongside accountancy or architecture. To some extent, they have succeeded, though such efforts have always run the risk of pushing too hard in the direction of its strategic role at the expense of its creative role, something to which the Digital Revolution has actually been a corrective. Such efforts encourage our view that we are partners to clients. Our plea to them so often is for partnership. And it is certainly true that the best work invariably comes from relationships which are deep, long term and which have at their core the premise