Managing Creative People: Lessons in Leadership for the Ideas Economy

Chapter 18. The new patronage

Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.

—Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, from Organizing Genius

I see people who make space for the work. Because they care about it. They make space in the minds of conservative or unwilling clients, they help make space in our own organisations for the work to be done, they fight for time, they fight for money, they fight for resource. They navigate difficult teams and precious planners through the maze of client politics. They protect our thinking and they protect our newborn ideas. They make space in client organisations for our creativity and cleverness and mop up the mess when we're truculent. Or late. Or crap. I see people who open up the eyes of clients to the power of creativity. I see people who work to get them to take their heads out of their asses and have ambition and vision. And for all that they have to put up with being called asskissers, flunkies, and empty suits.

—A blogger known as 'crankyoldbugger' writing on scampblog.blogspot.com

The cult of celebrity has distorted history's perspective of creative achievement. By shining such a bright spotlight on the star of the show, the men and women who made genius possible have been relegated to the shadows of memory.

Roy Disney carved out the space and the resources that gave Walt the freedom to express his genius. General Leslie Groves did it for Robert Oppenheimer and the other brilliant scientists of the Manhattan ...