Maybe it’s my early years as a pro surfer who felt at home amid the chaos of giant waves that can bring instant fame or instant failure at any moment, but there’s something comforting about being at the very fringe of any situation or industry.

So, I’ve spent my career refusing the comfortable middle. And I’ve always looked forward – from advertising to early digital, early social to experience design, and now to where I believe creativity can drive the most lasting impact: brand. My reasoning’s simple. In an age dominated by performance-driven tactics and short-term wins, brand is still the most powerful discipline to deliver meaningful change and sustainable growth for clients.

Whether building teams from scratch, refreshing legacy teams, or leading global creative operations, I’ve gravitated towards the edges where everything’s changing, the map’s not drawn yet, and the leadership playbook is being rewritten in real time. People have labelled me as progressive, I’ve just seen it as necessary.

Because if you’re going to make interesting work or serve ambitious clients – the kind who genuinely want to break new ground, not just say they do – you can’t lead from the centre. And you definitely can’t lead from fear. Instead, you have to be part creative, part cultural decoder, part systems thinker. Someone who can not only see where things are headed but help shape that path for others.

We need to build environments that allow people to do their best work – human or machine-assisted – without burnout, performance theatre, us-vs-them posturing

Right now, the edge has never been more interesting and AI is the cutting edge. AI is already rewiring how we work, how we create, and how clients – and ultimately consumers – expect us to show up. And as it moves front and centre, becoming what I like to call ‘a sidekick’, creativity increasingly becomes a competitive edge for our sectors.

The necessity of creativity and originality is not going away, despite what some fear. Instead, what AI eliminates is much of the mediocre middle. It is also surfacing something alarming for our industry: a creative leadership problem.

We’ve loaded up our teams with more platforms, prompts and productivity hacks than ever. We are bringing data and tools together to give better understandings. But we’ve barely paused to rethink how we actually lead inside this new complexity.

What does good look like? What needs protecting or reinventing? What needs redesigning? What do clients – and, ultimately, their consumers and employees – truly need from us in this moment? What does talent need from us? What do we as creatives need for ourselves? So, after more than a decade operating at the intersection of culture, commerce and creative change, I took a step back. Not to exit but to re-examine. And one thing has become crystal clear: leadership isn’t about personality anymore, it’s about system design.

We need to build environments that allow people to do their best work – human or machine-assisted – without burnout, performance theatre, us-vs-them posturing, or snake-oil salespeople. We need systems that deliver on creative excellence and client partnership – ones that don’t just talk a big bullshit bingo game about innovation, but make space for it structurally and culturally. We need technology to help us interlock creativity with business.

I came from the narrative storytelling space. But though it is a wonderful, massively important component of the world we still exist in, it’s only one component of many. The demands and challenges of our clients are so vastly different to what they were five years ago, that all things can’t be solved with just narrative, storytelling, and brand building. The best way to thrive is to make creative results-oriented and burrow into the essence of our clients. What are its ingredients? What are its behaviours?

I don’t have all the answers, of course. But for me, five things are key:

EMOTIONAL SAFETY

Collaboration occurs in conditions where people feel safe enough to dissent, push back, and bring unfinished thinking to the table. Diversity and inclusion are at its core – not just diversity of race, gender or sexuality but diversity of thought.

The most creative teams I’ve led, from New York to Singapore, all shared one thing in common: they were emotionally secure. That doesn’t mean soft. It means strong enough to weather complexity, ego, and the very occasional strategic argument. It means knowing your leader won’t throw you under the bus in a client meeting. It’s probably not the most obvious thing in business, but creating conditions of emotional safety lets one explore or experiment without fear.

At a time when AI tools can create faster than teams can critique, emotional safety is what allows people to slow down and say: is this actually any good? Is this right long-term for success? The ideal is a place of safety, inclusiveness and respect where collective responsibility, humility, and continuous improvement take centre stage – a culture where leadership is shared, focusing on individual character and prioritising a strong team bond built on mutual respect and trust.

Collaboration occurs in conditions where people feel safe enough to dissent, push back, and bring unfinished thinking to the table

TECH LITERACY

Let’s be honest: too many creative leaders are outsourcing curiosity. They leave experimentation to juniors, skim articles about AI ethics, and stay ‘strategic’. But leadership now means understanding the new tools well enough to question them, contextualise them, and use them not as shortcuts but as multipliers of talent.

If you’re a designer, you need to prove you can still design – on the tools and on the decks. You can’t lead people with just a point or suggestion. Getting into the weeds earns respect from the ground up. So, try shit, fail on stuff, get stuck in.

I’ve prototyped with Midjourney. I’ve explored Veo 3. I’ve worked alongside engineers to rethink pitch processes. Not because I’m obsessed with tech for tech’s sake, or because I’m a futurist, but because I refuse to lead in the dark. It’s how you earn trust.

TIME FLEXIBILITY

In a world built on metrics we’ve become addicted to speed, but speed without shape just makes noise. The best creative thinking I’ve seen comes from teams who are given time sovereignty. They are trusted to move fast when needed but also allowed to pause, reflect, and zoom out when the work demands it.

If we want ideas that cut through, not just content that keeps up, we need to give our teams more than deadlines. We need to give them creative air – and protect that space with the same intensity we protect margins and timelines.

I believe in serving clients. Not servicing, serving – as in standing beside them with honesty, insight, and yes challenge when it’s needed

BEYOND US VS THEM

Here’s the part I know isn’t always cool to say: I believe in serving clients. Not servicing, serving – as in standing beside them with honesty, insight, and yes challenge when it’s needed. Too many creatives find comfort in the ‘us vs them’ binary. It’s easier than owning the discomfort of partnership. It’s easy to blame the brief, the account team, or the layers of an organisation. But the work suffers for it.

Some of the best global CEOs and CMOs I’ve worked with have trusted me – not because I flattered them or entertained them but because I told them the truth. About the work. About what we were building together. About when we were onto something and when we weren’t.

That trust isn’t earned through charm. It’s earned through clarity, consistency, and the courage to hold the tension. The best creative leaders I know aren’t performers, they’re partners.

DESIGNING THE NEXT CHAPTER

I’ve judged my fair share of awards. I’ve won a few too. And look, I love awards. But awards focus on the now, maybe a year ahead. When you’re trying to build something truly iconic, something that shapes a category or business – you have to think beyond that window. Awards validate the work, but system design sustains it.

So, as I look towards what’s next, I’m not just designing decks. I’m designing environments. Places where creative people and machines can thrive together. Where trust is built. Where the pace of innovation doesn’t erode our edge but sharpens it. Because leadership now isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room but building the world great work can live in.

Creativity remains our greatest human advantage and leadership that blends emotional safety, tech literacy and time flexibility will be the system that lets it thrive. And if we want creativity to truly matter in this new era, we have to lead like it does.

Wayne Deakin is a creative director; @WayneDeakin