Complicated thoughts.

Last night, I was working late. It was long about 10:30 when someone with the word "chief" in his title sat across a table from me.

He began eating his dinner and we had a long-postponed chat.

Like I said, it was late.

And I must admit when it comes to burning the midnight oil, I'd way rather get up at 4AM and jam from 5AM till noon to get my work done than stay until the wee hours. I'm fresher in the morning. I'm faster. And I have all day to reflect and polish what I've done--to dot the i's and cross the t's.

But, as usual, I digress.

What I noticed last night and I've noticed through the years is that creative people who succeed in our business usually are prone to busting their buttons in talking about the business and the work they do and the things they learn.

Too often, I think, too many businesses has become to professionalized and analyticalized. In our powerpointed, Excelled and politically white-washed world we have lost something very important.

We have lost love.

Ardor.

Passion.

Of diving headlong into the work we do.

We have lost spark.

If you're a client, or a creative director, I think the best you can do to get great work is not to critique little things that really are of no material difference to the performance or perception of a communication.

I think the best thing you can do to get great work is to release the passion that's initially in most creative people. It's a passion that usually gets wrung out as things get over-thought and over-picked at.

During the Renaissance there were probably hundreds of painters who had the taste and technical proficiency of, say, Rembrandt. But Rembrandt had a spark.

That's what needs to stay alive.