The two critical ingredients to the balance between giving advice and taking advice are talent and respect. Imagination chooses its people carefully -- based on the quality of their work, on their open-mindedness, and on their curiosity about the world beyond their own expertise. Says Chris White, 33, who wrote the Journey Zone's text: "The integrated approach breeds respect for one another. When you work alone, or in isolation within your discipline, you can get an overblown sense of your own importance to a project."

At Imagination, people see one another's talents in action every day. The film director sees the power of the lighting designer. The graphic artist appreciates the poetry of the writer. People get suggestions from their colleagues, and many of those suggestions turn out to be good ones. What's more, because people respect one another, they come to respect one another's judgment as well. And so at Imagination, a suggestion not taken is not an insult; it's simply the exercise of more experienced judgment.

The hard part, of course, is that design taste, like artistic taste, is intensely felt and difficult to debate. No one pretends that cheerful harmony reigns at Imagination. There are still deadlines, delays, snags, disputes -- and clients with their own creative ideas.

"I'm stubborn," says Kate Wilkins. "I have a hard-core attitude. I know that I'm almost always right when it comes to lighting. The only time I'm ever sorry about how something comes out is when I backed down. So I'm thought of as a somewhat difficult customer here. But people know my work, and they trust me. They know that I'm not being stubborn just to be difficult."

Charles Fishman (cnfish@mindspring.com) is a Fast Company senior editor. He is his own brand experience. Learn more about Imagination Ltd. on the Web (www.imagination.co.uk), or view an example of Imagination's Web design at Ford's Journey zone (www.journey.ford.co.uk).

Sidebar: The Total Teamwork Agenda

Imagination is funny. The company may be Britain's largest design firm, but its interdisciplinary approach puts it more on a par with a theater troupe or a circus than with a traditional design company. The official Imagination brochure lists 26 disciplines used to attack projects -- a range of talent that gives Imagination's work its special texture. But creative people are notoriously independent and notoriously difficult to manage. How does Imagination herd its extraordinary collection of talent into fast-working, high-performance teams?

Start the project before there is a project.

Because of the kind of work that Imagination does -- from corporate-exhibition stands to the dinosaur exhibition at London's Natural History Museum -- projects are often only loosely defined at the start. But Imagination teams are assembled early, often before the company and the client have reached a final agreement about the goals of the project. In that way, the team often defines the project, rather than the project defining the team.

Make the brief brief -- and share it.

Even for the most complicated projects, Imagination team members ultimately know exactly what the goal of the project is. All members use the same words and phrases to express that goal, and the goal is usually boiled down to a sentence or two. Every idea can be tested against what the team and the client are trying to accomplish.

Everyone comes to the table.

Imagination projects are managed, in part, through weekly meetings -- meetings in which ideas are batted around, problems are raised, and progress on deadlines is assessed. Unlike many firms, Imagination involves everyone in a project by inviting all employees to all meetings. Production people and client-contact people are just as much a part of the team as creative types. The result: The company avoids production problems, and client-service reps have the information that they need to keep clients happy.

Responsibility to the people!

Imagination is an egalitarian environment -- not only within the company's artistic disciplines but also among its people. On most project teams, no one is actually "in charge." The result isn't chaos. In fact, it's just the opposite. Dispersing the power also disperses the responsibility.