If we can get over the fear of failure we can think creatively. Not easy, but possible for anyone, it demands disciplines that are difficult to measure. The four Nobel Prize winners who discovered penicillin did not have financial accounts or Key Performance Indicators. They observed the underground miners rubbing fungal growths from the mine shafts onto their wounds which then amazingly healed. Of the seven rules for being creative observation, as in this example, is the first.

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More difficult is assessing the price and value of good thinking, a rare commodity that cannot be easily measured; it weighs nothing and the act of thinking is not confined to a special time or place. Some think best in the shower, others when exercising. Many think in small doses – an idea churning around in their minds for a long time – and the solution or invention pops out when they least expect it.

A tip for creative thinking: when a problem gets too difficult, forget about it for a while. The solution may emerge while you are asleep. Our brains work in mysterious ways and at unpredictable times.

How then are we to weigh the value of consultation, work done to help a business or individual onto the right track?

Not by hours of attendance at an office; all that guarantees is presence. It does not predicate thought. Is length of report a measure? I would say ‘yes, but not in the way most people would think’. Long reports are usually full of hot air and jargon. Good thoughts can generally be expressed simply and briefly. Be especially wary of expensively dressed reports; they contain the worst conclusions.

How can you assess the quality of advice? In my opinion, very simply. If it seems obvious and you are tempted to say ‘I could have thought of that myself’ then it is probably useful advice. Common sense is most uncommon but it is always recognizable.

Here are some points to ponder about anyone offering to help your business or your life:

Do his questions to me get straight to the heart of the matter? Are they about the real problem or opportunity? Easy to ask about trivial matters, hard to ask difficult questions.

Does he keep on asking questions – maybe even repeating them – after you think you have answered them? If so, excellent. First answers are often the ‘public’ answers, what we would like everyone to think, answers that excuse us or avoid making us look stupid. The real answers usually lie behind them.

Does he probe your answers or does he just accept what you tell him? Often the best advice is not about the brief but about the approach to finding the answer. In my mentoring I try to get Mentees, whether individuals or companies, to come to their own conclusions – with my help. Then they truly understand and believe what they have decided.

Does he suggest way out ideas to stimulate thought about the problem or opportunity? You do not have to have an official brainstorming session to benefit from whacky thinking. The best conclusions in the world come from freeing the mind, not from boxing it.

Does he encourage you to ask him questions? A good advisor learns more about you from the questions you ask than from the information you supply to him. The root of all problems is how we see things. Your questions reveal this.

Does he push you to look beyond the immediate horizon? While it is obviously important for the advisor to keep his feet firmly on the ground it is equally important that you occasionally get your head above the clouds. That’s where the air is clean and the vision distant.

Only those who can see their goals clearly, reach them.

It is not necessary to drink to be creative but it is essential to provide an environment in which the inhibitions are relaxed and the mind can wander. Koestler said “creativity is the ability to perceive relationships”. I believe this is the best definition I have seen. Can we train people to do so? Certainly. It will still leave some people more innovative than others but the quality of everyone’s creative thinking can be improved.

As a boy I was frightened of pain and this made me timid and nervous. Not a good disposition for playing rugby. I turned my fear into fleet of foot and became a passable winger. The fact that I was running to escape the mob behind me didn’t detract from the value of the tries I helped to put on the scoreboard.

So it is with creativity. When a problem becomes too difficult you have three options – give up, ask for help or think your way out of it. The last of these involves you in taking the problem outside the framework in which it has been presented and seeing if a changed context provides the solution. An imaginative “running away” from a problem often presents novel and thoroughly practical solutions.

Creativity isn’t only about solving existing problems. Innovation involves creating new resources. They often turn out to seem like solutions to problems but in fact the problems they appear to solve didn’t exist until the resource was developed. It is significant that the Pentagon uses Hollywood as the source of much of its forecasting. The fiction writers may be ahead of the real world, but they are often right. Today’s nightmare is tomorrow’s reality.

Some of the current attempts to introduce or upgrade innovation are doomed to failure because they are subjected to procedures suitable for systematizing administrative work but counter-productive when it comes to encouraging imaginative thinking. Here’s an example that I have seen recently.

A company needed a strategy for the future. The expectation was that a consultant would examine the company (though not probe deeply into the finances), ponder and then produce a report with a tailor-made plan. This approach would be wholly acceptable if applied to the retrofitting of the plumbing. It could not possibly produce a worthwhile strategy.

The keys to the future of any organisation are

1. what the owners wish to accomplish for themselves
2. what the managers are capable of doing and willing to do
3. what the finances of the company – importantly, including its profit margin trends – permit it to do
4. what a sensible and rational forecast indicates the market will allow or demand.

Someone from outside a business can ask the right questions, focus on the points that matter and help to forecast the market, but the key word is ‘help’. Any consultant who presents a ‘solution’ is doing his client a disservice. He who helps his client to a strategy that is largely the client’s own development, is doing what he is paid to do.

Innovation can never be a solitary journey; it is a mental battlefield where only the best thoughts are allowed to win.