If you want to summarise everything ever written on the subject of creativity you can use this elegant little equation: creativity equals opportunity divided by the risk of failure.
The basic conditions of success are taking lots of shots, and not worrying about making mistakes. Because, as the old adage goes, ‘the man who never made a mistake never made anything.’ You see this play out in football time and again. An article in The Times revealed the statistics behind Manchester United midfielder Bruno Fernandes’ doomed passes and unsuccessful shots, yet argued he was the most impactful player in the league.
In his book Tools of Titans, Tim Ferris quotes Seth Godin on exactly this point: “People who have plenty of good ideas, if they’re telling the truth, will say they have even more bad ideas. So the goal isn’t to get good ideas; the goal is to get bad ideas. Because once you get enough bad ideas, then some good ones have to show up.” Have lots of shots at goal and you’re more likely to miss, but you’re also more likely to score.
Sometimes the opportunity part of the equation is simply about having access – whether to tools, materials, experts, money, education or some other factor. Matthew Syad talks about how his one small street in Reading, UK, produced more top table tennis players than the rest of the country put together: there just happened to be a club with incredible coaches there. Sometimes opportunity is about being granted time (as any mother of a newborn will tell you when she can’t get any exercise or sleep). And sometimes opportunity is simply about being given permission to play – whether by someone else or by ourselves.
In organisations, it’s often easier to apologise than to ask for permission, so great the barriers can be to doing the very thing that needs to be done. Giving ourselves permission, on the other hand is much more complex and directly linked to the consequences of failure.
Fear of failure is almost universal. Who wants to look silly, or waste money, or waste time, or fall short of expectations? In organisations, the conditions for creativity have to be culturally embedded: everyone should feel comfortable speaking out, to voice ideas without fear of judgement, regardless of their position within the organisation, and absolutely regardless of their gender, colour, race or sexuality. There must be forums where ideas can be expressed and time and budget set aside for new product development. Processes should be under constant review and ever-evolving.
It’s become fashionable to talk about learning from our mistakes, and embracing failure. It’s a fair point, and we don’t want to repeat them but, for goodness sake, let’s not dwell on them. We don’t need to constantly tell the story of the time we failed, as if we’re in psychotherapy or stuck in a recurring nightmare about the worst interview we ever had. By talking about our failures too much, we stand a good chance of reinforcing the very things holding us back.
To get to the real truth of our fears requires a lot of personal insight. It requires honesty and hard work to overcome our fears. Nothing worth doing was ever easy though. If you want to do something worthwhile today, feel the fear and create something new.