When it comes to the minutiae of modern life, I'm prone to getting things wrong. Go to the shop, come back with the wrong size batteries; turn up for an event on the wrong day; forget to put the clocks back - all that sort of thing, hopeless. But on the big stuff - politics, work, ideas - I find I'm mostly right.
Now, you're probably thinking I'm just a conceited twerp who should stop running off his mouth and do something useful. However, bear with me, for this isn't a boast; it's more of a process and something most people can do.
Being right isn't a matter of being superior or incredibly brainy, it's a matter of approach. Let's take the last war with Iraq as an example. You'll remember, in the run up to the invasion, various ministers, spin doctors, presidents and our own Prime Minister were asserting with the utmost vigour, that Saddam Hussein had a vast weapons capability which would allow him to launch an attack on Cyprus with just 45 minutes to prepare. This was almost a certainty, we were told, and created an undeniable reason to go after him and his country, with everything we had. This was believed by a sufficient number of MPs, who assured us they had been presented with a range of evidence, for the government to gain approval for the conflict.
'Their thinking had become coloured by their assumptions and interests.'
I was by no means alone, but I thought the argument was unlikely to be true. At first, this was nothing more than a gut reaction - so I may well have been wrong. So I checked the details. Using the web and a few books, I established what was needed to launch a weapon of mass destruction across the Mediterranean and hit a strategic target, like Cyprus. It didn't take long to discover that manufacturing deadly nuclear, chemical or biological materials is relatively easy. It's the delivery mechanism which is incredibly difficult, demanding very sophisticated engineering and resources - which were absolutely unavailable to the Iraqis. Therefore the 45 minute claim had to be false. And indeed it was. I explained this to anyone who would listen. Some folk told me I must have my facts wrong, but I didn't. I was right. I was right, not because I was better at this stuff than government strategists, or my fellow citizens, but simply because I established the facts and weighed them objectively.
As I say, pretty much anyone can do this and arrive at conclusions which are not 100% certain but have a very good chance of being correct. That chance diminishes when the process becomes distorted by subjectivity, wishful thinking, assumption and vested interest. In the case of the Iraq war, people with enormous power and influence placed more emphasis on the things they wanted to be true, than anything demonstrated by fact. Their thinking had become coloured by their assumptions and interests.
And what does this have to do with creativity? Well, most of us here work on projects intended to both satisfy a client and create a reaction in an audience. If we want to be professionally successful, retain accounts and remain employed, we're tasked with being right. Naturally, this is a fluid activity. The client may have one idea, the relationship manager another and you may well think they're both wrong. How can we ever unpick this quandary and arrive at answer that works? Compromise is an option, but design by committee produces patchy results at best. Far better to take an objective view, gather the facts, examine the details and determine what is likely to be right. Hard though it is, set aside your burning desire to be the one with the best idea. That's a vested interest. Follow the evidence.
Where do this evidence come from? How do you find the objective facts? That's easy. Insist they're always in the brief. That way, you'll never be wrong.
Magnus Shaw is a copywriter, blogger and consultant
