BUT NOW I SEE

Diversity of experience is also key to understanding customer needs. Many investors looking for new ways of thinking are put off by the idea of smart people who have been to fancy schools and all think the same way. So use the company credit card to pay for a global backpacking trip and say that you are weaving the tapestry of life and guarantee commercial results in five years (when you’ve left).

Institutionalisation is dangerous because groupthink can take hold, which is why all the highest paid executives live by this one important rule: move before you’re measured. Try to get yourself a great job and then be terrible at it, before being employed in another great job that you again stuff up. Gardening leave and golden handshakes are the key to a successful ‘ideation’.

What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger. That theory doesn’t always work, especially if you’ve been poisoned by Russian spies. But hardship is the best way to get some grit. So test the resolve of your team with a series of intense physical and mental challenges, Fear Factor style.

Take away your senses and you experience life in a different way. Create constraints and you will find ways around them. So get a couple of eye patches, and, like blind man Daniel Kish (AKA Batman), you can develop your own echolocation system through the use of clicks. This will not only open up your mind and show you that nothing is impossible, but you can also communicate secretly with friends who are in on the clicking.