Challenge is an under-rated quality in business. But organisations must face unpleasant truths if they are to survive the crisis

One of my friends is a non-executive director in government. He calls a spade a bloody shovel, doesn't suffer fools, challenges received wisdoms, and generally makes life uncomfortable for his executive colleagues. It is, at times, a difficult relationship, and not everyone appreciates his support as much as they ought to, given the time he puts into the job, the mistakes he has helped them avoid and the breakthroughs he has helped to forge.

Some people would prefer a bauble, an adornment (preferably titled) to the letterhead. Many lack interest in anything other than a good lunch and another quarterly fee in exchange for rubber-stamping decisions. As we know from bitter experience, some executives prefer so-called "independent" colleagues to act like nodding dogs. They are easier on their thinking, ambitions and egos.

Business underestimates the value of challenge. Look at the furious response from the City, business leaders and economists to what was characterised as an "aggressive attack on capitalism" by business secretary Vince Cable.

Cable's promise to shine "a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour" was no more anti-business than a parent chastising their offspring is anti-children. If Cable is to address the problems associated with corporate takeovers, banking practices, executive pay and other manifestations of short-termism, he needs to dig beneath the surface to tackle the root cause rather than just trying to deal with the symptoms. Like the tough love of a firm parent, this approach will benefit, not harm, UK business by enabling it to be more sustainable and competitive.

Witness also the furore sparked among the digerati by Malcolm Gladwell, influential author of The Tipping Point, who, in an article in The New Yorker magazine, attacked the popular notion that online social networks represent the future of campaigning, protest and even revolution. Rather, he argued, "Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice".

The vehemence of the backlash against his assertion that there is "a class of social problems for which there is no technological solution" reflects respondents' own insecurity. It is convenient for people to trundle along in their fur-lined rut, pretending to themselves that they are doing their bit, while the enormous social, environmental and economic challenges facing us loom ever larger.

Most people resist change and challenge because it is a threat. But if we are to solve mounting problems in the economy and wider society, we have to overcome that reluctance. Some companies try to do it by fostering a culture of creative thinking, but most of this has degenerated into cosy consensual conversations.

Alf Rehn, a professor of management and organisation in Finland, argues in his new book Dangerous Ideas that the insights or "breakthrough thinking" that organisations really need originate from friction, discomfort, anger, distress and from forced discussion of subjects that are commonly judged taboo, disgusting, inappropriate, or too difficult. For instance, he suggests, the reason the growing cohort of older people is so inadequately provided for is that the young or middle-aged middle classes typically charged with creativity find the idea of older people distasteful. "You see examples of great ingenuity in prisons, concentration camps and war zones, where people have very little, so surely in our comfortable, well-equipped, well-resourced work environments we can find more creative solutions to problems," he argues.

But therein lies the problem. Most organisations have been just too comfortable to feel the need to change. Even business leaders sympathetic to Cable have suggested that his message would be more palatable if he modified his language. The same, I am sure, might be said of my non-executive friend. I don't agree. The softly-softly approach has not worked. Look at the banks, which seem no more accountable than they were before the crash.

Rehn suggests that comfortable organisations feel the need to manufacture a sense of crisis in order to shock themselves into change. Few organisations in either the public sector or the private sector will be feeling comfortable at the moment.

But if they are to survive the crisis, they need to welcome change agents, such as Cable and my friend in government, with open arms. And the more painful their embrace, the better.