Ruly Bookshelf: A Perfect Mess
When I tell people I am an organizational consultant, one of the first and most common reactions I receive is an embarrassed confession that someone is disorganized. We have been conditioned to expect neatness from ourselves and others and the failure to achieve true neatness leads to profound feelings of shame or inadequacy. One of my primary motivations for founding Ruly was to challenge traditional thinking on organization. I don’t believe that we all need to be compulsively tidy or that our lives need to exist in perfection. When I see a messy home or office, the first thought that runs through my head is not a negative one about how disorganized or dysfunctional the person must be. Rather, I am thinking about the good and best attributes of the person and figuring out how the back end systems the person currently has support those best attributes and how I can add to and improve upon what is already there. There is not one universal “system” that is going to work for everyone but sometimes people do need a core set of ideas to start with in order to build a system that functions for them.
This month’s Ruly Bookshelf choice is a work that challenges traditional notions of organization. “A Perfect Mess” subtitled “The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How crammed closets, cluttered offices, and on the fly planning make the world a better place” by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman gives voice to the millions of us who are naturally messy. Is that such a bad thing? Abrahamson and Freedman argue no. While they admit that there is a limit of messiness (just as there is a limit of cleanliness), a little mess can be a good idea.
“The truth is, we are all at least a bit of a mess — and all the more interesting for it.”
–Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman, A Perfect Mess
Abrahamson and Freedman argue that there are six key benefits of messiness:
- flexibility
- completeness
- resonance (i.e. being in tune with the outside world and our constantly changing environment)
- invention
- efficiency (i.e. it takes time to properly organize things and one system of organization will be a time-waster to at least someone who does not categorize their own thinking in the same way as the system)
- robustness (i.e. messy systems have an easier time coping with unusual objects, concepts or thinking, whereas neat systems try to change those items to fit a predefined category or eject them from the system)
The book then details interesting examples from a variety of sources, including business, science, art, politics, and language showing how some of the greatest achievements have been made as a result of an exposure to a random idea, a chance encounter, a novel way of thinking. Abrahamson and Freedman argue that constraining processes and thoughts into highly ordered systems squelches this type of innovation.
The book profiles businesses like Harvey’s Hardware that stocks an infinite variety of hardware implements in a completely haphazard fashion essentially requiring that customers ask for help from one of their knowledgeable clerks. “[W]hat the store excels at is providing an opportunity to find what you aren’t looking for.” Similarly, the book has praise for search engine “BananaSlug” that inserts a random word (like “poodle”) into your search terms in order to provide you with a set of results that is both relevant and thought provoking.
Like all organizational systems, however, the hypothesis is not entirely perfect. The book was published in 2006. Some of the business profiled for their innovation have since failed, such as DayJet (a system for scheduling plane flights to smaller cities for business travelers based on unpredictable scheduling) which ceased operating September 19, 2008. The author also contrasts the fluid management style of Microsoft and the success of Xbox 360 with the “fastidious, turtleneck-only control freak” management style of Steve Jobs. While he acknowledges that “Apple finally scored a large hit with the iPod,” he tries to end on a sour note stating “by early 2006 analysts were predicting the iPod would soon be losing market share.” There is clearly room for business success for both “clean” and “messy” management styles.
The book makes the case as well as I have ever seen it made that messy people are not disasters but rather creatively organized. A messy person can be very functional, efficient and sucessful. I have met many people like this. However, even messy people have room for improvement. Just as obsessively tidy people may be missing out on detail, nuance and flexibility, obsessively messy people may be missing out on opportunities to expand their opportunities for achievement through introduction of more discipline.
This book is beautifully written and an interesting read. I have three pages of quotations written down that I love from this book but I will restrict myself to just a few of my favorites.
“There is an optimal level of mess for any aspect of every system.”
“Office messiness tends to increase sharply with increasing education, increasing salary and increasing experience.”
“Many of us are already operating at a more-or-less appropriate level of mess but labor under the mistaken belief that we’re failing in some way because of it.”
“Our brains evolved to function in a messy world, and sometimes when we insist on thinking in neat, orderly ways, we’re really holding back our minds from doing what they do best.”
“Even though you can’t count on serendipity, it’s more likely to find those who are open to disorder.”
“It we were always good at recognizing our powerlessness to control randomness– that is, if we fully accepted how disordered the world is — we might too often become paralyzed by indecision or hopelesness. Being quick to imagine that we can assert order and improve the odds to a greater degree than we actually can is what often inspires us to act boldly.”
This book is appropriate for a variety of audiences, including a tidy person who is trying to understand a messy spouse or child and a messy person who needs some validation and support. Some of the business information could use a little updating but it is also an interesting snapshot in time of 2006. I encourage you to experience it for yourself.
Have a messy weekend!