Interlude: The Benefits of Messiness

In the name of avoiding the perils of overorganization, I’m taking a brief detour from my series on “Connecting and Creating” to address an interesting connection I encountered today while browsing through the book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

To set the context: In one of my first articles in The Daily Improviser, I wrote the following:

“If anyone were to ask me ‘How can I be a Daily Improviser in my organization?’ I would say, ‘Read Frederick Winslow Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management – and whatever he says, do the opposite.’”

Abrahamson and Freedman make a similar observation:

“[W]hile the wild enthusiasm for strict Taylorism faded, what never quite disappeared was a now-ingrained inclination to organize, schedule, arrange, and standardize at work, home, and everywhere else, as a means of squelching variation, improvisation, unpredictability, and anything that smacked of extraneousness.”

(Note, by the way, that by “messiness” they're referring to more than just strewing around stacks of paper and flinging clothes over the handlebars of the Exercycle. Reflecting perhaps some latent tendencies toward organization, the authors create a neat taxonomy of messiness that includes such entries as clutter, noise, inconsistency, distortion, time sprawl – and, yes, improvisation.)

The authors then elaborate on some of the major drawbacks of overorganized people and systems – inability to respond flexibly to change, an unhealthy insulation from one’s environment (shades of Hans Monderman, “the guy who hated signs”), rigid plans and processes that shatter when their underlying assumptions meet reality (shades of Commander’s Intent).

Abrahamson and Freedman hasten to point out that there is such a thing as dysfunctional mess. “We’re not saying that messier is always better,” they write. “Rather, we argue that there is an optimal level of mess for every aspect of every system…. [P]eople and organizations frequently err on the side of overorganization.”

An optimal level of mess? Could there actually be benefits in messiness? Yes indeed, say the authors - flexibility, diversity, resonance with the environment, serendipity, robustness ... and, um, even fun!

Well, sorry for the “mess” I created by breaking into the “Connecting and Creating” series – but I just wanted to get this out while it was fresh in mind (hmm, another benefit of messiness).