Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World

by Tim Harford

Messy disruptions will be most powerful when combined with creative skill. The disruption puts an artist, scientist or engineer in unpromising territory – a deep valley rather than a familiar hilltop. But then expertise kicks in and finds ways to move upwards again: the climb finishes at a new peak, perhaps lower than the old one, but perhaps unexpectedly higher.

A final lesson is that we have to believe the ultimate goal of the collaboration is something worth achieving and worth the mess of dealing with awkward people. Brailsford says that ‘team harmony’ is overrated: he wants ‘goal harmony’ instead, a team focused on achieving a common goal rather than getting along with each other.

Boyd argued that synchronisation was for watches, not for people: trying to synchronise activities wasted time and left everyone marching at the pace of the slowest.