This is an
insightful book, at one level liberating but at another
uncomfortable.
There is a
significant chunk of the book that deals with the functioning of
organisations, there is a dominant trend for order and predictability
within organisations. The message is that this can get you to “good”
but rarely gets you to “great”.
Within education
practices like the literacy hour raised the baseline, giving a solid
structure that allowed less able teachers to perform well but for
stronger teachers it is seen by many to have limited their potential.
The same is true of chain restaurants, walk into any Pizza Express
and you know what you are getting, walk into an independent Italian
and you might get the best meal of your life, or the worst.
Tim Harford also
points out the ways that targets that are set as a measurable proxy
for performance quickly become the be all and end all and fail to
work – how many organisations have set a performance indicator that
all emails will be responded to within 24 hours, and then create an
automated response that merely thanks you for your email to hit that
target, with the meaningful response coming days or even weeks later
if at all. The KPI is met, but whether a service is delivered remains
in doubt.
The part of the book
that sat less easily was about those who were successful through the
deliberate creation of chaos. Once you know that most of the world
operates on pre-scripted rule based protocols, and you have the guts
to back yourself to deal better with off-script scenarios than your
rivals, it is natural for you to set up those scenarios and trust
your wits to get you through. That Harford's examples of this in
action are Field-marshal Rommel, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and
Donald Trump proves it is effective but maybe leaves you wondering if
winning is the same as virtue? Being a good person and being a
“successful” person are not necessarily co-determinate.
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