Ori Brafman and Judah Pollack, The Chaos Imperative: How Chance and Disruption increase Innovation, Effectiveness and Success, Crown Business, New York, 2013.
Once I’ve read a good book by one author I’m more than likely to sample their next offering. I love Ori Brafman’s earlier book The Starfish and the Spider. It’s a brilliant view of what I consider to be the biggest trend in business. I’ve also read his book Click – it was good and not outstanding.
We rapped The Starfish and the Spider here at Book Rapper.
By definition ‘chaos’ is the opposite of order and organization. And, naturally it follows that it’s the enemy within most corporations. We want order, control, certainty, predictability, reliability… These are all good things and they’re usually favored over chaos.
However, as Brafman and Pollack point out, chaos has some desirable qualities too.
In particular admits the control of the hierarchy that dominates most organisations, a little chaos and ‘not knowing’ is required for innovation, change and progress. As the old saying goes, if we do the same thing over and over we’ll get the same results. If we different we need to do different. If we have too much order, sometimes chaos is need to jolt the system forward.
This book is super-readable. I read it in two days. I just loved the stories. There are beautiful combination of case studies from history, science, design, the contemporary world and Brafman’s personal experience working with the US Army. My favourite was the chapter on The Neurobiology of Insight. This was er… insightful to me in a really big way!
If you’re looking for a how-to guide with specific steps for success you’ll be disappointed. In the world of chaos, it’s not so easy. Instead, the authors offer five rules for causing chaos which is not as dramatic as it might seem.
The goal is not to disrupt everything or throw the rules out the window. Instead, the goal is more to promote room to reflect, chance encounters and to avoid the dazzle of statistics into thinking you have everything handled.
Read The Chaos Imperative to:
Or, simply because you love good stories!
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