A PERFECT MESS: THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF DISORDER

by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

Thursday, January 25, (noon) at The Mercury Grill, Preston Forest Shopping Center RSVP

Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman estimate that each year Americans spend somewhere around $100 million hiring organizers, and American businesses spend some $45 billion on ways to be better, or at least differently, organized. Is this necessary? Without “mess,” they argue, the world wouldn't have penicillin. What other discoveries are out there waiting to be freed from the shackles of organization? Abrahamson and Freedman explore this question with entertaining, eyeopening stories from real life that may turn your many notions of productivity, effectiveness and clarity on their heads.

What Makes Interesting People Interesting?
Answers by David H. Freedman
  1. What do you think makes you an interesting person?
    "My mortal fear of not being interesting. That sort of thing drives you to work harder at it."

  2. What is the most interesting thing that has happened to you in your career?
    "I've had lunch with seven different Nobel Laureates, including a day spent a mile underground with one of them. I hung out for a morning with Kurt Vonnegut in his home. I was sent snowmobiling above the Arctic Circle, in a live-fire exercise with Marines, and on a police raid in China. But I'm always convinced that the most interesting thing in my career is about to happen to me."

  3. What topics currently interest you outside of your profession?
    "Mandarin and sailing--I'm converting from aviation."

  4. What qualities make a person a great dinner partner for you?
    "Someone who likes answering questions, makes me laugh, and laughs at my jokes--but that's in reverse order."

  5. Besides your family members, who is the most interesting, intriguing person in the world to you and why?
    "There's an ex-cop in Florida named Don who has had four major heart operations. Strong as an ox, a talented artist, can build or fix anything. Can't do enough for his neighbors. Kids follow him around. You just laugh when you're with him. He's seen, and has had to do, some terrible things--he still can't talk about some of them. Gentlest guy I know on the planet."

What Makes Interesting People Interesting?
Answers by Eric Abrahamson
  1. What do you think makes you an interesting person?
    "I tend to take things that people think are obvious and show them how they are non-obvious. I can often convince people of the complete opposite of what they believed initially on important matters. Guess I would be called a contrarian or counterintuitive thinker. "

  2. What is the most interesting thing that has happened to you in your career?
    "I have been able to show that many management techniques are little more than passing fads, that tipping points exist, that change can occur by creative recombination, rather than only by creative destruction, and that moderately messy systems often outperform either completely orderly or completely messy systems."

  3. What topics currently interest you outside of your profession?
    "How people avoid work and get away with it. "

  4. What qualities make a person a great dinner partner for you?
    "A person who discusses ideas and theories, and not just facts and experiences. "

  5. Besides your family members, who is the most interesting, intriguing person in the world to you and why?
    "I tend not to idealize people - so I pretty much find everybody equally interesting. Even if people are uninteresting - and most people are not -- its interesting why the rare uninteresting person is uninteresting. "
 
 
  Never let the urgent crowd out the important.
- Kelly Catlin Walker