“This is a very complicated case, Maude. Lotta ins, lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head”
26 October 2018 (bored during another freaking airport delay) – Earlier this year I received an invitation from Penguin Random House to a book launch. Their division, Riverhead Books, was publishing the latest from Tim Harford: Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives. It sort of “celebrates” (if that’s the right word) the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it’s important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead. Using research from neuroscience, psychology, social science, as well as some very captivating examples of real people doing extraordinary things, Harford explains that the human qualities we value – creativity, responsiveness, resilience – are integral to the disorder, confusion, and disarray that produce them. It described my life completely 🙂
I managed to shoot a 10 minute interview with Tim which, alas, remains in my media studio along with 450+ hours of editing work (yours is coming, Chris D. Really.)
Tim and I follow each other on Twitter and I subscribe to this blog. He just wrote a piece about Brexit for the Financial Times which you can read here. I know not all of you have FT subscriptions so that links to my SlideShare.
Tim thought it might be interesting to study the Brexit process as a “megaproject” – examples include high-speed rail, Olympic games, the Sydney Opera House. You might think it is a bit of a push to make Brexit into “engineering” given we are in the realm of law & regulation. The EU project is essentially political and so categorically different. But in a sense all projects are political, n’est pas?
Points he makes in the FT piece and his blog (I have mashed them up for you):
Lesson 1: Megaprojects go better when you prepare thoroughly. Alas, Brexit has – for understandable but purely political reasons – been rushed. Zero preparation before the referendum – as bad as it gets.
Lesson 2: Worth trying to debias yourself, adjust for optimism, overconfidence, etc. Alas (again for political reasons) the policy of both main UK parties is that we’ll have our cake and eat it. Any dose of realism is viewed as implicit criticism of the voters.
Lesson 3: Pick a highly experienced team. Alas, our highly experienced negotiator quit early in the process.
Lesson 4: Break the project into independent modules, so that failure of one doesn’t jeopardise everything (see: Irish Border). Alas the logic of negotiation says that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
Lesson 5: Align incentives so that nobody gains from throwing sand in the wheels. Alas there are lots of people (from Jeremy Corbyn to Boris Johnson to Michel Barnier) who have reasons to make things difficult for Theresa May. Nothing we can do about that – but not reassuring.
Lesson 6: Install an early warning system so that problems can be spotted and fixed early. Good idea. Or is that “Project Fear”? Alas.