"If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” JK Rowling
Image generated using Sora
A week of physiotherapy in December nudged me into an old habit—reading.
Earlier this week, halfway through the first chapter of Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives1, I found myself in a familiar place—nodding.
But what struck me was the way he got there.
He drops us into a moment that feels paradoxical. A concert where the piano was so out of tune, the performer Keith Jarrett almost refused to play. Yet the result became one of the most beloved solo jazz recordings2 ever.
Reading Messy reminded me that I’ve experienced this in meetings too. Someone tells a story about a project that shouldn’t have worked but did. Or a process that looked inefficient on paper but turned out to be resilient in practice. Before the charts show up, the room has already shifted. I’ve written about moments like this, when a story makes a future feel real before its proven3.
And it reminded me of something we don’t talk about enough at work—and why this felt like a useful place to start the year.
Over the next several weeks, we’ll look at a book a week that uses story in a way that persuades. Each book earns its place for one reason only.
Not the anecdotes.
Not the writing style.
But for the move.
If you read closely, patterns begin to appear.
That’s the lens we’ll use all month.
Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
What struck me while reading Tim Harford’s book wasn’t the research—it was the sequencing.
He doesn’t begin by insisting that mess is good. He starts by showing where order fails. Where neat systems collapse under real-world pressure.
Only later does he widen the frame. The persuasion happens before the explanation.
That’s business storytelling—just stretched over chapters instead of slides.
Where this shows up at work:
Strategy shifts—when the current direction no longer fits.
Innovation bets—when you have to make a high-risk recommendation
Any moment where the obvious answer turns out not to be the right one.
Why it works
Messy doesn’t try to tidy up disorder for you. It stays with it. Harford lingers on situations where rigid plans buckle under real-world pressure, where improvisation—often dismissed as sloppy—turns out to be adaptive.
What’s interesting is how the persuasion unfolds. He doesn’t start by insisting that mess is good. You feel the unease before you’re offered an explanation.
Reading it, I realized how often we do the opposite at work.
We begin with the argument.
We rush to the framework.
We try to secure agreement before anyone has really felt the problem.
And when it doesn’t land, we assume the answer is more evidence.
But the book reminded me of something I’ve seen repeatedly in organizations: people don’t resist ideas because they lack proof; they resist because the story hasn’t given them anywhere to stand.
Try this week
Not an exercise. Just something to notice.
This week, pay attention to moments where an idea starts to persuade before it’s fully explained.
You might see it in a meeting, when someone tells a story and the room leans in
In a review where an example shifts the conversation more than the slides
In your own communication, when you are tempted to lead with the conclusion
If you’re tempted to open with the answer, pause. Ask yourself:
Is there a small, specific moment that reveals the tension?
You don’t need to abandon logic. Just let it arrive a little later.
Next week, we’ll stay with this theme and look at a different move—one where the story doesn’t make the idea strange, but uncomfortably familiar.
1 Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
2 Keith Jarrett, Köln Concert, January 24, 1975
3 Use Storytelling When You Need to Sell The Future