“Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

It makes sense for management and process to eliminate surprise if the system you’re managing is predictable. But then I think about what I do when I QC datasets, and my goal there is to use automation to eliminate everything BUT surprise. The surprise is where the actual work is; anything with enough pattern to it to be dealt with using a defined process is something the computer should do for me.

So maybe planning for surprise means having a division that does QC on the organization itself? Or something like that.