Think the unthinkable. From Troy to Business Complexity

The development of complexity sciences during the 20th century tests 19th-century mechanistic determinism: chaotic systems, nonlinear laws, uncertain conditions, impossibility of unambiguous predictions, exponential expansion of small initial uncertainties. In this context, faced with the impossibility of finding deterministic phenomena in organizations, the theory of business management is forced to recognize the insufficiency of the old perspectives of “organizations in balance”, at the risk of seeing the organization itself diluted in the dynamic change flow. Wheatley (1997) attempts an analysis of the impact of these complex concepts on the order of organizations; “I wandered these concepts like a stranger, someone not trained for science but for organizational theory and practice. The more she explored, the louder the siren call.This new territory contained powerful images, metaphors, and ways of thinking that required me to seek to understand the phenomena that most frequently disturb organizations: chaos, order, control, autonomy, structure, information, planning, prediction, and participation ”(p.13). Wheatley, in her proposal for new organizational paradigms developed from metaphors from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular physics, recognizes that the more she explored that uncertain world, the louder the siren call. Clearly, there is no greater intent in Wheatley's selection of recourse to this image; However, the implications of the siren song's meaning can help us resignify leadership in times of uncertainty.and ways of thinking that required me to seek to understand the phenomena that most often disturb organizations: chaos, order, control, autonomy, structure, information, planning, prediction and participation ”(p.13). Wheatley, in her proposal for new organizational paradigms developed from metaphors from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular physics, recognizes that the more she explored that uncertain world, the louder the siren call. Clearly, there is no greater intent in Wheatley's selection of recourse to this image; However, the implications of the siren song's meaning can help us resignify leadership in times of uncertainty.and ways of thinking that required me to seek to understand the phenomena that most often disturb organizations: chaos, order, control, autonomy, structure, information, planning, prediction and participation ”(p.13). Wheatley, in her proposal for new organizational paradigms developed from metaphors from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular physics, recognizes that the more she explored that uncertain world, the louder the siren call. Clearly, there is no greater intent in Wheatley's selection of recourse to this image; However, the implications of the siren song's meaning can help us resignify leadership in times of uncertainty.autonomy, structure, information, planning, prediction and participation ”(p.13). Wheatley, in his proposal for new organizational paradigms developed from metaphors from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular physics, recognizes that the more he explored that uncertain world, the louder the siren call. Clearly, there is no greater intent in Wheatley's selection of recourse to this image; However, the implications of the siren song's meaning can help us resignify leadership in times of uncertainty.autonomy, structure, information, planning, prediction and participation ”(p.13). Wheatley, in his proposal for new organizational paradigms developed from metaphors from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular physics, recognizes that the more he explored that uncertain world, the louder the siren call. Clearly, there is no greater intent in Wheatley's selection of recourse to this image; However, the implications of the siren song's meaning can help us resignify leadership in times of uncertainty.He recognizes that the more he explored this uncertain world, the louder the sirens' song. Clearly, there is no greater intent in Wheatley's selection of recourse to this image; However, the implications of the siren song's meaning can help us resignify leadership in times of uncertainty.He recognizes that the more he explored this uncertain world, the louder the sirens' song. Clearly, there is no greater intent in Wheatley's selection of recourse to this image; However, the implications of the siren song's meaning can help us resignify leadership in times of uncertainty.

When the universe ceases to have the precision of a timepiece, the system becomes unstable and phenomena become unpredictable. Pierced by uncertainty, there is only the paradoxical certainty that no certainty is possible, the probability that the forward-looking modes of analytical thought will eventually dissolve into the flow of change. The complexity gap category reflects, in the business sphere, the crossing of the indeterminate as well as the disorientation of thought; the speed of change is recognized as well as the impossibility of representing it, the overwhelming increase in information as well as the impossibility of assimilating it, the certain suspicion that everything solid will vanish irreversibly in real or virtual airs. The problem with unique, complex, non-standard phenomena,is that there is no knowledge base to make sense of it; This lack indicates, on the one hand, the limits of our knowledge and, on the other, the urgent need to think, from the limits and outside the established knowledge, new criteria for action.

¿ What should a driver when traditional forms (accepted ritualized) execution are no longer effective? What should a leader do in a situation that, strange and inhospitable, endangers himself and his team?

The Trojan War lasted for ten years. Ten years of the same exercise, in your own field and your enemy. Ten years of the same way of executing war; the usual, accepted, ritual, traditional form of hand-to-hand combat. Ten years of the repetition of the known schemes and the deployment of the same force. The end of the Trojan War is proof of how the West is born from a display of ingenuity. Ulysses decides to break the repetition that did not lead to victory or defeat, and that he exhausted all forces without achieving the objective.In times when fatigue tempts the possibility of leaving the company, Ulises - the fertile man on tricks - provokes thought until it breaks the limits of what is known. The objective remains the same (to enter the walled city), but Ulysses resorts to thinking unusually, outside of any logic of familiar ways. Ulysses proposes to win the war with a wooden horse. Build a large wooden horse with an inscription consecrating it to the goddess Athena and send a messenger, along with the horse, to tell the Trojans that the Greeks were fighting in retreat. Ulises' proposal, which at first seemed absurd, required a long meditation, the instrumentation of a significant amount of information and a subtle handling of the unpredictable. The Trojans revered the figure of the horse;the Trojans wished to have the favors of the goddess Athena - who had been inclined to the Greeks during the war; no one would dare risk insulting the goddess by destroying the horse or provoking divine anger, leaving him outside the temple of Athena (which was within the walled city). The best Greek soldiers arranged themselves inside the wooden horse and, in order to give a context of credibility, the rest of the soldiers undid the Greek camp. At dawn, the Trojans discover the giant horse, certify that the Greeks have raised the site; some remain hesitant, but the risks of not bringing a divine offering to the temple are greater than any suspicion. Thus, the horse enters Troy and celebrates the triumph of war. When the celebration ends,Greek soldiers emerge from inside the wooden horse. The victory of Troy, paradigm of all wars in the West, is achieved by the tricks of a thought that dares to run the limits of the known.

Ulysses' bet is to think outside the routine habits, out in the open of what is given; Ulysses thinks subtly, introducing confusion, encircling the enemy in a paradox that must be solved in the imminent, playing with the logic of routine reason and implementing traditional forms of feeling. Ulises is the "one who knows how to think better than anyone" (Homero, Ilíada, X, 247); He is the man who wins the war that gives rise to the West with a wooden horse. Ulysses is the man who knows that there is no better resource for success than thought; a thought made of prudence, sagacity, subtle calculation and persuasive story. The Odyssey, the story of Ulysses' journey to his homeland, is the story of Ulysses bending the unknown: Circe, Calypso, the lotophages, the Cyclops, the Phaeacians, the mermaids, the cannibals,the six-headed monster, the world of the cimmerians. The Odyssey is a manual to explore the resources of thought in unknown contexts, on a journey where one navigates the unpredictable.

There is a faculty that describes Ulysses; a faculty that we men continue to possess but for which a fair translation has not been handed down to us: the metis.It is a cognitive skill linked to practice and success, essential to obtain and exercise power in unusual situations. It is a complex ability, often translated as cunning, but one that is committed to insightful action and combines a sense of opportunity with anticipation and experience. Detienne and Vernant (1988) refer to metis as the tricks of intelligence: “it is a form of intelligence and thought, a way of knowing. It involves a complex, but very coherent, set of mental activities and intellectual behaviors that combine smell, sagacity, foresight, simulation, flexibility of spirit, the ability to get away from problems, vigilant attention, the sense of the opportunity, diverse skills,and a long-standing experience. It is applied to fleeting, moving, perplexing and ambiguous realities that do not lend themselves to precise measurement, exact calculation or rigorous reasoning ”(p.11). The metis is the ability of man to think otherwise, outside the repetition of the habit, to react successfully to the unexpected.

In song XII of the Odyssey, Ulysses must face mermaids, strange and charming beings; incomprehensible to the ears of mortals, but sorcerers. So enchanting is the song of these strange beings, that the sailors are held captive and throw their ships on the reefs, forgetting any objective and going straight to defeat. Ulysses has a triple task: to accomplish his project (to return to Ithaca), to protect his fellow travelers from the charm of the unknown, and to understand the unknown. He decides to plug the sailors' ears with wax and tie himself to a mast, under the promise that his team would not untie him even if he required it. The sailors survive, Ulysses reaches Ithaca and goes down in history as the only mortal who has heard what escapes all foreseeable knowledge.

The metis is the human faculty to configure things, giving them a new meaning; to bring together what at first glance seems separate, to relate things that appear distant and irreconcilable to us, until creating new criteria for action. Returning to Archaic Greece can help us exercise metis, to attend to the complexities of mermaids without drowning in their charms.