The shield of Achilles – a tale of strategy for work and life

There shone the image of the master-mind:

There earth, there heaven, there ocean he design'd;

(The Iliad, Book XVIII)

Towards the end of the 1st century narrative poem Metamorphoses, Ovid tell us the story of an internal quarrel during the Trojan wars. The great hero Achilles had died, and the Greek had to decide who would succeed to his arms. Forged by the gods, those were without a doubt the most valuable items of the “world”.

Ulysses, the cunning strategist, and Ajax, the strongest warrior, present themselves as candidates to the spoils, entering a long public debate to conquer the votes of their compatriots. In brief: Ulysses wins; Ajax, jealous, goes furiously mad. Then, coming back to his senses, ashamed, he kills himself.

Like it is the case for all classical stories, we can extract multiple lessons and interpretations from that passage. I like to read it from the following perspective:

A part of the debate referred to Achilles’ shield, a magnificent work of Vulcan (Hephaestus). There is almost an entire chapter of the Iliad dedicated to how the smith-god inscribed in the shield the celestial and the earthly, including representations of human activities such as crime and judgment, dancing and partying, and many more.

Ajax’s argument about his right to the shield was quite convincing: it was a heavy and large piece, which the smart but weak Ulysses could not wield. For his strength, Ajax deserved it. Ulysses’ argument, however, overcame it: the shield contained such a divine wisdom that it should belong to someone capable of understanding it. Ajax could perfectly see and describe every image on the shield. But Ulysses, in addition, could read what they meant.

In everything we do, there are written (or explicit) and unwritten (or implicit) rules and guidelines about what is expected, or what will bring about appreciation and other social results (like money or positions). Often, the unwritten ones supersede the official.

When we say “make yourself at home” to a guest, it does not mean the guest should head to the bedroom, undo the sheets, and take a nap without further questions (it is common for sitcoms to develop a character that cannot read between the lines, for comical effect).

Ok, maybe it is easy to recognize the basic rules ingrained in our social lives, but what about the many other subtexts in Achilles’ shield (which shall be our metaphor for life as presented to us via our symbolic reality), which may escape our attention?

We can always repeat the mantra "look at the big picture", but understanding the picture is easier said than done.

Please follow me through a more practical, work-related example (although wholly hypothetical).

Some friends decide to open a company under an interesting concept: “we repair anything we can hold in hands within 48 hours.” New pieces required are purchased and reimbursed, but the total repair price is always capped to 60% of a new equivalent product. They hire six employees in their shop: one receives the customer, one researches how to repair the equipment, one dismantles it, one procures required replacements, etc.

(I have no idea about how a business like this works, so please be flexible to consider this only as an illustration.)

The customers love it. The shop team is fun and engaging, so they attract a massive fan base in their region, rapidly expanding to two other branches. They call the attention of a big company that buys them in a rush and invest to grow the business further.

However… the acquiring company’s controller finds out that the business not only lacks profitability, but it’s an utter financial disaster. Scaling it would only increase the bleeding; either they radically transform the model or shut it down.

Dozens of meetings are held at top management level. Upon approval of the revamp, a new direction is disseminated to the branches:

• Headcount is gradually cut in half. Each employee must now undertake at least two critical activities, in addition to covering for vacations and absences.

• A new triage system is implemented, which must be applied to any new product brought to the shop.

• Lean Six Sigma workshops are conducted for one week in each branch, so they learn how to better categorize, organize, prioritize, etc.

• Each branch is provided with a monthly inventory of “self-repair kits” for typical needs, to be offered to customers under special sales targets.

• Reposition products should be procured only with preferential suppliers.

• Finally, headquarters requests a monthly report about customer satisfaction in top review websites, with a target of never falling below 8.5.

Now, let’s zoom into one the branches.

The team is overwhelmed. Working with half the personnel, forced to apply new processes such as the triage, complying with a plethora of rules, plus being required to sell a new product, and all of that with the burden of watching out for minimum customer satisfaction…

As each of those measures were applied sequentially, while the dismissals were still happening, the remaining team accepted them resiliently. They needed the job, trusted the original vision of the company and, most of all, were proud of their service and work ethics. They work non-stop, through day and night, while cultivating the hope that their bosses will recognize their effort and hire more people soon.

Noticing the quantity and quality of the work plummeting in the other branches, which are even referring customers to competitors, they mock their colleagues. And keep forcing themselves physically and mentally to exhaustion, proudly.

As proud as Ajax.

Meanwhile, headquarters is confident about the plan. Not only the business shall survive, but the team at the ground should be grateful about the new model.

How wouldn’t they? The triage system helps them to decline customers faster. They can offer a self-repair kit to rejected customers, mitigating the perception of lack of service. It will be relieving to focus on the easy high-value repairs, for which there are suppliers ready to furnish replacements. The organization rules will ensure they order only a few times what they need, optimizing services and delivery. All that accepting a natural drop in satisfaction rates, at least until a reasonable threshold!

How different the message in the shield was…

After one year, the acquiring company decides to shut down the one branch still giving them trouble. Too much overtime payments, medical licenses, temporary workers’ hires, exemption requests to purchase from non-preferred suppliers, internal conflicts, etc. Yes, it is the branch with the highest satisfaction rate, but it is simply not working.

I can imagine the until-then-proud employees, in their last day at the shop, feeling like Ajax – willing to run amok and destroy everything around them. It is infuriating not being recognized for strength and honor.

The other branches survive because they were able to read what was going on. And the employees, leaving the shop every day at 5 pm, take full vacations.

Our example ends here, but let’s think a bit more about unwritten messages and the difficulties of understanding them.

First, some implicit rules are made to remain implicit – or, to make things more complex, one of the implicit rules of life is that some implicit rules should remain silenced.

The controversial philosopher Slavoj Zizek has a recurrent example about this that I like: in old Soviet Union, during a meeting of the party, if Stalin suggested a plan and someone said “this is stupid, it is never going to work”, the next day this person would probably have disappeared. However, if a second person said “Are you crazy? We cannot express views against Stalin here!”, this person would have disappeared even earlier. How could the political system of the equals admit that there was a rule against equal participation? Meanwhile, both rules (no challenge to Stalin in public and no talk about the prohibition) were clearly written in the air, for anyone attentive enough to see it.

Back to our illustration, can we imagine a social network post of the revamped shop saying “to our beloved customers, from now on we will offer a poorer service, be much more selective of what we take in, with no intention to fix your knick-knacks, but still make sure we have many of you satisfied enough to keep us in business”? I am not so sure.

Perhaps the company leadership could have been much clearer about the new vision internally (in fact, classic books about transformation of organizations, like Kotter’s Leading Change, underscore the need to relentlessly disseminate the sense of urgency and the new vision to everyone), but I suspect that even “much clearer” never means “transparent”.

Secondly, leaving taboos aside, there are some things we must read through the lines because they simply have no translation to words, at least not in a way that enclose their full meaning.

The filmmaker David Lynch, famous for movies filled with symbolisms he never explains, once said: “The film is the thing. You work so hard, after the ideas come, to get this thing built, all the elements to feel correct, the whole to feel correct, in this beautiful language called cinema, and the second it is finished, people ask you to change it back into words.”

Either you believe or not in a Creator who has worked hard on it, our reality is not different. Direct instructions are simply not enough. That is why we stand in awe of nature and art. That is why religious writings of wisdom so often provide us with stories rather than guidelines.

When Vulcan inscribed images of life and death in Achilles’ shield, he created his own "film" – not a manual.

No text could have told Ulysses to win the war by building a giant horse, stuffing it with Greek soldiers and pretending it was a gift from the gods, taking advantage of the Trojan pride and devotion. And no general applying this tactic today would be successful. Grasping the vision and reading the context require more than literacy.

To conclude, I do not want to leave the impression I am trying to say everyone should, inspired by Ulysses’ trickster spirit, do less work or accommodate.

We can easily think of an opposite example about reading the implicit: someone refusing certain work activities because they are not part of their job description, service level agreement, or whatever, while losing the opportunity to contribute to the company’s main objectives in a given moment.

Reading the context correctly could mean doing more than expected, or at least redirecting efforts, thus generating well-appreciated value and the recognition that follows.

I am also not saying I am a good reader of the implicit (I wish!) or that there are any bullet-proof methods for understanding everything that is going on. After hundreds of management books talking about vision, culture, always adapting, etc., we can be sure that strategies are far from mechanistic. They are a moving piece of a world in flux, and here we need to embrace all the usual clichés.

Well, if there are no instructions for this, what is the use of this text anyway?

I would say that merely recognizing the existence of the invisible in our work life, waiting to be read and understood, already goes a long way. Stop, look around. Strategize. And please, don’t go mad.

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(This text is personal and do not represent ideas of any organization I have belonged or presently belong to.)

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