ACT II: THE MACHINE — How the system works (or doesn't)
No matter what the problem is, no matter who the problem is, nothing matters... there's always an explanation, and that explanation always escalates one level up in the org chart (it really escalates, not ironically).
I propose we consider this phrase an axiom. An irrefutable truth that serves as a frame of reference to "understand" — or better said, assimilate — some realities lived daily in the world of work.
In quality systems work, you need to know the organization's processes in detail. When you find a "problem" or a deviation from procedure, or simply a bad result, you have to review the entire process to "find" the "crack" — what caused the error.
That might sound technical, but it applies to any work situation. In that search for "the crack," I find that in example after example, there's always an explanation that escalates to the next level up in the org chart. I insist: this isn't irony. It's reality. The explanation always escalates one level up.
Example: You analyze a worker's results and find their performance is deficient. You start the "search for the crack." We naturally assume that when a company hires someone for a role, they expect at least acceptable performance. I imagine no company hires people expecting the opposite.
You often find that the worker's bosses are permanently overwhelmed — which prevents them from doing the necessary follow-up, from detecting problems in time — during the trial period? — or from having enough time to coach and try to improve performance. Every case has its details, but this is a fairly verifiable reality.
So the problem isn't the worker — it's that their manager isn't managing. But why? At this point the axiom applies. Let's go up one level in the org chart.
For some reason, department heads don't have the slightest idea of "the reality" their teams live in the field — yes, like a battlefield. They seem to live in a parallel world where the instructions that "come down" to their teams seem very coherent, but in the real world of their subordinates, they're impractical.
This pathology is directly related to the fact that upper management is an insatiable machine of demands that have no point of contact with operations — and absorb 90% of the time and resources of area or department heads.
So the problem isn't the department heads — it's that upper management is consuming them. The axiom applies again. Let's go up.
We arrive at upper management (to keep it short), and when we're lucky enough to learn the reasons why we do everything like shit, that's when you want to shoot yourself in the balls.
Management is permanently fighting with the demands of the board, the shareholders, whatever. The shareholders demand gross margins that, to make possible, require cutting costs however you can: bad salaries, terrible competitiveness in the labor market, minimal spending on infrastructure or training. Or raising prices through the roof — losing to competitors, losing clients.
On top of this, they fight with their own clients to not be forced to lower prices and lose profitability. And with all of us who work at the company.
The Taleb Connection
The axiom describes a separation. At every rung, the people giving the orders are one ladder-step away from the consequences of those orders. The worker's deficient performance is downstream of a manager who can't follow up. The manager's distance is downstream of an executive who's "swamped". The executive's pressure is downstream of shareholders who never set foot in operations. Up and up, each level can plausibly point above for cause — because the structure is engineered to make that pointing always available.
"Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions." — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game (2018), Prologue
Six years before that line was published, "El axioma de la explicación" described the same construction at the resolution of a single org chart. The escalation isn't ironic — it's structural. Less bullshit, more reality at every level isn't a slogan. It's the only countermeasure: shorten the distance between decision and consequence.
This article was translated from the 2012 Spanish original and revised in 2026 through human-AI collaboration — clarifying transitions and adding connections to Nassim Taleb's framework.