ACT II: THE MACHINE — How the system works (or doesn't)
One of my jobs was in an "office" in the back of my cousin's house. At lunchtime, we'd go to his place, where his 4-year-old sister was having lunch before heading to school.
At that hour, the kid would watch a children's programme called "Blue's Clues." Blue is a blue dog that leaves clues (3 of them) that the kids have to find and record, so that at the end of the programme they can discover the object Blue was hiding.
I use the word "record" intentionally here—when the kids found a clue (a Blue paw print), the host would appear and tell them to "write the clue in a notebook" (Recording).
Once they found all 3 clues, the host would invite the kids to go to the "Thinking Chair" to use their record and, through thinking, discover what Blue was hiding.
Thinking, in all aspects of life, needs a designated space, place, and time. It's the only way to conduct a critical and realistic analysis of a situation, and thus make decisions.
Despite the fact that this—as that programme demonstrated—can be done by kids between 3 and 4 years old, in work environments it seems impossible.
Companies don't dedicate a specific time, much less a space, for thinking. Frequently, and in some cases with luck, they collect 8 million data points that they never analyse.
In cases where they do actually think, it's an activity reserved for a specific group of workers—not something extended throughout the organisation.
This isn't just the fault of middle/upper management. From my point of view, the responsibility for this space not existing is 50% on management and all positions with the authority to delegate, and the other 50% on the rest of the workers.
In meetings with senior executives and management, when I raised the complaint "we're not thinking," I received responses like:
"You're right, but I'm swamped with other things—I don't have time."
"Do me a favour: write down what we just discussed, and in the next meeting we'll get into this topic."
(It was never, ever addressed.)
In meetings or chats with colleagues in various positions, outside of management or middle management, I got this type of response:
"Ehhh, they don't pay me for that..."
"No idea, mate..."
"That's what bosses are for. You're such a suck-up..."
Boss, middle manager, or whatever the hell you are at your job: What happens if someone asks you—or you ask—these questions at your workplace? What answers do you get or give?
- What does the company do?
- What's the company's future?
- How do clients see us?
- What's the work climate like?
- What are we getting wrong?
- What's our strength?
- What's the core of the business?
- How does the company make money?
- What do you want for yourself in the short/medium/long term?
- How are we going to align that with the company's objectives?
- Why are you here?
The Taleb Connection
A 4-year-old gets given a Thinking Chair on Blue's Clues. A senior executive doesn't.
The article's two refusals are characteristic. From management: "You're right, but I'm swamped — I don't have time." From workers: "They don't pay me for that." Same outcome, opposite ends of the chart. Nobody owns the thinking function, so it doesn't happen. The data gets collected; the decisions get made anyway, on the nearest available story.
"The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them." — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan (2007), Ch. 6
That's what fills the empty chair. Without a deliberate pause, the explanation that gets attached to the facts is the convenient one — the one that doesn't require rebuilding the strategy or admitting the direction is wrong. Cheap narratives are the natural by-product of an organisation that never sits down.
The eleven questions at the end of the article are diagnostic. Most people in most companies can't answer them. Not because the answers are hard, but because the chair has been removed from the floor plan.
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.