Solving complex problems - The Gordian knot fallacy

When Alexander The Great reached the city of Gordium (aka Gordian, near modern day Ankara) during his conquest, he heard of a famed knot tied on an ox cart. According to legend, whoever untied the knot was meant to rule the world.

Rather than untangling the complex knots, Alexander slashed it with his sword, in his own iconoclastic way.

Cutting the Gordian knot is a metaphor for solving a complex problem in a direct and unconventional manner.

This tale of machismo is often eulogized whenever a decisive leader slashes through complex situations instead of unraveling them painstakingly.

It makes for impactful storytelling, but poor management lessons.

A quick fix approach may seem efficient for leaders in today’s fast paced corporate world.

Why waste time on hours of deliberation if a decision can be taken on two or three options, right? More often than not… wrong!

This may work well for simple reviews or binary choices.

At strategic levels, quick fix solutions like a Gordian slice might solve an issue instantly but compound it over a longer span.

Problem-solving at the strategic level is starkly different from tactical or even operational levels.

When a platoon comes under fire, or a HR executive must arrest attrition of key talent, both leaders have to respond immediately, based on SOPs and within the limited options available.

Naturally then, those decisions can be reductive and binary.

At the macro level however, strategic decisions cannot be taken the same way.

For example, if a nation’s territorial, economic or energy security is threatened, or a company culture needs a transformation.

The Tiger & The Dragon

India and China may be at loggerheads on various fronts, such as border disputes and security, political ideology, etc, and skirmish regularly.

Yet, our economic dependence on China compels us to adopt a dual relationship, where our armies may fight but our commerce collaborates. This is just the reality of a strategic situation where decisions have to be made for the short and the long-term.

Leaders may tend to miss their targets when trying to solve strategic problems with techniques that work well in tactical or operational situations, because they are trying to address?strategic issues with an operational toolkit.

Nuanced understanding of the problem at hand.

Perhaps the biggest threats in the modern connected world are cyber threats - now among the top three risks for organizations.?

Over 90% of breaches occur because an unassuming employee unwittingly?‘allows’ it.

In other words, the majority of successful cyber-attacks are psychological attacks, NOT?technological ones. Yet, ‘cyber security’ teams of even the most evolved organizations rarely?have personnel with an understanding of psychology, let alone training their teams!

A quick way of discerning the same dichotomy between operational and strategic thinking on the national security issue would be to assess how many people we have in our?entire national-security establishment who are fluent in Mandarin, let alone those who have?travelled to China and spent time studying the country first hand.

Operational thinking can and often needs to be a selection among available options, whereas strategic thinking invariably requires capacity building and environment shaping, an activity which by definition requires meticulous deliberation rather than a Gordian approach.

Alexander did go on to conquer vast territory that stretched from Greece to India within a?decade, thus fulfilling the prophecy. However, when he was at the far end of his conquests,?his soldiers tired of his insatiable ambition and mutinied. Since his pace of advance did not?allow time for consolidation or succession,

Alexander’s empire withered away within years?of his death, splintered by satraps fighting one another in a leadership vacuum.

He left behind little other than cities bearing his name, folklore and lessons on the importance of?unravelling complex problems painstakingly.