July 30, 2025–In your career have you played “The Game?”
I define The Game as a set of unwritten rules that control every institution. The institution can include anything from marriage to politics, but for purposes of this post let’s limit it to the workplace.
What makes playing The Game so difficult is not knowing the rules or even realizing a game is being played. It took me a long time to figure this out, but what I finally learned is that in any compensated position, the most valued quality is not in doing the job, but in looking like you are doing the job.
We all have worked in places with “that guy” who accomplishes little but always seemed driven. I remember one of my worst teachers who had perfected the focused walk down the halls between classes, wearing a thousand-yard stare that made him look like Clint Eastwood striding to save the widow from losing the ranch. He was a typing teacher.
Or the guy furiously pounding his keyboard, when you could see by the reflection in his framed diploma that he was playing Tetris.
Alas, I have not perfected the “looking busy” look. I am all about efficiency. To me, success is creating the largest impact with the least effort. To the unsavvy observer, it looks like I’m not doing anything.
Employers don’t want you to make your job look easy. It makes them think 1) they are overpaying you, or 2) they can find any 1st-year intern to replace you.
Years ago I was commiserating about this with a consulting expert who listened to my tale of woe of not being appreciated by a client. He said, “Phil, you’ve got to stand on their desk and show them your shoes.”
Huh?
He told the story of his consulting firm losing a client after finding many inefficiencies and saving them tons of money. The client let them go because they made it look so easy for the amount of money they were being paid. From then on, they made it a policy to barge into the CEO’s office of every client and show them the amount and depth of work his team was doing on the client’s behalf. He called that “standing on the desk” and shouting “aren’t these fine-looking shoes?”
This is hard. Especially for those of us who take quiet pride in our work, and were raised not to brag or call attention to our successes.
Another challenge in playing The Game is that it changes with every situation.
You may have one employer who wants you to do your job without them having to micromanage you. The next employer might want to approve every decision you make.
Here’s The Game: They are both lying.
Every manager who says they will not micromanage you, will micromanage you. Every employer who wants you to run every decision through their office, will become annoyed that you are not making decisions on your own. We lost one client because we ran their marketing the way they wanted us to, instead of the way that we knew would work. After it didn’t work, which we told them would happen, they fired us.
That is the Catch 22 of playing The Game. Ignore their instructions, and get fired for insubordination. Follow their instructions, and get fired, for ineffectiveness.
My advice, after many years of playing and failing at The Game, is this: Don’t play it.
You cannot conform your individual style or talent stack to anyone else’s perception. Because it is only perception, there is no logic or objectivity to how one works.
Do your job. Do it the best way you can. If people pay attention, they will know. If people don’t want to work with you, they will manufacture narratives to make them feel comfortable in their decisions.
Take this away: for every situation that falls apart, three opportunities arise.
That is one rule of The Game that always holds.