Power: To Play or Be Played
Five Rules for the Game Nobody Told You About
At some point in your career, if you're paying attention, someone will hand you a knife without meaning to.
A late night. A loosened version of themselves. A confession about how they really got to where they're at. The gaps between what was claimed and what was True. The improvised career dressed up as an inevitable one.
What you do in that moment is the whole lesson.
I held it. Never used it. And earned something more durable than gratitude: trust.
Years later, my boss was asked to leave.
The announcement hit the familiar notes. Mutual respect. New opportunities. The careful language organizations reach for when the truth is too blunt to print.
The reasons weren't without merit. Big vision, scattered execution. He was genuinely talented, but talent even has a shelf life when the gap between promises made and promises kept becomes the thing people remember.
What I inherited was not a clean slate and what I learned was that “the game” is always being played.
The rules are unwritten, rarely spoken, and very much in force.
The only question is whether you're a player or a piece.
…
Rule 1: Pick Your Targets
Not every person, pitch, or project deserves your energy. That's not cynicism. It's how you protect the things that actually matter.
Most of it is noise. The skill is learning to hear through it. Knowing what the business needs now, and caring enough to think about what it will need next. Be where the puck is headed. Not because you're gaming the system, but because you've done the work to understand it.
Find where power actually lives. And then, genuinely, try to understand the people who hold it. How they think. What they value. What keeps them up at night. Not to manipulate, but to meet them there. To earn their trust by making their problems your problems.
That's the real move. Not positioning. Not politics. Just showing up, fully, for the people and work that matter most. Lead them somewhere better than where they started. That's how trust gets built, and how it lasts.
My north star is the CEO, but I'm not walking into his office uninvited. My aim is to earn the trust of the people around him, to exceed expectations with deliveries and let their words carry my name into rooms I haven’t even entered.
A recommendation from someone he trusts lands differently than anything I could say myself. The people at the top notice who performs.
Operate at that standard long enough, and something shifts.
You stop wanting a seat at the table and instead become someone they pull up a chair for.
Rule 2: Optics Matter
Doing good work in the dark is charity, not strategy.
I've watched people use leadership transitions to quietly rewrite history. Talking down peers behind closed doors. Absorbing credit for others' groundwork. Pitching themselves as the antidote to a team they'd helped undermine.
Optics without substance is a short-sighted game.
Snakish behavior has a way of following the snake around. The people worth impressing tend to see through it eventually, and word travels further than most people expect.
Trust lost that way rarely returns. Honest work, done openly, carries a different kind of weight. The kind people feel before they can explain Why.
Just make sure your work lands in front of the people who matter. And if someone tries to bury your contributions to make themselves shine a little brighter, stop supporting them. Full stop.
Credit isn't vanity, it's currency in a capitalist society.
Rule 3: Handover the Win
Managing up is an artform. The most underrated tool isn't competence, it's getting the people above invested in you and what you're building.
This isn't manipulation, it's intentional empathy.
Every leader carries a worldview. Instincts, pet theories, priorities they’re already committed to.
Your job isn't to override their worldview, it's to understand it deeply enough that your ideas feel like a natural extension of what they already believe.
Not a pitch. A reflection.
In practice: listen before you speak. Know what they value and where they want to go. Then hand it back to them, refined. Take their instincts, elevate them, and present them as a path forward. Credit them early and publicly. Let them feel like the architect, because the best collaborations make everyone look better.
When powerful people feel seen, they become your most devoted advocates. They carry your name into rooms you'll never enter alone. They clear obstacles you didn't know existed. Your success becomes, quietly, an extension of their own.
But it has to be real. Sincere praise lands. Everything else has a smell to it.
Find what's genuinely worth admiring and let that be your currency.
Rule 4: Define the Narrative Early
The moment you walk in, you're being judged. The window to define yourself on your own terms closes faster than most people realize.
I came back from leave to a boss being pushed out, a split team, a crowded analytics lane, and a reputation that needed rebuilding.
Some would have kept their heads down and waited. I didn't.
I talked to people across the org, shaped a roadmap, and started saying “No”.
To side quests. To follow ups. To "it'll just take a day" requests that ultimately become week-long detours.
I made it clear we weren't messing around with our time or focus.
I'm leading a lean, inexperienced team and our only shot is to be ruthlessly focused.
To deliver where it counts, then build from there.
Our team sank before because it lived off of distraction and side quests.
This time is different.
We are a "delivery team" that practices discipline day-in-and-day-out. We finish what we start.
That's the brand, and it's worth protecting every single day.
Identity at work is established early and quietly. The first few weeks write a story about you whether you author it or not.
People are watching what you prioritize, what you push back on, what you let slide.
Show them who you are before they decide for you.
Rule 5: Be Unpredictable
This one is harder to teach and may be the most important.
The people who accumulate real organizational power rarely color inside the lines. Not always, anyway.
They're the ones willing to have the conversations nobody else will start. To push back when the room is nodding. To say out loud what everyone else is only willing to say behind closed doors.
Nothing moves without these people. Nothing changes.
They are the catalyst, and organizations need them more than they'll ever admit.
I've made a deliberate choice to live in that discomfort. To surface tensions early. To challenge assumptions in the room and force clarity where convenient ambiguity has been allowed to fester.
It's not always welcome. But it signals something rare: I'm not here just for optics, I'm here to build something real.
Building something real leaves marks. That's the cost.
There's a certain respect that follows people who speak plainly and stand apart. Who you can't quite predict. Who aren't angling for approval with every word.
Predictable people are easy to manage and easier to overlook.
Be intentionally unpredictable. Be the variable in the equation.
...
The Bigger Picture
The future we're building doesn't announce itself. It accumulates via one trusted report, one solved problem, one moment where someone thinks I'm glad they're on this and files that feeling away.
Technology is the scaffolding. Trust is the structure.
And influence, real influence, is what remains when the scaffolding comes down.
Power dynamics aren't shadows to fear or levers to pull in secret. At their best, they're an invitation to know the room, to know yourself, and to show up with enough clarity that people stop wondering whose side you're on.
The game has always been underway.
The only question is whether you're playing it or just watching it play out around you.