None of these are games: they're really just an expression of the energy you need to spend to change a rigid structure. And the more rigid, the more energy, just like a metal bar you'd be trying to fold.

You can change things but you must do it. You must put your reputation at risk, expense time that you wont be compensated for, go through conflicts you'd rather avoid, make lifelong enemies wether you succeed or not. Then, you changed the rigid structure once more and the next guy will either try to put it back where it was and face less resistance or fold it one more time and face even more.

You cannot teach a rigid structure agility just like you cannot teach iron to be silk, and the structure is rigid for a reason: size, cost, regulation, cultural beliefs, rot due to time, past mistakes (in my experience the largest factor: a mistake 10 years ago can justify 3 days a week of useless processes today) etc. You can change the structure but it's CEO-level work to change its rigidity.

Well first of all I don't consider work groups as solids, it's more like a non newtonian fluid.

And reputation, enemies.. all of these are absurd notions to me. It mostly shows immaturity in our notion of work and society. And I'm not asking for people to find solution to state finance, but even for changing the simplest thing, people will resort to primitive behavior. It's child like behavior mostly.. and the bad side of childhood, not the "let's make something fun for everybody" more like "boss doesnt like me so i wont move a finger". In those structures everybody becomes everybody's enemy, and it's a super sad sight.

This strikes a chord with me.

Ironically, the only way to minimize the "game playing" is by mastering them. There will always be people out there whose only real skill is manipulating the people around them, and who will deploy that skill at full force.

I'm not saying you should manipulate the people around you... but the twin powers of, "understanding whats going on around you" and "documenting everything", go a long way.

Yes.. I came to a similar sad realization. Either understand the game better or somehow treat people like confused scared kids posturing.

I also try to distill good vibes and motivation, bit by bit. Listening, suggesting, showing.

I've asked a few places but I've been looking for the social dynamics of work groups.

This article helped me to understand "the game" a little better. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

I've read these articles back and forth and I honestly cannot grasp more than 30% of the ideas. The loser eludes me, the middle layer same..

I'd love to poke in people's head to be sure what are the motives behind their behavior (the main one I assume being a balance of respect/equality and money).

> I'd love to poke in people's head to be sure what are the motives behind their behavior

I suspect you're approaching things too logically. In my experience most people do something then rationalize why they've done that later, if at all. And that's without any perceptive, or memory problems or anything like that, and assumes good intent-- which a lot of people don't have.

I also suspect some people's brains work so differently from my subjective experience that there's effectively no way to understand them.

A very hard lesson for me was "don't try to use logic to understand irrational people."

I now tend to think of people in terms of, "can I predict a response or action by them?" By observation, you can kind of build a set of rules and start hypothesizing about them and update your model when you get more evidence. But you still need to be mindful that different conclusions can be reached with different or conflicting information.

It worked so well on an ex of mine that she thought I was spying on her somehow, because I often had reasoned out things I shouldn't have known. The most terrible example-- that she was cheating on me. I came to this conclusion from a few bits of evidence-- she wasn't really the curious type. Most of the film, music, etc she knew about were from me. And then one day, she started talking in detail about a film I knew she hadn't seen, and she used a word I had never heard her use before.

This lead me to think, "She's having some sort of social interactions that I'm unaware of, and they're probably watching movies together, and if its being kept secret, its probably something bad."

And I was correct.

That's too cold an approach for me

I'd rather try to connect emotionally and see who's responding. I grew up the way you think and I'm tired of it. If someone doesn't like me (or doesn't like me anymore), no problem, then I'll find other people, all I want is honesty.

That said, I've encountered the post rationalizing lying kind just too many times.. :)

I understand your feelings but I'm not saying you should do this with everyone-- just problematic or difficult people.

Boy, this resonated.