Understanding social reality is especially important for managing long time career success. Though the term is not regularly used in business, reality structures are nothing more than a mental framework that helps people understand and interpret the world around them. Over the years I’ve found that reality structures can differ between one corporation and another. The 3M reality differs significantly, for example, from the Ralston Purina reality. 3M is strongly oriented to research, while Ralston is strongly oriented to marketing. The consequence is that research behaviors get a lot of attention at 3M, and little at Ralston. You get my gist.
In this post, I want to introduce you to a major social reality that operates in many different contexts.
The “waiting game”
“Waiting game” is a social reality in which one or more participants withhold action temporarily in the hope of having a favorable opportunity for more effective action later.
It’s often seen in personal affairs. In divorce, the waiting game is a tactic used by one spouse to delay the process by refusing to commit to the terms of the settlement. The goal is to force the other spouse to make a different move or to gain more information.
My wife and I used the waiting game to get the best settlement from an insurer who wanted to settle with us immediately for a small amount over the failure of a neighbor to pay attention to his backing up, knocking my wife off her bike and causing serious bruising. Our lawyer said we could accept a small amount from the man’s insurance company as an immediate settlement or wait years until the insurer had to pay the max settlement. Although the insurance agency attempted to get us to settle for less several times, we played the waiting game. It paid off big-time.
The best definition of “waiting game” is the colorful, less polite statement to “fuck around and find out.”
Israel has been playing the waiting game with the Arabs almost since its founding in the late 1940s. Hamas is now playing the waiting game too. Of course, Iran is also in the mix. Add to that the survival needs and problems of both Netanyahu and Sinwar. Their game operates on fairly different behaviors than, say, “war,” a different social reality that Netanyahu has actually chosen not to use—even though their behaviors sometimes look like war.
Career realities
Many of my blogs, including this one, are written through the perspective of my careers—church minister, seminary faculty, and since 1984, executive consultant. A major piece of my role in all of these roles—and especially as consultant—is focused on personal and career development. In all of these roles, I sometimes had to spend initial time explaining what was actually going on in changes of the social reality. Today, some of the best companies will do some of what I had to do as a consultant. There’s even a term for it: onboarding.
But, occasionally I had a fairly senior client that really did not understand that a major shift in the social reality had taken place—or was going to take place. Once that understanding was understood and accepted, the form and shape of their career behaviors could be re-focused. Sometimes, I was called in to work with a senior client who knew that the social reality was changing, but they were clueless about how to deal with it. One very well-educated vice-president of marketing and an MBA from a top school grabbed me while I was working with several others at his firm. Rather colorfully he said, “Erwin, the organization is making very strong changes in managing people and I’m so clueless that I don’t even know where to begin. I’m going to be a dinosaur in just a few months—and out on my ass. Help!”
“Career change”
The basic reality of business people after the mid-1980s was “career change.” Prior to that time, personal change was not central. Most every organization worked on the basis of the hierarchical social structure growing out of the factory assembly line. But with the onslaught of technology, hierarchy as a reality retreated, giving way to horizontal structures which demand career change and development for many. Surprisingly, many clients lacked the needed structural clarity for that new organizational reality. The consequences were often failure and job loss. So my task as an executive coach was sometimes to help clients understand and shape their behaviors and expectations to fit the new business social reality.
Career success
Today, the social change of business is taking place again—drastically. Smarter senior people recognize that the new fundamental reality is “applying AI to our business”. If managers decide to play the “waiting game”—which is clearly what many are doing—they’re making a serious mistake. Like my client from the 1990s, they’re liable to be out on their ass. If they don’t understand AI, they’d better get to the task on a strategic level so can begin to figure out to best use AI, as well as how, when and why it will impact their career. And then make certain they’re also making the AI reality changes necessary to survive and succeed.
To go back to where I began with the “waiting game,” it’s quite possible that Sinwar might end up dead fairly soon, and Netanyahu out on his ass. As I’ve indicated, social realities come and go. Their usefulness eventually comes to an end. And Mossad is better at assassination than the CIA. The changing context demands a changing reality structure.