Annette Simmons

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Ten Games People Play to Control Truth (7)

  1. Invisible Walls Game
"Come on in" said the spider to the fly.

“Come on in” said the spider to the fly.

“He would use the bureaucracy. He would tie things up in bureaucracy. He knew how to make moves and grab what he wanted and then tie it up so you couldn’t get it back.  He would use the system…He would mislead people into thinking that he was being cooperative while he was doing this other stuff behind the scenes. He always put on the face of a very cooperative person, but he was a back stabber.”

The Invisible Walls Game is a broad catch-all bucket of highly creative yet secret (well…deniable) ways to stop the progress of an idea while pretending to support that idea in public.  One subject reported that a game player agreed to share information and then buried the needed information within a mountain of data and printouts.

“[They] completely disallowed any useful information to come out for me to take back and use as a program. The people in that meeting , therefore, accomplished not allowing  the program to be started.”

Of course, not all walls are inherently bad.  Good fences make good neighbors.  A “wall” is not a game until a group decides they no longer need/want to be a good neighbor.

One Big T Truth about being human is that, to survive, we must balance the paradoxical benefits of connections and protections.  Too much emphasis on protection erodes connections. Too few connections and we cannot solve problems that require collaborative effort.  Every decision to protect has the potential to erode a connection and vice versa.

Twenty years later, the word “bureaucracy” in the quote above can also describe new technology-run administration systems (new forms of bureaucracy) with built in walls that prevent unauthorized acts of connection/generosity before they can happen. For instance in healthcare, systems increasingly redefine face-to-face interactions as unnecessary and thus avoidable expenses. Kiosk check ins, website based communication and automated telephone systems effectively wall off any chance the providers I need will have to waste time on a healing smile, a shared  joke, or an expression of empathetic connection.   Some territorial game players are even proud of how these walls keep resources out of the reach of anyone outside their circle of moral concern.

Everyone knows that some walls are good, even vital, but the territorial game of Invisible Walls (not so invisible lately) specifically describes behaviors of a core group that hoards resources needed for collective actions. If it’s not a game (legit protection) it isn’t an invisible wall.

In the 3rded. of The Story Factor (Fall 2019) there will be more about how individuals, groups and institutions use stories to define who is and is not within their “circle of moral concern.”  Shrinking circles mean fewer connections.  And when the desire to protect causes us to neglect the care and feeding of vital connections required to solve problems too big for our tribe alone– we are playing games with our future.

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Ten Games People Play to Control Truth (6)

  1. Strategic Non-Compliance
Let me lull you into a false sense of security. You are feeling sle-e-epy.

Let me lull you into a false sense of security. You are feeling sle-e-epy.

“There was clearly an executive who would ‘roger up’ on everything but then do his own thing. He would agree on the way things would be done in a meeting and then go out and do as he damn well pleased.”

“So they would say they were going to do something and then not do it. The effect of that was that I didn’t get the information that I needed to resolve the problem, I didn’t know until it was too late.”

“They drag their feet by saying they will run a test and then they won’t run the test. Some other important priority came up and they couldn’t get on [it.].  For months and months they would never get the data.”

Have you ever brought up a tough issue, heard “Okay, we’ll get right on it,” but felt deep in your bones that this person or group was simply buying time and had no intention whatsoever of “getting right on it?” Unless they meant they’d get right on undermining your approach. In a group pressed for time, a promise to act or superficial agreement effectively halts further discussion and buys a game player enough time to kill the idea or let it die a languid death in the “too hard” basket.

“You get all five divisions together, they promise to work together and they act like the CEO calls the shots. Thay all walk out of the room in complete agreement with him collectively.  The pretend and go along with it…They just say one thing and do something else…When they go back to their five regions it will be ‘the hell with everybody else.’”

Strategic Non-Compliance is a tactic that buys time by convincing you that you don’t need to keep trying to influence others because if they can convince you that you’ve already won, then you will shut up.  It reminds me of the fake handshake where the other person suddenly removes their hand to smooth their hair and you feel like a goober with your hand out and more than a little bit humiliated. (a double play with the indimitaion game)

However this is not just something “other people” do, we’ve all done it.  (spoiler alert: all of us play all ten games at one time or another) The first time you told your parent “Okay, okay, I’ll do it,” and went right on not doing it – you played the strategic non-compliance game.  You didn’t have malicious intent. You intended to do it, but you said yes primarily to get Mom, Dad, or the boss to just go away. That doesn’t mean that when people say “yes” they don’t mean it. But good intentions can fade pretty quickly.

“He wasn’t aggressive with it. He was passive. He didn’t say, ‘This thing is not going to work.’ He said, ‘This will work; I’m all for it; we have to do it; we have to make sure it is successful. I want to make sure it is successful”…Just let me train these people and when they are ready to go they we’ll move along to the next step.’ So he agree in principles but yet his behavior was that he delayed it as long as possible.”

As long as we play these games and then protect ourselves with plausible deniability: “I meant to, but…Oh, I must have forgotten…I depended on you to remind me….oh darn did I miss the deadline?” we stay blind to the unconscious ways we defend ourselves from having to face tough truths that require personal sacrifice.  If territorial impulses are part of human nature (and I think they are) there is no way to drive out human impulses to be territorial.  These ten games will always be part of our shadow selves. The point is, that like any shadow – these territorial impulses need to be examined and understood in the light of day if we have any hope for finding big picture collective solutions.

 

 

 

 

 

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Ten Games People Play to Control Truth (5)

 

  1. Information Manipulation Game
Weasel words distort truth.

Weasel words distort truth.

Tweak the numbers and you tweak the decision.  Edit video and you edit context. Control the narrative and you control what information seems relevant. Truth is the first casualty whenever we assume that everyone manipulates information so we have to as well….since “that’s how the game is played.”

“Their response [when tweaking numbers] is that they’re doing what the system allows them to do. They feel, ‘I’m within the rules. I’m applying the rules to my benefit but I’m still playing within the rules.’”

When we characterize work, government, or other personal interactions as a competitive game we invoke game “rules.”  As long as politics is considered a battleground, war rules apply and truth is the first casualty.  Why not review the rules with Sun Tzu’s Art of War? The battle metaphor is a disaster for truth seekers. In a war/game, withholding information, promoting disinformation, suprise attack and active misdirection are not just acceptable but honored as good tactics. Whenever I facilitate high-level budget meetings, I always ask the question – how do you calculate your budget requests? Eventually I hear, “we figure how much we need and double it, or add 30%,” or whatever distortion each group’s norms justify. When I ask:

“How can we possibly make good decisions if our norm is to lie to each other?”

…it is usually the first time the group has asked themselves this question. The resulting conversations reveal the obstacles we impose on ourselves every time we characterize a budget meeting as a battle or a game. We play by rules that guarantee to distort our collective understanding of Big T Truths. Truth is the first casualty the minute we unconsciously expect there will be winners and losers, because it means that helping the other side tell the truth is the fastest track to becoming a loser.

Granted our judicial system wouldn’t work if lawyers were asked to collaborate – but there is no reason this adversarial approach should be our primary method for seeking Truth. While there are laws about sharing information in the judicial system, few lawyers call attention to evidence that helps the other side.  An adversarial system for seeking truth incentivizes a battle mentality that rarely assembles various points of view into one big picture.  We limit our truth to the one who wins, rather than the one who has the most integrity, experience, or good intentions.

“Another example is where data can be selectively manipulated.  That’s a strong word for what I’m describing, but I’ve seen instances where selective use of data can basically get you to a different conclusion. They are protecting their own territory. The conclusion they are going for – let’s assume we are looking at a particular feature on a product – it’s a strong desire from one group in the company to have this feature.  Another group…may not feel it’s that important…It becomes a judgment call.  You are adding cost, adding weight. The one that wants the feature will tend to collect data and present data that would enhance the attractiveness of that feature. On the other hand, other people will be tweaking the numbers the other way.”

People (and now, algorithms) that assemble, interpret, format, and relay information into “meaningful” chunks edit out what seems unimportant (from their point of view) in order to feature what is important (from their point of view).

“So you’ve got a subculture that is trying to go for their optimum, which is counter to the big-picture good…What actually happens in the interchange from human to human is that they refuse to look at the big picture.  They tell you flat out in a meeting… I’ve made the request that we look at the big picure and their response back [to me] is that they don’t get measured to do that, not paid to do what. ‘I’m only measured on meeting this objective and that’s what I’m talking to you about.'”

Any “fight” for truth means welcoming truths we dont like as well as the truths we do like.  Denying unpleasant realities doesn’t make them untrue, it only distorts our ability to find solutions.  That’s what I meant when I titled my last book “Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins.” I didn’t mean to suggest it was a guide to crush someone else’s truth with a truth you like better.  I thought it would be obvious to those who study storytelling that the real wins are only found in Big T Truths.  I guess I need to keep working on that.

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Ten Games People Play to Control Truth (1)

People seem to be applying the same ten games from Territorial Games (1997) to control narratives and thus control our perceptions of what is/isn’t true.  For the next ten weeks I’ll post about each of these ten games one at a time.

But first let me give a bit of background on the research. It all started with the metaphor, “turf war.” Everyone knew what “turf war” meant, but when I asked for stories every description just contained more metaphors (back stabber, empire builder, brown noser, etc). I wanted to know what actually happened, the behaviors, and the impact at a granular level.  SO, I asked people to tell me stories about “a time when I witnessed a turf war.” The metaphors started to translate to specific situations that eventually fell into ten buckets of behaviors.

Marking territory is quite common.

Marking territory is quite common.

What is a territorial game? What is territory?

In the late ‘90s we already had very few tangible kinds of territory to fight over except maybe office space (remember private office space?) The games were primarily used to control information, relationships, and status/popularity. Controlling these three intangible factors meant players could monopolize gateways to money, power, and more tangible goodies.  Today, it seems these ten territorial games have exponential potential to control global perceptions of truth.  Any storyteller determined to control “the” narrative has stopped seeking mutual truths in favor of a single story.

Today, these games are even less visible because technology hides games so they are much harder to name, resist or question. So many messages are shaped and promoted by entities seeking to game the truth, we are all either confused or escape into fundamentalism.  Personally I can’t even conceptualize solutions until I can examine which games perpetuate the biggest problems. Over the next few weeks I’ll do my best to translate old descriptions of each of the ten territorial games to current examples so we can decide if we think this is a useful way to describe the most common games people use to distort “dangerous” truths.

  1. Occupation Game:

The image that best evokes the idea of the occupation game is an dog marking his territory.  Just as often the Occupation Game is played like musical chairs. The game is all about getting there first, in as big a way as possible to occupy control of who/how/why people get information, access, or status. In musical chairs the player with the biggest butt who is most willing to knock someone else off a chair usually wins.  Sending an biting email with our version of the truth while copying far more recipients than necessary is a form of the occupation game. Occupation game players also withhold information (sit on it) if it they feel it might benefit their percieved “enemy” even in situations where sharing the information is the best way to achieve the organization’s mission.

Thank goodness I did this research when there were more tangible examples. Most of these behaviors are so far behind the scenes, written in code, and so complex we need metaphors to discuss them. SEO software has automated the occupation game. Which is fine. People have been playing these games since cave men protected good hunting grounds. Only… look at the two examples below of physical games of occupation and ask yourself if the problems caused by these games might also translate to current problems discerning what is/isn’t true.

“So there would be cases where people wanted to get something done and regardless of any of the [safety] procedures or who was accountable, they would just get it done – they’d go ahead and do it.  They would ignore the procedures and then justify it on the basis of this is what you’ve got to do to keep the plant online…To keep the procedure people out of their hair they were very secretive in many cases.  In some cases, they would rewrite procedures on their own.”

                                             Safety Engineer of a Nuclear Plant

In the name of speed and efficiency we prefer to ask forgiveness rather than permission. But if a nuclear plant needs safety procedures surely we also need safety procedures to protect “Truth.”  In the tangible world safety doesn’t happen without effort, so it sure as heck isn’t going to happen without effort/procedures in the intangible world to avoid nuclear options and scorched earth solutions.

In my research most people did not connect the long range implications of these games or even realize that they were playing a game.  Territorial games are fear based actions that hijack the limbic system with knee-jerk fear responses. The central aspect to understanding and overcoming territorial games is to understand that no matter who you ask, “who started it?” no one will ever answer: “me.”

Therefore solutions that seek to place blame only make things worse.

For the most part these games are not malicious. We play these games because we are humans acting like humans.  The example above risked a nuclear disaster.  Occupation games that populate (occupy) all of our available attention with half truths risk similar disasters.

“We had three different departments on the same physical site.  When a load of scrap came in, you sent a truck and you had to dump it somewhere…The guys were doing whatever they could to sort of define their boundaries and dump piles of stuff that would keep the other guy from using that space …There would be this stuff sort of creeping into the parking lot…the other funny thing is that the people who did the work couldn’t stand to see the pile get too low. It scared the hell out of them. It was like they liked seeing this big pile of work …they always knew they had a job…[it was] contrary to the financial side, because the best thing we could do was to have no inventory with no money tied up in it.”

If storytellers race to produce as much content as possible across as many channels as possible, I don’t see how we can avoid burying the kind of Big T Truths we must face to keep counterproductive individual goals from sabotaging humanity’s collective goals.

 

 

 

 

 

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Charlottesville Vigil in A Southern Town

Elizabeth Beauvais spoke the words written below last Sunday night at a local vigil to mourn the violence in Charlottesville. We still have a confederate monument directly in front of our court house. Let’s not ignore the stories perpetuated by these monuments. Monuments have motives. This one was erected during Jim Crow when loyalty to Confederacy was code for white supremacy.  It still is.

She agreed to let me share a copy of her words:

“I went to the University of Virginia in the mid-1990s as a Jefferson Scholar, a scholarship that brought with it expectations of not just academic excellence, but citizenship and a real contribution to the inclusiveness, equality among student life. I soon learned that this was a campus-wide religion at UVA – this religion to Jefferson and his democratized ideals of self-determination, honor and equality. I took the history of civil rights under Julian Bond and poetry with our first black female poet laureate Rita Dove. I say this to tell you what a horror and shock it was to see hundreds of torch-bearing neo Nazis walking the central lawn of this campus, my campus, on Friday night. Don’t get me wrong – Charlottesville, then and now, struggles with a racist and misogynist past with lingering aftershocks in the present– a state school that didn’t allow women in until 1970, a university built with slave labor under the design of a founding father whose repeated rape of his slave mistress has become perversely romanticized. Charlottesville is far from perfect. But Charlottesville did not bring this on itself.

I believe that Charlottesville was expressly targeted as a strategic battle site by douchebag Richard Spencer and his NeoNazi, racist colleagues BOTH because it is now a progressive city built by the leading architect of America AND because it could actually be anywhere. For outside hate groups to invade and unilaterally terrorize a city that voted over 80% blue in the last election, a college town, and UNESCO world heritage site – (a city also, by the way, surrounded by a sea of red) – is a pointed, clear message that reads: We can take Berkeley with torches and hate just as easily as we can take Shreveport.

This matters to us not just because we feel for people in Charlottesville but because the violence could happen here — and the oppression and marginalization of already vulnerable people is in fact happening daily at the policy level.

My friend Kristin Adolfson was in the crowd hit by the car Saturday that barreled into her and dozens of other peaceful protesters that were holding signs that said, “Solidarity. Unity.” Kristen had written Love Not Hate on her shoulders and carried snacks and water in her backpack. She was marching by a low-income housing complex that white supremacists had been tormenting with racial epithets and chants of “Heil, Trump”. Miraculously, Kristin was unharmed, but a woman near her, Heather Heyer, died. Kristin told the New Yorker in an interview Sunday: “This was a terrorist act. Something that happens in so many places around the world, and it happened here in our little town. And I still can’t process the hate—that someone could actively take people’s lives, that’s what their goal was.”

She wrote to us on Facebook:

“What I can’t forget: The joy we had as we were marching down Water Street. Clapping and chanting and the solidarity and the community.

Then: such a strong feeling of ***NO!!!!!*** when I realized what was happening, realizing there was a car at full speed plowing through us. If my NO could have stopped time. It felt like it should have, it was that big.
How I knew what was happening and I couldn’t stop it. The sound of the car hitting human flesh and bone, ripping into us like dominoes, a quick staccato. Bodies thrown into the air. The anger that someone would do this. So angry, so angry. NO.
NO to the car and to the driver and to why it happened.
The fear for how bad it was, how many dead? How many dead.
A woman supported by three friends screaming heart wrenching. Her scream contained all our screams.
The tear streaked face of the young man wearing gray and a black medical mask around his neck, telling me someone is dead.
His face. Grief, incomprehension, pain, tears and pain, collapsing not able to stand.
His face.”

Over the past several years, since Sandy Hook, I’ve wondered – how long until I know someone who’s killed by gun violence and unchecked hate and intolerance? Or since Lafayette – when will I need to map out the exit the next time I take my kids to see a movie? How long until it comes for me or someone central to my life? I didn’t have the opportunity and the misfortune to test my courage as Kristin did (and I know that for many the awfulness of racially motivated violence has long been in their streets.) Charlottesville is as close as it’s come for me. I won’t let my fingers write “so far” – but that of course is my fear, your fear, all our fears, right?

Here’s what I know:

  • This is not “alt-right” or far-right, this is non directional, non partisan. Non American. The actual right should be loudest group saying this.
  • This is not about First Amendment rights. Not when assembling and speaking also means toting torches and assault rifles and other actual tools of terror. Friends who teach constitutional law at UVA have been telling me and others earnestly that when both the first amendment and the second amendment are abused together – violence, terrorism, homicide are not far behind.
  • Ignoring the fact that there is a short, direct and causal line from the President’s rhetoric and permissiveness for hate to the recent shocking surge of violence and hate crimes in American towns is dangerous. Strong leaders on both sides of the aisle, CEOs and other influencers are now seeing this writing on the wall and finally being vocal. Meanwhile – David Duke, our embarrassing fellow Louisianian, himself declared that the alt-right unity fiasco “fulfills the promises of Donald Trump.”
  • Doing nothing regarding Shreveport’s own Confederate statues and totems of racism in the hopes that Charlottesville’s violence won’t come here is ostriching and wrongheaded and in fact, the surest way to greater oppression and racial violence and domestic terrorism.
  • Equivocating with so-called compromises on false equivalencies – as if monuments enshrining civil rights and slavery bear equal moral weight and significance as worthy symbols in front of a courthouse is another fast track to Charlottesville – or worse.
  • I love Charlottesville so much I named my daughter after it — and I also gave her the middle name Strong. I actually believe Charlottesville is going to be okay, largely because there is a strong and motivated population and institutions that immediately began calling the evil out by name, AirBNB owners who canceled Alt-right reservations, locals who moved their cars to make it harder for hate groups to park and have to walk miles and miles in their sad little fake military costumes, teachers and students who stood in front of their university buildings as they sought to reclaim it for tolerance and were viciously assaulted, and now residents crowd-funding for all kinds of social justice groups to strengthen their community.
  • I love Shreveport too. Can we organize like that together?
  • When and if the Nazis come to our town, or reveal themselves in our town, terrorize and threaten people, maybe even brutally mow down some young brave person, how will we respond to their chant “you can not replace us.” I think we start in the same way we have gathered here at this vigil: by standing up to say, “we are not replacing you – because you were never entitled to anything you are demanding in the first place.”

I need to say how much of an imposter I feel as a well-meaning, slightly crunchy aging liberal white woman talking about bigotry and racism. I am acutely aware of the fact that what I am speaking of is no news at all to my neighbors of color in Shreveport. In fact, I told Tamica there were people far better positioned than me to speak today. But then, I remembered what I read this Sunday morning in the New York Times:

“Now is the time for every decent white American to prove he or she loves this country by actively speaking out against the scourge this bigot-ocracy represents. If such heinous behavior is met by white silence, it will only cement the perception that as long as most white folk are not immediately at risk, then all is relatively well. Yet nothing could be further from the truth, and nothing could more clearly declare the moral bankruptcy of our country.”

Read more from Elizabeth Beauvais here.  She’s a great writer!

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Budweiser Storytelling Genius Used for Good

I just watched the new Budweiser commercial for July 4 this year and I think it is genius.  They used story to do good as well as make money. Lately I’ve been disturbed by mechanistic applications of story, but this? This is big picture, risky, embedded with big T Truth and I hope it does what it seems to have been designed to do.

Budweiser invites liberals and conservatives to remember who they are and why they are here, and to have a damn beer fer crissakes. The common good intentions of left and right are symbolized by the conservative cues framing the family of the veteran and his daughter as obviously conservative they add an even heavier handed cues about liberal Hollywood to characterize Adam Driver.  Then they dissolve their different POVs with the shared tragedy of both men being wounded before deployment and dealing with pain and survivors guilt.

I try to imagine… what was the dialogue in the conference room when they made the decision

“Should we do it?”

“It’s risky.”

“You are f—ing idealists.”

“It tested well.”

“Screw it, we’re going to do it.”

Of course they tested this ad. I admit preliminary the comments I’ve read are accusatorial jabs from die hard haters from both sides. But I hope that over time, the idea of just sitting down and having a beer comparing what we care about most…will bring some sanity to the current political arena.

If not, I’ll just drink a Bud and try not to worry about it.