Nine games are running around you at work. Most capable people spend a year explaining each step to themselves before they see the pattern. That delay is the whole cost.
Most capable people work exclusively on the first ledger for years, and conclude from the silence that they must not be good enough yet. That conclusion is usually wrong, and it is expensive.
If you are reading this with a situation in mind
What usually fails is not the seeing. It is the believing — because believing obliges something expensive. Each one has a name →
Read this before you buy anything
A decision goes the wrong way. A room goes cold. A promise quietly expires.
And you go looking for the fault in yourself first — because that is what capable people were trained to do. So you work harder. You wait for the situation to explain itself.
What people do to you is a report on them, not a verdict on you.
Most of the time it was never about you at all. That is not consolation — it is accuracy. And it gives you back the capacity that self-blame was quietly consuming.
Where to start
Where power actually sits, who holds the pen, and why the meeting is almost never the moment the decision was made. Four routes to influence, six system games.
Not sure which? The assessment answers it in four minutes.
Invisible Games® · Book One
READ
People
Before they read you
Linda Reddy
The book behind the method
The most expensive mistakes of your working life will not come from what you did not know. They will come from who you misread.
Confidence is not competence. Charm is not character. Agreement is not support. Silence is not consent. Kindness is not loyalty.
The method
Naming is where reading becomes action. Most of these patterns weaken the moment you can put a word to them.
What am I seeing?
What is actually happening?
What will I do about it?
Career power playbooks
Invisible Games®
Your Boss
Before they read you
Playbook 01
Your boss is warm with you, and nothing ever comes of it. The read that costs most to get wrong.
£24
Invisible Games®
The Games
Before they play you
Playbook 02
Nine games are running around you at work. Spot the pattern. Read the intent. Choose your move.
£38
Invisible Games®
The Politics
Before you play the game
Playbook 03
The org chart is not the power chart. Decode how decisions are really made — before you make your move.
£24
The author
Thirty years in global supply chain and procurement, across twenty-four countries — including twenty-six years deciding which suppliers got the contract. I sat in the rooms where decisions about people and careers were actually made, and watched capable people lose them without ever seeing it happen.
I reached the C-suite. The games were also played on me, and it cost me. High performance did not save me.
Ten questions · four minutes
You need to stop being the last person in the room to notice a game is on.
