Duplicity or Simplicity

I just finished A Thousand Pieces of Gold by Adeline Yen Mah.  It tells the story of the first few emperors of China and the Chinese proverbs those stories spawned.  The book was fantastic, both informative and engaging.  But its tales of history were framed with the author’s twisted and sad reflections on her family life.  Despite loving the book, those family stories made me dislike the author.

Mah gives an account of the duplicitous actions of her step mother, her oldest sister, and her older brother.  She explains that everyone schemed against her.  And in presenting her own sad tale in the backdrop of Chinese history, she asserts that life is a series of machinations and betrayal.  I emphatically disagree.  In fact, I think the people that imagine enemies and ulterior motives are the very ones that create a toxic atmosphere.

The real question I am today asking myself is if our future is better by acknowledging the games people play and becoming better at them.  Or are these games self-defeating?  Would our lives and ambitions be more fulfilled if we spoke directly and honestly and assumed others were doing the same?  Certainly our lives would be simpler if this were true.

In the the large companies I worked for I occasionally would meet people that were intellectually mired in the hidden power structures of the organization.  They were identifying the players, estimating their motives, guessing true intentions, predicting actions, influencing the network, and calculating outcomes.  I rarely engaged in this process long enough to measure its productivity.  But obviously it is based on impartial information and as likely to be wrong as right.  Does that make the game not worth playing?  Or does its practice confer advantages on those that learn to play it well?

Personally, I am drawn the behaviors of Abraham Lincoln, of which I learned in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  One tale she relates is regarding the boiling over of ill-will against Lincoln’s beleaguered secretary of state, William H. Seward.  Lincoln’s cabinet and indeed the entire USA are embroiled in debate during the civil war as to whether or not Seward should be removed.  And every political player is offering opinions, conjecture, and recommendations with hopes of securing more power should a void arise by Seward’s exit.

But Lincoln, who resolutely supports his secretary of state, brings everyone except Steward into a cabinet meeting.  He professes his continued support for the secretary.  And he asks every man in the room to either do the same or speak his piece.  In front of a group, and under the patient eye of the president of the United States, everyone voices support for the secretary.  For those that are speaking truly the honest statement is simple.  For those that harbor misgivings, Lincoln has challenged their game of subterfuge.  By voicing support their duplicity is thwarted.  How can they go back to private discussions, tell others they lied in front of the president, and hope to be believed ever again?

I do not know if this effort by Lincoln was strategic genius or just a simple solution borne from great instinct.  I want to believe the latter.  For it only requires understanding that bringing groups together airs and solves grievances more quickly that backchannel bargaining.  Indeed, sometimes the very problem with group dynamics is the amount of discussions that are hidden, secretive, and later duplicitously related.  Such machinations are impossible when everyone is in one room.

In the case of Adeline Yen Mah, I believe she brought her family problems upon herself.  The only action she ever took as a result of her scheming was to ignore a letter of congratulations from a family member she imagined could be doing her harm.  Because people’s motives are subjective, she will never know if she was right in snubbing that nephew.  But objectively she certainly missed the chance to build a closer relationship by replying.  She  may have avoided a trap.  But she definitely missed an opportunity.

The question with which I now struggle is whether my life and ambitions will be better served by taking the simple and honest approach or learning the game of intrigue.  Am I hindered for my lack of skills?  Or can simple policies of openness, inclusion, and sharing make those skills moot?  I hate to think that success in large organizations requires playing that game.  But I would be a fool to pretend that others are not playing it.  The question remains: when should the game be played, when should it be recognized but avoided, and when should it be ignored?  I guess I will walk the middle road until I learn otherwise.