Are We Being Played?
I was sitting in an exec meeting when the CEO walked in with the news. Board wanted a change. Third reorg in eighteen months. New structure. New priorities. The strategy I’d spent two months creating? Wrong strategy now. We’re pivoting.
Nobody told me the pivot was coming. I assumed the CEO didn’t know either. But then I noticed the guy two seats over, the one who plays golf with said CEO, was looking at a new org chart no one else had seen. Yep, he knew. Sitting there with my now outdated deliverable in front of me, it didn’t even occur to me that someone kept me out of the loop.
My response? I should have seen this coming.
Has that ever been your first thought? Something blindsides you at work and your gut reaction isn’t wait, why didn’t I know about this? Nope. Instead we fall back to the status quo of what did I miss?
That’s the game right there. Not the org change. Blaming ourselves for not seeing it.
I’d been consulting in tech for over two decades at that point. I’d helped build companies and products, driven strategy, delivered results that showed up on earnings calls. Yet my first instinct was to blame myself for not anticipating a decision I’d been deliberately excluded from.
That’s not a confidence problem. That’s a program running exactly as designed.
The Tactic of Shock and Awe
In 1996, two military strategists wrote a doctrine called Shock and Awe. The goal wasn’t to destroy an enemy’s military. It was to break their minds.
In their own words:
“The strategy aims to affect the will, perception, and understanding of the adversary. Leave them physically, emotionally, and psychologically exhausted.”
That playbook is quite specific.
Hit from all directions at once.
Change and move faster than the target can process.
Control the flow of information.
Use deception and disinformation massively.
Keep the target wondering how they could have missed that latest shift, how they can keep up with it all.
The desired end state?
Helplessness, along with a complete lack of will to resist.
Shock and Awe was originally designed for enemy nations. We saw it in a big way in Baghdad in 2003. That display of brute force and firepower wasn’t really the shock and awe. It was the icing on the cake. Before a single bomb dropped, the same principles were used domestically to make the American population feel helpless. How? An information campaign so overwhelming that 85% of Americans believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist.
That’s the military version. But the tactic doesn’t need bombs to work. It doesn’t even need a country.
It works just as well inside any organization.
Sound familiar yet? Keep reading.
We Already Live It, All the Time
We just didn’t have a name for it. Yet.
Have you ever built the business case, walked into the meeting with your work, and the decision’s already been made?
Not your recommendation. A totally different one. Made yesterday, in a conversation you weren’t invited to. Now you’re presenting to a room that’s already moved on. Pretty obvious you’re out of touch.
You are. You were managed out of the information flow.
Has your boss ever told you to be more strategic? Maybe something like suggesting you pull back from the details, lead at a higher level? Then dinged you in the review for losing your edge?
“Not as hands-on as she used to be.”
You followed his guidance and were punished for it.
That’s not mixed signals. That’s changing the game to trap you.
How about the reorg that came out of nowhere? New leadership, new reporting lines, new priorities. The relationships you spent a year building? Start over. The positioning you earned? Reset. The alliances that had your back? Scattered. And somehow the same handful of people land on their feet every single time.
They got the early warning. You got the announcement. Late.
If you’re nodding right now, you’re not alone.
Now stack those. All three running at once, which is what usually happens.
Conflicting expectations from above. Decisions you find out about after they’re made. Goalposts moving while you’re delivering on the last ones. Relationships destroyed by restructuring before they can solidify. Information flowing around you, not to you.
That’s not the dysfunction we think we see. That’s the doctrine we don’t know.
Overwhelm from all directions. Speed that kills clarity. Controlled information flow.
And us?
So busy reacting that we never look up and ask why.
The Rules Beneath It All
Here’s what makes it work so well on women specifically.
Think about the rules you were handed when you started your career. Work hard and you’ll get ahead. Deliver great results and you’ll get promoted. The system is fair if you do your job. Just put your head down and let the work speak for itself.
Sound familiar?
We didn’t choose those rules. They’re programs that got installed; by managers, by mentors, by a career culture that told us the formula was simple: effort in, reward out.
Shock and Awe activates those programs perfectly.
When the chaos hits, the reorg, the shifting priorities, the contradictory feedback, what kicks in?
The installed program. It’s on automatic. Work harder. Stay later. Be more prepared. Anticipate better. If things aren’t working, you’re not working hard enough.
How many times have you told yourself that? Be honest.
That’s the rules of the game speaking. Not you. Every time it happens, you burn your energy, your clarity, and your power on a treadmill someone else controls.
You’re not failing. You’re running code that was written to keep you reacting instead of understanding. Working instead of questioning. Blaming yourself instead of seeing the game for what it really is.
The Weakness To Exploit
The doctrine has one fatal flaw.
It depends entirely on you not seeing and recognizing it.
Every element of these tactics, from the overwhelm to the speed to the information control to the pure exhaustion, works because it triggers automatic responses. The programs run. The reactions fire. The self-blame loops and confusion all happen below the surface.
Not a conscious decision in sight.
The moment you see and understand the pattern, it begins to lose its charge.
Not because the games stop. The reorgs will keep coming. The goalposts will keep moving. The information will keep flowing around you instead of to you.
When you look beyond the shock and awe, recognizing that this pattern is designed to knock you sideways, something fundamental shifts.
The program stops running. You stop blaming yourself for not keeping up with a system designed to keep you off balance.
The more you see the game, the less you react. The more power you claim.
When you recognize that you’re IN the game, everything shifts.
Because the game cannot win when a woman knows she’s in it.
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It’s Your Turn
I’m curious. When did you first feel it? That moment something happened at work and your gut said this isn’t what they told me it would be?
Maybe it was a promotion that went to someone less qualified. Or realizing the rules you followed weren’t the rules everyone was playing by. Maybe it was the third reorg in eighteen months and a golf buddy with an org chart you’d never seen.
What’s the game look like where you are? I’m not asking hypothetically. I’m asking because I lived this for over three decades and I’m DONE watching it happen to us.
Tell me. Drop it in the comments. DM me. Share the moment. Because once we start naming it out loud, they can’t pretend it’s not happening.
Together we can change the game. Once and for all.