Know the game you are playing
Every game you play has a range of cost [x, y] and a range of outputs, a range of reward [x’, y’]. Realistically accept that this is your range of loss and reward. If you are expecting anything outside this, either someone is fooling you or you are fooling yourself.
Example: the office game.
In offices and any corporate structure, people are more careful about not being wrong than about being right more often. They will intentionally slow down just so they are not wrong. The alternative would be to move fast, be wrong a few times, and be right a lot more times. Instead people choose to be right far fewer times and also wrong far fewer times.
They are doing something wrong - and that is how the game works in an office. People are not looking to make the right calls. They are looking to make calls that are not perceived as wrong by their senior management. So it turns into a game of social cohesion: doing things that are accepted rather than things that are probably right or would have the highest ROI.
ROI for an employee is disconnected from ROI for the company. You are not incentivized to make the company a hundred million bucks; you are incentivized to deliver projects that fit the criteria of the next promotion level. Even if you do something magical that saves the company a billion dollars, you might not be promoted until you meet the criteria of the next level.
Stock and vesting do tie your incentive to the company’s growth, but passively. If the company grows, you grow, and in a very large company the effort you would have to put in for your contribution to change the stock price is way more than the reward you would get out of it. Everyone realises that subconsciously - you know the rules of the game, knowingly or unknowingly - and the whole company slows down.
But the office game is highly dependent on the kind of setting you are in. What I described above is a corporate, cog-like situation where inputs are disconnected from outputs. It is just one type of game. There are many situations, each structured differently:
If you are a fixed-salaried employee with no equity, no stock, and no profit-sharing agreement, your inputs will be severely constrained. You will most likely have a micromanaging manager monitoring everything you do. Their objective is to get more from you, because the incentive structure makes it clear you are not going to give a hundred percent naturally.
Move to a mid-level hierarchy, where a company gives you some form of profit sharing—equity, bonuses, or commissions. Here, you have a stake in the gains, and your inputs are non-linear. If your effort benefits the company, you get a share. As long as you are incentivized this way, you will automatically put in more effort.
Take it a step further to startups. In a startup, you have a major share of equity, much higher than in a large corporation. Early startup equity is priced lower, and if the company succeeds and finds product-market fit, the value of those shares increases rapidly. The early founders and employees capture the majority of the gains. Before a company hits its inevitable plateau, its growth phase operates almost like a multi-level marketing scheme: early founders gain significantly more from the efforts of the entire company simply because they hold a larger number of shares. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it is just how capitalism works. Without this model, people who join later wouldn’t even have the opportunity to rake in the profits the company is making. The goal is always to innovate, sustain the growth phase, and delay the inevitable plateau for as long as possible.
Finally, at the top layer is the personal company, where you are the CEO. You will do everything in your capacity to make sure the company succeeds, whether for-profit or non-profit. Your inputs determine almost everything. You have the largest share, your name is associated with the company, and people trust the company because they trust you. There is a lot riding on your shoulders.
The point is that you should know the game you are playing, and it can be very different even in similar-looking situations. The game is influenced by multi-dimensional variables: the people you work with, your management, your mental peace while working, and everything else going on in your life.
It is easy to look at all of these games in isolation—the work game, the life game, the relationship game, the health game, the food game, the sleep game. But most of these are interconnected and influence each other. You have to make sure you are really good at the core games: communication, health, relationships, and work (being skilled and making sure your skills bring value to the people around you).
Before starting anything, build a mental map. Say to yourself: “This is the game I am playing, these are the rules, these are the things I can bend, and this is the range of outcomes I can get.” Knowing the game you are playing always helps.