Shakespeare was right when he said, “All the world’s a stage.”
And in the 21st century, you are now an actor on that stage, like it or not.
You must act as though the whole world is watching.
Therefore you have to rehearse—or plan—the role you’re going to play.
You can’t be as open, transparent, and spontaneous as you may like to be. People say to be
yourself. That is simply, unfortunately, not true in today’s world.
I am not saying that you should live in fear. I am saying you should put yourself in a better
position by being realistic about today’s reality. Especially about the potential for crises on the
horizon.
That’s because the people most crushed by crises are the ones who never saw them coming.
An example of this is Jon Gruden, the former head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. In 2021, it
came out that he was talking shit about black and gay people in the locker room. Accusations
about these remarks had been made for years. They were ignored. The hiring team had only
looked at his win record before naming him head coach. They thought the win record was the
only thing that matters.
But they should have done far more. They should have researched those allegations just like we
do in politics. We call it a vulnerability study. Had the Raiders done so, they would have
discovered the accusations.
The Raiders made two major mistakes here (other than hiring a racist head coach).
They didn’t determine the threats ahead of time.
And they didn’t formulate a plan for how to deal with them.
In other words, they forgot that all the world’s a stage.
Don’t make the same mistake.
