The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms...
How to Survive Game of Thrones
Navigating Power Plays, Conflicts, and Politics at Work
Every workplace has its own version of Game of Thrones. This is the field guide for it. Learn to tell conflict, politics, and power plays apart, read the influence map that sits underneath the org chart, and run seven concrete plays when a disagreement turns political. Every chapter closes with an exercise you run with an AI assistant, on your own situation, in private, before you walk back into the room. Most fights you can win are not yours.
Interested in this book? Show your support by saying what you'd like to pay for it!
PDF
EPUB
WEB
APP
131
Pages
41,853Words
About
About the Book
Every workplace has its own version of Game of Thrones. Departments compete for influence. Teams clash over priorities. People position themselves for rooms they have not been invited to yet. Most professionals learn to handle this by trial and error, and pay for the lessons in sleep, attention, and the relationships they carry home.
This book is written for the gap between two kinds of advice that do not help. The soft kind tells you to be authentic and build trust. The transactional kind hands you seven persuasion tactics. Neither is enough on a Tuesday afternoon when a peer has gone around you to your sponsor and the room is waiting for your response.
It holds two things together that are usually kept apart. The first is established conflict and escalation theory, translated out of the academic register and into the room you are actually sitting in. The second is practical exercises you run with an AI assistant, in private, on your own situation, before you walk back in.
What you will learn:
- Tell conflict, politics, and power plays apart, and understand why bringing substance arguments to a power play means you lose.
- Read the influence map that sits underneath the org chart: sponsors, blockers, proxies, and shadows.
- Place a disagreement on the nine stage escalation scale, and know which moves stop working at which stage.
- Sort a conflict across its four layers, task, process, identity, and power, so you stop fighting on the wrong one.
- Run seven concrete plays: repair, reframe, controlled confrontation, stabilization, safe escalation, the evidence trail, and boundary and exit in place.
- Recognise the pattern when you are being targeted, and know what to do first.
- Name a dynamic that cannot be fixed, and stay intact inside it while you plan what comes next.
- Choose which battles are yours, and set the others down without carrying them home.
Every chapter opens with a vignette from a real room and closes with an exercise written for an AI assistant. You paste the prompt, replace the placeholders with your own situation, and have the conversation before the meeting, not after it.
The book was written by two practitioners who have spent their working lives inside these rooms. One from the engine room of technology, AI, and platforms. The other from the engine room of teams, leaders, and culture.
It is a personal companion. It is about you, and what you can do.
Most fights you can win are not yours.
Author
About the Authors
Romano Roth
I believe the next competitive edge isn’t AI itself, it’s the organisation around it. Feedback loops, governance, and continuous adaptation across people, process, and technology.
With over two decades in the technology sector, I focus on AI-augmented delivery, platform engineering, and enterprise evolution. As Group Chief AI Officer (CAIO) at Zühlke, I shape the global strategy and service portfolio for AI-Augmented Delivery & Platform, AI integration, platform engineering, and cloud solutions. My work redefines how organizations innovate, adapt, and scale in industries such as finance, insurance, cybersecurity, energy, healthcare, and aerospace.
In a world reshaped by Artificial Intelligence (AI), I believe the key to resilience and competitiveness lies in becoming AI-augmented, AI-enabled, and ultimately AI-native: a new operating model driven by feedback loops, intelligent workflows, and self-learning systems that place customer success at the center. I empower companies to continuously create value by harmonizing people, processes, technology, and AI.
I began my journey at Zühlke more than two decades ago, evolving from software engineer and architect to trusted consultant, and now to my leadership role as Chief AI Officer. My passion for value creation through automation and quality led me from engineering into the DevOps movement and further into the forefront of enterprise transformation.
I organize the monthly DevOps Meetup in Zürich and serve as president of DevOpsDays Zürich, an annual conference within the global DevOps movement. I share my insights via my YouTube channel, with over 500 videos, and through well over 30 blog articles focused on DevOps, architecture, leadership, and transformation.
My commitment to thought leadership and education extends to my role as a lecturer in DevOps leadership, agile methodologies, digital transformation, and enterprise architecture at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. I champion a culture of innovation and agility, helping enterprises evolve into adaptive systems capable of thriving in complex, fast-changing environments.
My work has been recognized through several awards and honors, reflecting my contributions to technology leadership and digital transformation.
The Leanpub Podcast
Nadine Broghammer
Nadine is an agile and transformation coach who is committed to transforming organisations through a balance of technical advancement and human-centred change. Based in Bern, she has worked with a range of Swiss and international companies, including Die Schweizerische Post, where she currently applies her experience to enable cross-functional collaboration, improve delivery processes, and nurture a culture of continuous improvement. Earlier in her career she held positions at ERNI Schweiz AG, Zühlke Engineering AG, SBB Swiss Railways AG and UBS AG.
Through her career, she gained deep experience in various fields of business ranging from Banking, Telecommunication, Healthcare, Hospitality, Entertainment, Transportation, and Insurance. Her background combines positions in business and management, which she also studied at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and at the University of New South Wales (Australia), with a strong orientation toward modern product development and team methodologies. She works fluently in both English and German and is comfortable operating in multilingual, multicultural contexts.
Across her roles, Nadine has become known for a direct, approachable style that emphasises transparency, open communication, and the empowerment of individuals. Rather than focusing solely on processes or tools, she addresses the human dynamics that underpin organisational success. Her work reflects a belief that sustainable transformation requires more than the adoption of frameworks such as Scrum or Lean; it requires shifts in mindset and culture that allow people to thrive amid change. She is particularly interested in the intersection between strategy, culture, and technology, where alignment across these dimensions enables real, lasting progress.
Her engagement extends beyond her corporate roles into the broader professional community.
Nadine has been an active organiser and speaker at DevOpsDays Zürich and related events, contributing to the dialogue around transformation and agile practices. She advocated for maintaining focus on people, values, and collaboration even as organisations expand. Her perspective reinforces the idea that the quality of human interaction and shared understanding often determines the success of technical or organisational initiatives. Her message is that change is not something to fear or to “get through,” but rather the natural space where learning and innovation occur. She brings empathy, structure, and clarity to that process, enabling teams and organisations to operate with confidence amid uncertainty.
Nadine connects people, processes, and strategy to cultivate environments where agility and authenticity coexist. Colleagues and clients describe her as a coach who bridges business objectives with technical and human realities, helping teams navigate complex transformations without losing sight of purpose.
Podcast
Podcast Episode
Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase
We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earned over $15 million writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Write and Publish on Leanpub
You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!
Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.
Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.