One of the biggest life lessons I learnt while at school, although I didn’t know it at the time, was from a PE lesson and a game called Rat.
There were only a few rules to Rat: one kid had the ball and could throw at any of the other kids, when you were hit you were out, and the last kid left standing was the rat.
Most of the kids would run and jump around trying to avoid the ball, but would rarely last the distance; the surviving rats tended to push others into the line of fire or better keep their heads down and find a place to hide.
On reflection this seems to be a perfect analogy of the corporate world where “survivors” in a company are typically the ones who keep their head down and try not to draw attention to themselves.
But where’s the fun in that, the real lesson for me was not to get too caught up in the “game”, if you’re hit you can just move on to a new one.