Simon Sinek reframes business as a form of play rather than a win/lose game. Using an anecdote about game theory salons, the prisoner's dilemma, and Dr. Kars’s observations of his children playing ping-pong versus playing with LEGO, Sinek argues that business is a creative, ongoing process of building and adapting that persists despite changing participants.
In the 1970s, the concept of game theory was all the rage. And there were, you know, there were discussions happening all over the place. And if you've ever heard of the prisoner's dilemma, you know, that was one of the things that came out of these 1970s.
Salons where everybody was discussing.
Game theory. And Dr. Kars was invited to partake in one of them. And there was mathematicians and economists, and he's a philosopher and all these other, you know, clever people. And he was surprised that the only thing they were talking about was winning and losing. And he raised the question, what about playing? And it stuck in his head. And he went home and he's got three kids and he has a ping pong table in his house. And he noticed that when the kids play ping pong, there's always screaming and yelling, there's always accusations of cheating, and somebody always ends up crying, right? But when the kids were doing something creative, like Lego or drawing, it would go on for hours. And people would waft in and they'd play for a while and leave. And the players kept changing, but the LEGO would go on all day. And he recognized the value of playing. And business is playing. It's lego. It's a creative process. It's an ongoing process of building and changing and adapting and adding some color and move things around. And employees come and go, and leaders can come and go, and every employee could completely change and the company can still exist. And it's this idea of play. And so it's a completely new way to rethink.
