Simon Sinek argues business should not be framed with finite-game analogies (sports/war) but as an ongoing lifestyle—like maintaining health—requiring continual practices. He lists core elements of an "infinite mindset": a just cause, building trusting teams, studying worthy rivals, existential flexibility, and the courage to lead. He emphasizes reframing competitors as "rivals" to learn from their strengths and extend the longevity of one’s organization; practical help (a "leadership buddy") makes sustaining these practices easier.
So let's change the analogy. First of all, just as an aside.
We overuse sports or war analogies. In business, those things are about winning. Those things are very finite, driven. So we need to sort of change the mindset that this is not a game like baseball or football. This is not a battle to be won, but it's more like a lifestyle. Think of it more like being healthy, that to be healthy, there's a number of things that we have to do. We all know what they are. You have to eat, eat well, you have to exercise, you have to get enough sleep, you have to nurse your personal relationships. Some would argue there's 20 or 30 other things. It's very difficult to do all of those things well all of the time. They sort of go like this. You know, we let one go while we're doing well with another, and it's a striving. We all know this and think of business the same way. There's so many things that we have to do to lead a successful business, right? We have to do our marketing, we have to do our sales, we have to do a racial relationship building, we have to be structured, we have to have, we have to have systems. All of these things. Very hard to do all of them all the time. It's a striving, much easier to do when we ask for help. As we've talked about before. Just like you have a gym buddy, you can have a leadership buddy.
And so the same goes for the infinite game, which is there are multiple practices to embody an infinite mindset. You need to have that sense of just cause. You need to know the skills of building trusting teams. You need to study your worthy rivals, you need to have a capacity for existential flexibility, and you need to have the courage to lead. You have to do all of them at some point. Doesn't matter where you start, you're going to have to do all of them at some point. The easiest one to embody and to embrace is studying your worthy rivals. So in a finite game, we have competitors, right? And that competitor is there to be beaten. We have to stop talking about the other players in our game as competitors because they're not. We're not actually competing against them, we're competing alongside of them. Very, very different. So change the terminology to rivals. There are other players. The other people who do what I do are my rivals. And some of those rivals are worthy of comparison, which means some of them do one or many things better than I do, which means that their strengths reveal to me my weaknesses. And instead of trying to beat them, rather I can respect them. I don't have to like them or agree with them. But I can now have my weaknesses revealed and I can now work on those weaknesses. I can work to build on those weaknesses. And the reason is simple. Because I need to stay in the game as long as possible. I don't care how long they stay in the game. Whether they survive a day or a year or 10 years or forever has nothing to do with me. The goal is that my business survives for as long as I want it to, whether it's my lifetime or beyond my lifetime.
And so those decisions are going to be very, very different. So stop thinking of the other players as competitors. Start respecting the ones who are better than you. And as I said before, their strengths reveal to your weaknesses. Maybe they have better leadership, maybe they have better marketing, maybe they have better relationship building. Maybe they have better returns. Study them. Understand what they're doing. Learn from them. To make yourself a better player, that's the easiest one you can do, and you can start that tomorrow.
