Simon Sinek on Travel with an Infinite Mindset | Full Conversation

Welcome back, everyone. Welcome. This morning we spent time talking about marketing and technology, and this afternoon we're shifting into partnership. And it's the combination of those three things that makes me incredibly optimistic. And I'm here with Simon Sinek, a self described unshakable optimist. Simon is the host of a podcast called A Bit of Optimism and the author of three best selling, and I can vouch for them, very good books, including the Infinite Game, which was recently published. And Simon, I'm very nervous. Very, very nervous.

Well, you know the trick to that, right?

I do. When you're nervous, you say, I'm excited.

Exactly.

I read that on Simon's. But here's the thing, Simon, you were here in 2017, and after every event we send out a survey and you were the highest rated speaker by far. By far. And not just of that year, but any year that we've done this event. The highest. So I guess we said, well, let's have Simon come back and how can we possibly make that better? And here I am.

Well, that's humbling. Thank you. Thank you. It's nice to be back. It's nice to be back and it's.

Great to have you. And what is it about your message that resonates with so many of us?

You know, I think it's human. I think it's a distinctly human message. You know, it's embarrassing that I have a career. I talk about trust and cooperation. There should be no demand for any of my work. But I think the reason there is demand is because it's a very human experience that all of us are going through. Then the message that I share is my own. I struggle with trust, I struggle with cooperation. I struggle with all the same things. And I'm on my journey trying to figure it out for myself and for the people I love. And it turns out if something resonates for me and my friends, it resonates for other people. So I think it's a very real message and it always has been.

And we were talking backstage. Simon insists on not getting questions in advance because he wants it to be real and authentic.

I have no idea what you're going to ask. That is true.

Well, like I said this morning, we talked a lot about technology, and I love how you say that technology isn't inherently good or inherently bad. How do all of us, how do we make sure that technology is making our lives better?

So technology is supposed to alleviate a stress. Right. And just because we have the ability to do things with technology doesn't Mean, we should. You know.

I sound like an old man when I talk about this, but, like, why do we have to put flat screens on everything? You know, it's like I'm in my car and I want the volume between 7 and 8. But a dial, I could do that, but a button, I can't. And so like, whenever anybody's going to apply technology or apply AI, I'm sure that's a big topic for you guys.

We did mention AI.

Yeah. It's like the topic of every conference.

The question I always want to know is what are we solving for? And because if we over index on the technology, we're actually creating problems we didn't know that we were making. And we're starting to see it. Like social media and cell phones were a great idea and wonderful, but we didn't think it all the way through. And we've created new problems. Addiction, depression. And now we're sort of trying to like, whoops, you know? And so I always like to think, what good will come of this? Or so what's next? And trying to envision some of the accidental problems we might be creating.

It's hard to do because the technology moves so fast. Yeah. And I think it's accelerating. We're all in the travel industry and Expedia is a technology company in this very human centered industry you talk in your book about. And actually you give a great example of a hotel here in Las Vegas about the human will.

Noah.

Yeah, yeah. You want to share about that?

It's such a good story and it still resonates. And it's one of those that could never be repeated because this unique set of circumstances.

And you can talk about the good hotel, just don't talk about the bad hook.

Yes, I will do that.

Now. Now you've made like a hit of me, like, really so tempted. Don't press the button.

Okay. So I was in Vegas for a business trip a bunch of years ago and the client put me up at the Four Seasons, which is a lovely hotel. And the reason that Four Seasons is lovely is not because the beds, though, the beds are nice. It's because the people who work there, well, they happen to have a coffee bar at the Four Seasons down here, which you can go visit in the lobby. And one afternoon I went and bought myself a cup of coffee. And the barista working that day was a kid named Noah. Noah was funny and engaging and charming, and I had way too much fun just buying a cup of coffee. So as is my nature, I asked Noah, do you like your job. And without skipping a beat, Noah said, I love my job. Now, in my line of work, that's significant. Like versus love, right? Like is rational. I like the people. I like the challenge. I get paid well. I like my job. Love is emotional. It's a higher order connection. It's like, do you love your husband? I like him a lot. You know.

Not the same.

So Noah said, I love my job. So immediately my ears perked up. And so I asked him, tell me specifically what the Four Seasons is doing that you would even say to me, I love my job. And again, without skipping a beat, he said, throughout the day, managers will walk past me and ask me if there's anything they can do to make my job better. Not just my manager, any manager. And then he said, I work for another hotel as well. And there they drive performance. They catch us doing things wrong there. I just like to keep my head below the radar. I just want to get through the day and collect my paycheck. And he said, only at the Four Seasons do I feel I can be myself. Now, if you think about this, our experience of Noah at these two different hotels will be profoundly different. Not because of Noah, but because of the leadership environment in which he works. And so often we blame the people who are on the front line for the customer experience when we never consider who they're working for. What's the leadership environment that they've created. And so to be able to make that comparison was, for me, a once in a lifetime experience. That same person, two different places, entirely different point of view about his work.

Yeah.

You have a quote, or at least I attribute a quote to you. I think you said this.

And it was, working hard for something we do not care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.

Yes.

Sounds like Noah had a passion. He did have a passion created by that environment.

Yeah, that is one of my quotes. Thank you. That's a great one. I sometimes get credit for John Quincy Adams quotes, which I'm also grateful for.

He was pretty good.

That is true. When we talk about stress and passion, in both circumstances, we're working extremely hard. In both circumstances, we're making sacrifices. Right. We're working late hours. Maybe we're on business trips or missing out on some family stuff. We might be tired.

But only in the case of passion does that sacrifice feel worth it. And it's because we believe in the thing that we're doing. We believe in the higher cause that's bringing us to work. So I don't Think effort is what distinguishes stress and passion. It's whether that effort feels worth it and what you feel is passion.

And again, this is a group of travel industry and we went through a global pandemic. It was a difficult time for the whole world. But I would say, how do you stay an optimist working for a travel company during a global pandemic?

Well, I mean, I think the beginning of it was awful because there was the unknown. But I think what happened is what we're seeing, which is I think there was an over reliance and no disrespect intended to my lovely hosts, but there was an over indexing on technology, Technology, technology to solve all problems. And I would even say actively trying to minimize political people. And I think Covid may have been one of the accidental best things that ever happened to the travel industry because it really showed us the importance of people. You know, people talked about the death of the travel agent. It didn't happen. The travel advisor has come back stronger than ever. And you know, we see the importance of people and we kind of know this. You know, if you, if you look at sort of, you know, if you have status, like I have status on my preferred airline and you can say that too.

I'm a Delta guy, hey, Delta.

It's really.

Your status just went up.

I will check my account later. I'm a little bit behind this year. I'm not going to lie.

In my mqms.

But.

We see it right, like the best thing about having status in a hotel, in an airline, in any of these things is not the upgrades. Not that this, it's the phone number. It's that when I call, I get a person where somebody else who doesn't have status gets a machine. And, and we are now living in a world where interacting with a human being has become a luxury. But that's how special we know it is, that it's become a luxury, which is a whole different conversation, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. But we know how special human interaction is because by the way, it's not the problems that they're solving, it's that I get to talk to a person who has been trained well and cares about me. And I'll give you an example of what good customer service is and what, and let's stick with an airline just for fun. So it's not about, I think most customers, if we're really cynical, customers talk about they have great service or bad service if they got what they want or didn't get what they want. Right. But that's not true. I'll give you an example. Let's say I'm on a business trip and my work is done early, and I want to go home to my family. I check the website. I see that there are. There's flights available on the earlier flights. Call it a day early. And so I call the airline and I say, hey, I'm done early. I'd really love to get home to my family. I see that you've got availability in the earlier flight. Can I get on that flight? And the agent says, I'm sorry, you have the wrong class of ticket. I can't change your flight. I'm happy to pay a fee. I'm happy to pay whatever it is. Please, can I get on that flight? I'm sorry, sir. I told you, you have the wrong class. I can't book you. You have the wrong status flight. There's nothing I can do. The computer won't let me do it. Okay. I now hate that airline. Right.

Okay, let's replay that. Okay, same scenario. Hi, I'm done early. Love to go home. I see you have availability. Can I get on that flight? Sir, I want to get you home to your family. Here's the problem. Your ticket is the wrong class. And so the computer won't let me. But let me see what I can do. I really want to get you home to your family. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. That didn't work. Click, click, click, click. That didn't work. Sir, let me talk to my supervisor. I'm determined to get you home to your family. Go away. Come back. Sir, I talked to my supervisor. We've tried, like, six different things. There's nothing I can do. I am so, so sorry. I just cannot get you on that earlier flight. Don't worry. Thank you for trying. I now love that airline even though I didn't get what I want. And that's what it feels like when someone cares. It doesn't mean we always get what we want, but what we get is somebody who understands and cares about what we're trying to accomplish. That's considered good service.

I thought you were going to.

So you were here in 2017. The Infinite game came out in 2019, just before the pandemic. And I read it before and after. I read it after.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

One copy or two?

I highly recommend.

One. And then I passed it to my friends and they.

Excellent. Right answer.

Just trying to spread the word.

That's what really matters. What matters. Okay, well, I'm just curious, like, you know, some of these shifts that we've seen in hospitality and in the world more broadly, has that changed your thinking at all about finite versus infinite games?

The great thing about the pandemic, it actually reinforced everything I wrote about because I'm open minded. I put forward theories, you know, and so those theories can get tested and need to be updated. And rereading. The infinite game post pandemic, it actually highlighted, actually that a lot of those things, all of those things 100% apply.

Is it worth me describing what the infinite game is?

Probably.

Okay, I will. Okay. So in the mid-1980s, a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr. James Karst defined these two types of games, finite games and infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules, and agreed upon objective. Football, baseball, right. If there's winners necessarily, there have to be losers or a loser. But more important, there's always a beginning, a middle, and an end. In infinite games.

There are known and unknown players, which means you don't necessarily know who all the other players are. And any new player can join at any time. The rules are changeable, which means anyone can join the game whenever they want. And the objective is to stay in the game, to perpetuate the game. We are players in infinite games every day of our lives, whether we know it or not. No one will ever win career. No one will ever be declared the winner of education or learning. Nobody wins health care.

And no one will ever be declared the winner of business. Like when Circuit City went bankrupt, Best Buy didn't win anything, right? But when we listen to the language of so many of our leaders, it becomes abundantly clear that they don't know the game they're playing in. They're obsessed with being number one or being the best or beating their competition. Based on what? Based on what agreed upon metrics, objectives and time frames. And this is a problem because when we play with a finite mindset in the infinite game, when we play to win in a game that has no finish line, the outcomes are predictable and consistent. The decline of trust, the decline of cooperation, and the decline of innovation. We have to play for the game that win. Are there finite games in the infinite game? Of course there's always finite games. There's a beginning, middle and end. It's like, let's stick with airlines. Like that gate agent has a finite game. Every time a plane needs to go, there's a beginning, middle and end, repeat. But we want them to be aware of the infinite game in Other words, we want the company to stay in business. So I'm going to treat people nicely as they're getting off and on the plane so that they'll come back again. Right. Because I want to perpetuate that we stay in the game. So you're always aware. And I think that the people who best understand the companies that best understand the infinite game recognize that it's not just a series of transactions. It's not just a series of deals. It's about fostering a relationship. It's about building trust not only with your employees, but also your customers. And it's that obsession that allows you to manage through the bad times. You can't really judge the quality of a company in good times. Right. Because we can all do well simultaneously. It's when the. When the. When the things go sour, do the people at the company rally and say, we're going to do this together. Do the customers come together? One of the greatest stories of this was post September 11th, where the airline industry was decimated and Southwest Airlines customers were sending checks, sometimes up to $1,000, to Southwest Airlines, just rooting for them.

I mean, imagine your customers sending you random checks just because they're rooting for you right now. Clearly, that amount of money meant nothing. But the sentiment that somebody wants a company to stay in business so badly is, I think, a testament to how they treated their customers every single day up until that day.

Do you think trust, and like I said, we're all partners here, Trust is obviously a critical part of partnership. Do you think it's gotten harder in this Zoom era when we're not face to face as much?

I mean, the simple answer is yes. You know, I actually think there's a hierarchy to the media that helps us build trust in person. Obviously the best one. Be able to look each other in the eye. You can feel it.

And we had just started with YouTube, watching you on YouTube. And now look at us.

And now look at us.

But, like, if I look into the audience and I make eye contact with somebody, I mean, you can feel it. Even though we're in a dark room and I'm just looking, I mean, you can feel it. You can't get that anywhere else except in real life. I think the next level down is the phone. I actually don't think it's zoom. I think it's phone.

Does everyone agree with Simon on this Zoom or phone? Let's hear for phone.

And Zoom video or teams.

About 50. 50? Yeah. 50. 50.

I'm with you. I think it's a generational thing.

No, no, no, no. I don't think it's a generational thing. I think it's a biological thing.

I mean, you know, zoom, it's nice to look at the person, but occasionally you have that experience where.

They'Re looking at their screen, but their camera's over here, so what you see is the side of their head or. And let's be honest, we spend a lot of times looking at ourselves self view off, you know, and I don't want self view off, I want to.

Look at me, I want it off.

Right.

And we figure out tricks that if you make. Here's a trick for you, by the way. If you make your. If you make the zoom screen really small and you put yourself underneath the camera, you can look at yourself, but they'll think you're looking at them. Wow. And this is the point. But this is the point, which is it's, it's artificial. And when somebody is clearly distracted, they're on their phone, you can see them checking their email. You know, it's like there's this weird awkwardness where we sort of continue as if nothing's happening. And it's weird to say, are you listening to me? But on the phone, when you hear someone's distracted, you can go, you there? And they go, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Like we can actually hold the space a lot tighter. And if you're somebody like me, I like to pace. It's hard to pace on zoom.

Keep pulling the plug out of the computer.

As these are our partners, it means that some of them are also competitors.

Yes.

And you talk in one of your books about worthy rivals.

Yeah.

In the game and love that concept. Can you tell? Maybe explain the idea.

So in a finite game, baseball, the other players are competitors. The goal is actually to beat them, that your score is higher and at the end of the game you will be declared winner. Right. In business, there's not really such thing. And so to view each other's competitors is kind of silly because two companies can sell the same thing for about the same price, about the same quality, and both be wildly successful simultaneously.

Instead of thinking of each other's competitors. Because then all you do is focus on reacting to what they do. And you're choosing your own metrics, by the way, as to what constitutes winning and losing.

Instead, you want to find the players who are as good or better than you on one or many things and have respect for them because their strengths reveal to you your weaknesses, but not.

Copy them, not try to be them.

I mean, you can copy them if they have got a good idea, but, you know, but the point is you're not trying to beat them. You're trying to outdo yourself. I'll give you a real life example. That happened to me. So I spoke at an education summit for Microsoft, and by sheer weird coincidence, a few months later, I spoke at an education summit for Apple. At the Microsoft Summit, most of the executives, this is the Steve Ballmer days, most of the executives spent most of their presentations talking about how to beat Apple. That's actually the language they used. Whereas the Apple Summit, 100% of the executives spend 100% of their presentations talking about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn. One was obsessed with their mission. The other was obsessed with trying to beat their competition. Guess who was having issues with competition, with cooperation, trust, and innovation, Right? So.

After my talk at Microsoft, they gave me a gift. They gave me the new Zune when it was a thing. Some people remember what that was. This is Microsoft's response to the iPod MP3 player. And Ballmer's intention was to beat Apple and make the product better. And by the way, they did a great job.

Good product.

They gave me the newest Zune at the time, and it was great. It was actually pretty decent. So I was finished with my talk at Apple and I was sharing a taxi with a senior executive. And I have this character flaw where I have to stir the pot like you telling me, not to mention, don't hit the button. So I'm sitting in the back of this taxi, just like, I gotta do it. And I turn to him and I say, you know, Microsoft gave me their new Zune. It is so much better than my ipod.

And he looked at me and said, I have no doubt. And the conversation was over.

Because companies playing with an infinite mindset understand that there's no such thing as a winner or a loser. There's no such thing as winning or losing. There's no such thing as beating your competition. You're either ahead or behind. And the goal is not to compete against your competitor. The goal is to compete against yourself. How do I outdo ourselves? How do we make our culture better this year than it was last year? How do we make our leaders better this year than they were last year? How do we make our marketing better this year than it was last year? Learn from your worthy rivals. Those who are better than you in the business have their strengths reveal to you where you have to improve. It's worth noting that a year or two after this conversation, Apple introduced the ipod, which rendered both the. I introduced the iPhone, which rendered both the iPod and the Zune obsolete because they weren't competing against. To make a better ipod. They're competing against themselves, which I love. I love.

It's a great story. And I remember when I had an ipod and I had a great flip phone, I remember thinking, why would I possibly want to put my music on my phone?

Or your camera or your encyclopedia or your.

They were thinking beyond incremental.

They were way ahead of us. And this is the value of. Stop thinking of the other players in your game as competition and think of the best ones as your worthy rivals, and they will make you better at the game.

So we have a new CEO as of yesterday, Ariane. She's out there somewhere.

And for Ariane and for anyone in this room.

You have to think about big, bold bets. As a leader of a company now, and you talk a lot about that in your books. How do you encourage a culture? What are some of the principles that Ariane should be thinking about to encourage a culture within the company of taking risks and making big bets?

So it's funny, when I listen to a lot of corporate leaders and they talk about, we incentivize performance. Impossible. Biologically impossible. You can't incentivize an outcome. You can only incentivize a behavior. That's all you can do. And so you want to incentivize the behavior of trying new things. Right? So I'll give you a personal example. Long ago.

When I was. I was a junior guy at a big ad agency, and it was customary for the senior folks to do the new business pitches, but it was holiday season, and so all these senior executives went off on vacation, and the junior idiots were left back at the office. And so.

So we had a big pitch in January, and so they told us to prepare the war room, which basically means hang the research on the walls. That took an hour, but we had a week to kill. So we decided, me and this other junior person, we decided to do the pitch ourselves. We combed through the research, we wrote a strategy, we developed a strategy. We wrote the pitch deck. We did all the work. And they came back from vacation, and we presented our work to them, and they actually used our pitch, our deck, in the new business pitch. And they lost the business. They did not win the pitch. And my boss gave me a huge promotion. They actually moved me up two levels because he wasn't incentivizing my outcome, he was incentivizing my initiative. And by giving me a huge reward for showing initiative, guess what? He got more of initiative. If he had come to me and said, look, I'm really grateful, but we didn't win, so I can't give you anything, then the next time I would have done nothing, or I would have just taken the safe road. And so we have to incentivize and reward and recognize the behavior that we want, and then we will get the behavior that we want. And we create a safe space for people to try new things.

And you talk a lot on your podcast. In fact, you had the designer, the ad agency that did a lot of the Apple early Apple work.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Lee Cloud.

Lee Cloud. And it was fantastic. And you talk a lot about creativity on your, on your podcast. How do you connect creativity and risk taking and optimism? I mean, it was part of your A Bit of Optimism podcast.

I think it all goes together, right? I think when you are driven, if the company comes and tells you to hit some financial number by the end of the year, how does that drive creativity? That drives small thinking. But if you have some sort of vision or mission, some just. Cause that's really, dare I say, delightful, like especially in your line of business. I mean, the outcome is really delightful. It's amazing. It's experiences, it's stuff that reinforces relationship and memories. And it's arguably more important than money to a lot of people.

You know, what an amazing thing to give people. And so if you, if you set your sights on. We want to create the most memorable experiences a family can have for the rest of their lives. Go now. That's what people are thinking against. That's what. That's incredibly optimistic. It also gives them the drive and the grit to not quit just because it gets difficult, because that's so worth it. It's really important. Here's a little insight, though, on how you keep that thing alive, which is the more you can actually interact with the people who are the beneficiaries of your work, the more valuable. So the case study on this one was a university who was. They had volunteers raising money for a scholarship, right? Dialing for dollars. And, you know, donations were flat. And so they hired a consultancy to come and rewrite the script for them. And in these difficult times, it's more like, you know, you get the idea. And it was a small bump, but a group of social scientists did an experiment where they brought in one of the recipients of the scholarship to talk to the volunteers. You ready for this? For five minutes. And all of a sudden Performance skyrocketed because they weren't doing it for some amorphous kid who needs a scholarship. They weren't reading a script. They were doing it for that kid they met. It became deeply personal. They didn't need a script.

Loan officers in banks, when they meet the small business owners that they've given the loans to now they have this verb that this new, this energy. And so if you can. And by the way, the data shows that even if you read a letter from somebody, it won't as powerful an effect, but it still has a powerful effect. If you can put a name and a face on the experience, if you can bring in people who benefited from your efforts, you'll find that you'll have an energy for innovation and grit more than anything. So creativity and risk taking and optimism, they're all, they all go together. They all go together.

I heard a clap and.

I love that's what you call social clapping. One person clap, one person. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But I'm glad that you called out the opportunity that this group has and the just cause of travel. That's why I've stayed in the industry for a long time. What do you think that we're doing really well right now and how should we go forward with confidence in a just cause, whether we're regardless of where we are in the travel industry.

So give credit where credit is due, right? I think overall the travel industry is doing a really good job of listening. I think in the past. Less so. Less so. It's about efficiencies and numbers and how you can improve your margins, whatever it is you're doing, which has its place. But should that be the first thing? You know, and I think, you know, I definitely feel that companies are making adjustments at every level of the experience, from the travel experience to the hotel experience, to the website experience, to all of it that you seem to be paying a lot of attention to. What we want and to what makes, what makes our experience the kind of experience that we want and doing your best to give it to us. And I think that's, I think that's had a huge benefit. I mean people, I think people are enjoying travel more. You know, it used to be that like travel was the thing that you did to get to the destination and now travel is becoming part of, part of the experience overall. So I think overall it's like check in experiences are better, checkout experiences are better. Like, you know, I think, I think airlines are working at it.

It's a tough business. Let's be honest.

But I think overall the experiences are a lot better. Even the customer experience when you're talking to a gate agent.

And ultimately, travel is a force for good. And we can, I think so we can do a lot with that.

I think people who travel more are more curious. I think people who travel more are more open minded. I think people who travel more are more tolerant of people who aren't like them, who don't look like them, who don't sound like them, who have different views than them. And when I say travel, I'm not even talking international, I'm talking about domestic. You know, just meeting people and seeing the world and interacting with people, I think makes, dare I say it, but I think you may hold the recipe for world peace.

And by the way, I'm being deadly serious. The less we travel, the more we stay focused on our phones and our TikToks and our Instagrams, the more judgmental we become, the more angry we become, the more we tune in only to news and that agrees with us. And we become polarized and sometimes very angry at people for no discernible reason. The more we travel, the more we see the world, the more we interact with people who aren't like us. They don't look like us, they don't sound like us, they don't feel like us, they don't think like us, the more tolerant, creative and patient we become. And honestly, if we can start to view each other as human beings more, I genuinely, genuinely believe that the more people that you can get to travel, we are more likely to achieve world peace. That is 100% and true.

Ladies and gentlemen, Simon Sinek.