The Mindset That Makes the Biggest Difference in Business | Simon Sinek

Very early in my career, thank goodness, a friend gave me this rinky-dink little sort of philosophy book, this kooky little philosophy book, and I fell in love with this concept. The problem with it was it was a philosophy book, so it's not actionable. And I started to use it and apply it to my own work, but it helped me so much understand the world. And like Carissa, the pressures that people were putting on me and the advice they were giving me never felt right. And this helped me understand it. Basically, there are 2 types of games: finite games and infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules, and an agreed-upon objective. Football, right? Mm. If there's a winner, necessarily there have to be a loser or losers. And more important, there's always a beginning, middle, and end. Always. Then you have infinite games. Infinite games are defined as known and unknown players, which means you don't necessarily know who all the other players are, and new players can join the game whenever they want. Mm. The rules are changeable, which means everyone can play however 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 here will ever be declared the winner of your marriage. Good luck with that, right? Nobody will win health or fitness or nutrition. No one wins education. And definitely there's no such thing as winning business. If one company goes bankrupt, their competition doesn't win anything.

Yeah.

The game just keeps going. But if we listen to the language of so many leaders, it becomes very clear that they don't know the game they're playing. They talk about being number one. Or beating their competition, or my favorite one, being the best. Based on what? Based upon what agreed-upon metrics, timeframes, or conditions? And so, when you play with a finite mindset in an infinite game, when you play to win in a game that has no finish line, when you strive to be the best or number one or beat your competition in business because there is no finish line, there are very consistent and predictable outcomes. The big ones are the decline of trust, the decline of cooperation, and the decline of innovation. And you'll find that the companies that are built to last, you know, that doesn't mean that a company can't have success in the short term with a finite mindset, they can, but it doesn't last, that's the problem. The companies that are built to last, all of those leaders and all of the systems inside their company are built for the infinite game. Thank you.