Simon Sinek explains finite and infinite games: finite games have winners and losers, infinite games never end. Most companies compete like they're trying to win, but business is infinite. Microsoft obsessed over beating Apple while Apple focused on education. The real competition is against yourself.
Chapters
In the mid-1980s, a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr. James Karse defined these two kinds of games: finite games and infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules, and an agreed-upon objective. Football, baseball. If there's a winner, necessarily there has to be a loser. More important, there's always a beginning, a middle, and an end, like a new business pitch. There's going to be a winner, there's going to be a loser, there's going to be a beginning, middle, and end. But then once you win the business, You're no longer in pitch mode. You have to now go do the work, and the mindset has to change. And that's where we go into 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 at any time. The rules are changeable, which means every player can play however they want, and the objective is to perpetuate the game, to stay in the game as long as possible. We are players in infinite games every day of our lives, whether we know it or not. No one will ever be declared the winner of career. Nobody wins education or healthcare, and there's definitely no such thing as winning business, right? Like when Circuit City went bankrupt, Best Buy didn't win anything. One of the players simply dropped out of the game. But if you listen to the language of so many companies, it becomes very clear that the leaders don't know the game they're playing in. They talk about being the best. Or being number one or beating their competition. Based on what? Based upon what agreed-upon metrics, objectives, and timeframes. And this is a problem because when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game, when we play to win in a game that has no finish line, there are some very predictable and consistent outcomes. The big ones are the decline of trust, the decline of innovation, and the decline of cooperation. And so what— if you play with an infinite mindset, one of the things that you work to advance is not winning the game because it just doesn't exist, but it's about advancing a cause. I'll give you a real-life scenario that happened to me that really highlights the two different mindsets. So a bunch of years ago, when Steve Ballmer was CEO of Microsoft, I was invited to speak at an education summit for Microsoft. By sheer coincidence, a few months later, Apple invited me to speak at an education summit hosted by Apple. At the Microsoft summit, the vast majority of the executives spent almost all of their PowerPoints talking about how they were going to beat Apple. And Balmer was very public about how he was going to beat Apple. That's the language that they used. When I spoke at Apple, all 100% of the executives spent 100% of their presentations talking about how they were going to help teachers teach and how they're going to help students learn. One was obsessed with advancing a cause, the other one was obsessed with beating their competition. Guess which one was having problems with innovation and culture and cooperation in those days, right? So at the end of my talk at Microsoft, they were very nice and they gave me a gift. They gave me the new Zune when it was a thing. The Zune, for those of you who remember, was Microsoft's response to the iPod. And Ballmer made it expressly clear that he was gonna beat Apple and make a better iPod. And I have to tell you, this little piece of technology that they made was quite good. It was very, very good, actually. I was sharing a taxi at the end of my Apple talk with a senior Apple executive, and I couldn't help it. It's a character flaw. I had to stir the pot. And so I'm sitting in the back of this cab with him, and I turn to him, I go, "You know, Microsoft gave me their new Zune. It is so much better than my iPod Touch." And the executive looks at me and he says, "I have no doubt." And the conversation was over. Because when you play with an infinite mindset, you understand there's no such thing as beating your competition. There's no such thing as winning or losing. It doesn't exist. There's only ahead and behind. Sometimes you're slightly ahead, and sometimes you're slightly behind. Behind. And you're never setting out to beat your competition. The only organization you're setting out to advance or to outdo is yourself. How can we be better at leadership this year than we were last year? How can we help our sales team be better this year than they were last year? How do we make our culture stronger this year than it was last year? How do we make our products better this year compared to us?
