47 pages • 1 hour read
The Infinite Game
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Themes
Fostering an Infinite Mindset
Throughout The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek provides advice on how to cultivate an infinite mindset in business and leadership. Because the overall game of business is an infinite one, he shows readers how to keep playing the game: “Despite the fact that companies are playing in a game that cannot be won […] too many business leaders keep playing as if they can” (6). Moreover, infinite games vary in definition and metrics to justify success. Though one company may consider highly rated reviews as “winning,” another company may consider the number of sales in a fiscal year a victory. Because of the plethora of ways to win, leaders playing infinite games need to focus on strengthening organizations so they can endure for many generations.
Sinek also reminds readers that leaders cannot choose whether a game is finite or infinite. However, they can choose whether they want to join the game or not. Likewise, once the type of game is chosen, leaders can choose how they want to play. Sinek compares this decision to becoming fit. There are thousands of exercises regiments, diet plans, recovery methods, and psychological tricks that can be applied to getting in shape. What truly matters is sticking to a plan. The adoption of an infinite mindset requires consistent practice, even though the exact moment of success cannot be predicted.
The five essential practices of Fostering an Infinite Mindset are advance a just cause, build trusting teams, study your worthy rivals, prepare for existential flexibility, and demonstrate the courage to lead. Sinek illustrates these practices in a circle, wherein each practice flows into the next. For example, when a leader studies their worthy rivals, they can learn how others use existential flexibility to overcome obstacles. Likewise, demonstrating the courage to lead means taking risks and making sacrifices in service of a just cause. The maintenance of this cycle is crucial to infinite thinking. Overall, Fostering an Infinite Mindset means developing the confidence to focus on the future and take care of constituents, like employees and customers. This mindset empowers leaders to resist the temptation of short-term success and sustain organizations with ethics.
The Dangers of a Finite Mindset
When leaders choose to play finite games, they do everything they can to win. While games in business can be finite, such as meeting a quota for sales, finite games should never take priority over infinite games. Sinek argues that when companies prioritize the short-term goals of finite games over the long-term sustainability of infinite games, they lose sight of their purpose and vision. As a consequence, the just cause loses its power, and symptoms such as ethical fading emerge. The worst-case scenario of playing finite games is unethical behavior pervading a company culture. This danger is how companies become involved in harassment, malpractice, and other unethical practices—at the expense of the safety and well-being of their employees and customers. Being the best in a field and making a profit can be worthy goals in service of a just cause—however, when these pursuits become the only priorities, the ethical constitution of a company becomes endangered.
Sinek exemplifies this danger with a Princeton University psychology study, which can be applied to toxic company culture. Theology students were divided into three groups and told they needed to rush across campus to an important lecture. The first group faced low pressure from faculty members, the second group faced moderate pressure, and the third group faced high pressure. Meanwhile, an actor was hired to lay on the ground in an alley and pretend to be hurt. The researchers found that the most pressured group ignored the person in pain the most; the least pressured group helped the most (134-36). Similarly, when leaders demand that their companies achieve finite goals through coercive or threatening tactics, they encourage employees to participate in unethical behavior to meet expectations.
Companies that succumb to the dangers of finite thinking often justify their destructive behavior. Even social responsibility campaigns can be clouded in the rhetoric of self-deception. As unethical behavior proliferates in a company, this behavior becomes the norm if left unchecked. The “slippery slope” of ethical fading begins small, almost imperceptible, until unethical behavior becomes so widespread that little besides public or legal reckoning can make change.
The Games of Business: Finite and Infinite
Throughout the book, Sinek argues leaders and companies cannot choose to play finite or infinite games. The nature and rules of these games are beyond the control of one individual or company. Systemic cooperation between industries creates the parameters for these games. However, leaders and companies can choose whether or not they want to play and how to play. To Sinek, the most ethical, sustainable organizations know finite games are fuel for the infinite game. The infinite game should advance a just cause for multiple generations of leaders and eras of a company. Sinek illustrates this point with Kodak, once the world’s largest photographic company. Despite dominating film and print photography for years, Kodak refused to embrace digital photography as the future, even though one of their engineers discovered the technology. Eventually, as their patent expired, competitors like Nikon and Fiji developed their own cameras and took over the photography market globally. Kodak’s failure to practice existential flexibility was the result of losing sight of their just cause—that is, allowing people to record the most important moments of their lives. They became obsessed with finite goals and lost sight of the infinite game.
Sinek balances his argument for infinite games by proposing how leaders and companies can win finite objectives to continue playing the infinite game. He cites companies like Apple and Patagonia, who engage in finite maneuvers to do just that. Patagonia is a B Corp organization, a company that participates in a form of capitalism that gives back to its employees, customers, and the larger world. This relatively new method of playing the infinite game in business is called stakeholder capitalism. This capitalism is the pursuit of profit to advance one’s vision of a better future: Companies like Patagonia “see money as the fuel they need to continue to pursue their Just Cause” (156). This capitalism frames businesses as having a responsibility to serve others. Sinek cites this concept as an emergent form of infinite thinking in global business, which recognizes the value of winning short-term games with an infinite mindset.
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