The Infinite Game - Simon Sinek

January 1968 North Vietnam launches a surprise attack against American Allied forces they throw 35,000 troops 85,000 troops they throw 85,000 troops at over 125 targets across the country this is the Tet Offensive tent is the Lunar New Year it's a big holiday in Vietnam and for decades there was a tradition in Vietnam that there was never any fighting on Tet but in 1968 the leaders of the North Vietnamese Vietnamese forces broke with tradition with the hope that they would overwhelm American and Allied forces and bring a swift end to the Vietnam War caught completely by surprise many of the commanding officers and the American forces were in the local cities and towns celebrating Tet and here's the amazing thing the United States repelled every single attack every single one and at the end of most of the major fighting which ended after about a week North Vietnam had lost 35,000 out of the 85,000 troops with which they attacked America had lost fewer than a thousand a few hundred troops Wei went on for about a month they're 150 Marines died and 5,000 North Vietnamese forces were killed if we look at the Vietnam War as a whole the United States actually won almost every major battle they fought and over the course of those 10 years the United States lost 58,000 men the North Vietnamese lost over 3 million people which at the time would be in a population equivalent of 27 million Americans so it raises a very interesting question how do you win all the battles how do you decimate your enemy and still lose the war we clearly don't fully understand the concepts of winning and losing James Carr cieth theologian in 1986 wrote a little book called finite and infinite games in which he theorized these two kinds of games if you have at least one competitor you have a game and there are two types of games there are finite games and there are infinite games a finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and an agreed upon objective baseball football we agree on the rules we know who the other players are we play until the end and whoever has more points at the end of the game as the winner and the game concludes we all go home there's a beginning there's a middle and there's an end then there's an infinite game infinite games are defined is known and unknown players the rules are changeable we call play however we want and the objective is to perpetuate the game to keep the game in play when you pit a finite player versus a finite player the system is stable baseball is stable when you pit an infinite player versus an infinite player the system is also stable the Cold War was stable because we could not have a winner or a loser and both sides just kept playing to keep the game and play problems arise however when you pit a finite player versus an infinite player because finite players are playing to win and infinite players are playing to keep playing and they're making very different strategic choices accordingly and what always ends up happening is the finite player finds themselves in quagmire racing through the will and resources until they no longer have the will and resources to continue to play they don't so much as lose as they drop out of the game and the game continues with them or without them and this is what happened to the United States in Vietnam America didn't lose the war America ran out of the will and the resources to continue to play and dropped out of the game but the game of global politics continued with them without them now this is interesting because we are players in multiple infinite games every day of our lives there's no such thing as winning marriage if you think you're gonna be the winner in your marriage you will run out of the will and resources there's no such thing is winning friendship there's no such thing as winning global politics and there's definitely no such thing as winning business or winning hospitality but if we listen to too many leaders they don't know the game they're in they talk about being number one they talk about being the best to talk about being beating their competition based on water Peter agreed-upon metrics based on what agreed-upon timeframes when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game there's a few very predictable and consistent outcomes the decline of trust the decline of cooperation the decline of innovation and the eventual demise of the organization itself in the 1950s the average age of an organization the average age of a company was 60 years today it's about 18 so I had a real life experience that really helped me understand the difference between playing with a finite mindset and playing with an infinite mindset I spoke at an education summit for Apple I also spoke at an education summit for Microsoft at the Microsoft summit I'd say 70 to 80% of the executives spent about 70 to 80% of their presentations talking about how to beat Apple at the Apple summit a hundred percent of the executives spent a hundred percent of their presentations talking about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn one was obsessed with where they were going the other was obsessed with their with beating their competition guess which one was in quagmire guess which one was running through will and resources at the end of my talk at Microsoft they gave me a give me a little gift they gave me the Zune when it was a thing the Zune was Microsoft's response to the iPod and this little piece of technology that they gave me was absolutely fantastic it was beautifully designed it was elegant it worked flawlessly the user interface was simple to use and intuitive it was really spectacular so I the end of my Apple talk I'm sharing a taxi with a senior Apple executive employee number 54 I couldn't help myself I had to stir the pot I turned him and I said you know I spoke at Microsoft and they gave me the new Zune it is so much better than your iPod touch and he looked at me and he said I have no doubt and the conversation was over because when you're playing with in an infinite mindset you understand that sometimes they have the better product and sometimes you have the better product and there's no such thing as being the best there's only a head and there's only behind and in the infinite game the only true competitor is yourself how do we make our product better this year than it was last year how do we make our service better this year than it was last year how do we grow our leaders better this year than we did last year how do we make our culture stronger this year than it was last year the goal is not to beat the competition the goal is to outlast them which means we have to completely change the way in which we lead in which we operate in this infinite game in which we are all players so how do we lead how do we play in the infinite game there are five things five practices that you have to do number one you have to have a Just Cause number two you have to have trusting teams number three you have to have a worthy rival number four you have to have a capacity for existential flexibility and number five you have to have the courage to lead Just Cause Just Cause is a cause so just you'd be willing to sacrifice in order to advance it I mean you read corporate mission statements and vision statements they usually say something similar to be the best aha for the highest quality product with the highest quality services the best value for is that the kind of thing you're gonna sacrifice for very rare one of my favorite examples of a Just Cause was written down in the Declaration of the tomato pendants our founding fathers wrote down a reason that they were willing to sacrifice as they wrote their fortunes their lives and their honor in order to advance that all men are created equal endowed with inalienable rights amongst which include life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and winning the finite game of the Revolutionary War was simply the first step now the real hard work begins it is an infinite pursuit we will never actually get to the point where all people are equal in our nation but we will die trying that is the point remember when they wrote all men created are created equal they meant white Protestant men but even back then George Washington understood the importance of maybe including Catholics and so he banned the organizing against Catholics and his armies and he would regularly attend Catholic services to spread the message that this was an inclusive cause that they were about to embark on they won the Revolution and some years later we had the abolition of slavery and some years later we had women's suffrage and civil rights and gay rights and even though all of those pursuits are still as of yet trying to find their foothold and are imperfect to all themselves you can see that this nation is at its best when we're trying to advance that just cause where you work must give you a cause bigger than the product you serve the service that you offer for you to come to work a Just Cause means you would willingly sacrifice in order to advance that that doesn't mean we have to give our lives but we all know that we could get another job and get paid better somewhere else maybe work fewer hours sometimes we work late or take frequent business trips and are away from our families we don't like these things but they feel worth it number two trusting teams I went on a business trip and I stayed at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas it is a lovely hotel and the reason it's a lovely hotel is not because of the fancy beds any hotel can buy a fancy bed it's a fantastic hotel because of the people who work there that when you roam the halls and someone says hello to you you get the distinct feeling that they wanted to say hello not that they were told to say hello we're highly attuned social animals we can tell the difference like you can always tell when someone's working on Commission right at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas they happen to have a coffee bar 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 charming and engaging and I stood there for far too long buying myself a cup of coffee I couldn't help myself it's my nature I I asked Noah do you like your job and without skipping a beat Noah says I love my job now in my line of business that's very significant because like is rational right I like the people I work with I like the challenge I get paid well I like my job love is emotional it's a it's a higher order connection do you love your wife I like her a lot right there's a difference Noah said I love my job immediately my ears perk up so I asked a follow-up question tell me specifically I asked what the four seasons is doing that you would say to me I love my job without skipping a beat Noah said throughout the day managers will walk past me and ask me how I'm doing ask me if there's anything that I need to do my job better not just my manager any manager then he said I also work at another hotel in Las Vegas and they're the managers walk past us and catch us if we're doing anything wrong there they make sure that we meet our goals and made it meet our metrics and then he said something magical he said when I'm working at that other hotel I'd like to just keep my head below the radar and just get through the day and collect my paycheck he said only at the four seasons do I feel I can be myself this is the exact same human being and yet my experience of the service that he will provide me will be profoundly different not because the person but because of the leadership environment in which he works I talked to so many people so many people ask me Simon how do we get the most out of our people right like they're a towel that we just wring them out it's a flawed question which means the answers will also be flawed the correct question to ask is how do we create an environment in which our people can work at their natural best and that's what the Four Seasons is doing and usually when we have performance issues 99 times out of a hundred it's not the people that we're blaming it's usually the leaders that are creating the environment in which we're asking those people to come to work and in NOAA's case it is the exact same human being with a profoundly different attitude toward his work and a profoundly different experience as a customer a leaders responsibility is to create an environment which people can work at their natural best it's not about being in charge it's about taking care of those in your charge I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations who are not leaders they have authority and we do as they tell us because they have authority over us but we would not follow them and we oftentimes do not trust them and I know people who have no no formal rank and no formal Authority but they've made a choice the choice to look after the person to the left of them the choice to look after the person to the right of them and we would trust them and follow them anywhere if you want to play in the infinite game you have to take responsibility for building trusting teams you have to you have to work in one we all know what it's like to work in a trusting team because a trusting team is one of those teams in which you can feel confident raising your hand and saying I made a mistake or you promoted me into a position and I don't really know what to do I'm gonna need more help or I'm scared or I'm having trouble at home and it's affecting my work you don't have trusting teams what you do have as a group of people who are showing up to work every single day lying hiding and faking they're burying the mistakes for fear of getting in trouble they're not admitting that they don't know what to do for fear that it'll make them look weak or that it'll put them on a short list for the next round of layoffs they're definitely not telling you about stress that they might need just a little coaching or a little help and they're never gonna ask for help and eventually if we don't intervene these things will compound and compound and compound and break we know what happens in the extreme we've all seen it we turn on the news and so what happened on United Airlines when they dragged a paying customer off the plane with a broken nose a concussion and broken teeth I feel for every single member of that crew because 100% of that crew knew that that was the wrong thing to do and none of them intervened because they feared getting in trouble more than doing the right thing this was not an anomaly this was a steady slow march towards that event years before I experienced I witnessed a scene play out in front of me on a United Airlines flight where I was getting ready to board a plane at a scene played out in front of me where one of the passengers attempted to board the plane before their group number was called which is everyone here knows as a felony and that is exactly how the gate agent treated him step aside sir I haven't called your group yet please step aside and wait till I call your group is how she talked to a paying customer so I spoke up I said why do you have to talk to us that way why can't you talk to us like we're human beings and she looked me in the eye and said sir if I don't follow the rules I could get in trouble or lose my job what she revealed to me is that she does not feel safe at work her leaders do not trust her to do the job for which she's been trained to do and guess who suffers customer company and her the reason we love flying Southwest Airlines it's not because they have some magical formula how to hire the best people it's because the people who work there feel safe at work their leaders trust them to do to do the job which they've been trained to do and guess who benefits customer company and the people who are performing their duties build trusting teams number three worthy rival there's another guy who does what I do he writes books he gives talks he's very very smart his work is extremely well respected I like his work it's of extremely high quality I hate him he's always been very nice to me whenever I've seen him in professional circumstances I just hate him and because of my visceral contempt for him I have a very competitive spirit with him and I will regularly go online and check my book rankings and then I will immediately check his I don't check anyone elses just his and if I'm a head I'm smug and if he's a head I'm angry and when people bring up his name I cease we had an opportunity to speak on the same same stage together I don't mean me in the morning in the afternoon I mean we were interviewed together he and I and the interviewer thought it would be fun if if we introduced each other I went first and I turned to him and I said you make me really insecure I said all of your strengths or all of my weaknesses and when your name comes up I get uncomfortable and he looked at me and he said funny I feel the same about you the reason I hated him had nothing to do with him it had to do with me a worthy rival reveals to us our own weaknesses and because it was much easier to channel that insecurity and that energy into a competitive spirit to beat him instead what we do when we change our mindset away from competition away from having competitors but having rivals now all of a sudden I can work on those weaknesses and become a better version of me this is true for individuals it is for organizations we all have worked with people at our place of work where we irrationally hate them we can't understand why everybody else likes them and when they get promoted we're incensed perhaps they are revealing something to us about ourselves and perhaps that energy would be better served to see where we can improve rather than trying to undermine their success it's like being a runner in a race where is obsessed with running or a winning in a race we may trip the other company other runner we may trip the other competitor and yes we will win the race but we're still a slow runner and the problem is in this infinite game there's another race in another race and another race and it never ends we get to choose who our worthy rivals are both as organizations as individuals do not choose the ones that are not worthy of comparison I do not choose the ones that you feel superior because there is no value the value of a worthy rival is to reveal to us our weaknesses so that we may improve upon those weaknesses because that's the goal in the infinite game to become better versions of ourselves know you're worthy rivals next existential flexibility the best case of existential flexibility goes back to the 1970s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak the founders of computer had a just cause it was to empower individuals to stand up to Big Brother they loved the idea of one person sticking it to the man and they saw the personal computer as the perfect tool to empower individuals and they imagined a time in which one person could compete with the corporation they've already had success on the Apple one in the Apple two it's already a big company Steve Jobs is already a famous CEO and as many executives do they tore each other's companies and jobs and some of his senior folks went on a tour of Xerox PARC and Xerox showed them a new technology that they had invented called the graphic user interface which allowed computer users to use a mouse to move a cursor across a desktop and click on icons to and folders to make the computer work jobs saw this technology and was profoundly moved by it for the first time any buddy could use a computer you didn't have to learn a computer language anymore and when they left Xerox PARC he said to his colleagues we have to invest in this we have to invest in this graphic user interface thing and one of his colleagues the voice of reason said Steve we can't we've already invested millions of dollars and countless man-hours in another strategic direction we can't just walk away from that if we do were gonna blow up our own company to which jobs actually said better we should blowed up than someone else that decision became the Macintosh a computer platform so profound that it literally changed the way in which we use computers today the entire software of Windows is designed to act like a Macintosh existencial flexibility is the willingness to make a profound strategic shift sometimes at great short-term cost because you find a better way to advance your cause or perhaps you see that the path that you're on has a limited lifespan and to the rest of the world it's existential because they think you've gone crazy but the person who's making the flex to them staying the path Iran is the path to a short lifespan there are prerequisites before you could make an existential flex one you have to have a Just Cause because there has to be a reason why you're making the Flex it's not just shiny object syndrome and number two you have trusting teams you have to have the trusting teams because you will put the orga that organization through extreme short-term stress and not only does everybody on the team have to understand and agree yes this is the right thing to do but is willing to hunker down and see it through the stress george eastman the founder of Kodak also had a just cause he wanted to democratize photography prior to George Eastman the only way to take photographs was to hire a professional photographer and he imagined a time in which we could take pictures of our own vacations and our own families he invented film which allowed us to take pictures inexpensively without caustic chemicals that we'd have to deal with in big photographic plates it is because of George Eastman Kodak that we get to take pictures of our own families and our own vacations and Kodak took that Just Cause and was obsessed with simplifying photography making it cheaper and cheaper so more and more people could do it this will last a decade they invented color film slide projectors all all the chemicals to make it easier and easier and in 1975 an engineer at Kodak by the name of Steve Sasson invented the digital camera and when he showed the new technology he had invented to the then leaders that he decided to suppress the technology for fear that would cannibalize film sales they knew that this digital thing was gonna be a thing once the genie was out of the bottle there's no putting it back and they gave themselves 10 years before they they figured somebody else would pick up on the technology do you know what they did over the course of those 10 years to prepare nothing they did absolutely zero and sure enough to the Year 10 years after digital started to show up in other places and Kodak actually made billions of dollars licensing the patents that they had developed for that technology and when those patents ran out five years later they went bankrupt because if you're not willing to blow up your own company the market will blow it up for you that is existential inflexibility they had a cause in yet they couldn't bear the thought of having to reinvent their organization or worse they couldn't bear the thought of sacrificing their annual bonus structure to do the right thing for the longevity of the organization and it cost them the entire company do you have a capacity for existential flexibility number five the courage to lead it's embarrassing that I have to have this on the list but everything that I have told you today is unbelievably difficult it is very difficult to build an organization based on a just cause it is much easier to do it based on an annual financial goal it is unbelievably difficult to build and maintain trusting teams it is a lifestyle it is hard work to be a leader it is often thankless it is tiring it is exhausting and it is constant it is hard to look at others and see our own weaknesses and see ourselves in the mirror it is much easier to channel that energy into a competitive spirit and be so excited when we beat them it is wrenching to an organization to go through an existential flex most organizations will never have to go through it but a responsible finite minded leader prepares their future leaders to go through it should they need to and it is incredibly difficult to have the courage to stand up to all of the pressures in our lives that are telling us to stay finite to advance ourselves beyond others to make as much money this year as possible to be the best to be number one and all these artificial rankings with arbitrary ratings and arbitrary timeframes it is so much easier to just do as we're told and succumb to the pressure that's why we need the courage to lead and courage is not some internal fortitude it comes from the relationships that we've formed I've had the opportunity to meet some remarkable human beings who have literally risked their lives for the good of others they were in order to nobody would have faulted them if they didn't and they happened have come out of live expecting that they would die when they did the things that they and I had the chance to meet some of them and ask them why did you do what you did why did you do it no one would have faulted you if you didn't you have a family you have children why would you risk your life for people you don't even know and they all gave me the same answer because they would have done it for me the courage comes from the relationships the absolute confidence that someone will be there for you in a time of need is what gives us courage to be there for other people when they need it it's what gives us the courage to stand up and buck the system because we know that someone has our back we know someone says to us I believe in you I've got your back whatever you need I'm there with you you have to do this we need you to do this which all raises the very interesting question what does it mean to live an infinite life clearly our lives are finite but life is infinite and we are simply the players in this infinite game and in every other infinite game though we don't get to choose the rules of the game we do get to choose if we want to play and we do get to choose how we want to play it in the game of life however we don't get to choose if we want to play once you're born you're a player the only choice we get is how we want to play we can choose to live our lives with a finite mindset to advance our own careers at the expense of others to try not do all of our friends make more money than any everybody else we know and accumulate as much power as possible and when we die we leave it all behind or we can choose to live with an infant mindset which is to commit ourselves to see that those around us rise to see that those around us have experiences that they cannot get anywhere else and that when we ask our friends how did you become so remarkable they will say your name this is what I love about your industry people can say it's your name they will I'm talking about Noah they will say your name they will say thank you for the experience they had and there's never an end to what you do there's always another guests there's always another room to be filled there's always another table to be served it goes on and on and on and on and and on and the only choice you have is do you want to be the best you want to win or do you want every single day that your service will just be better than it was just five minutes before it is just a choice you very much [Applause]

Channel: The Welcome Conference

Views: 49,050

Rating: 4.9109588 out of 5

Keywords: Start with Why, welcome conference, 6-5-19, The Infinite Game, leadership, hospitality, restaurants, Welcome Conference, Simon Sinek

Id: RFxIm7fcB7c

Length: 29min 23sec (1763 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2019