The Infinite Game

by Simon Sinek

It’s like telling someone we have to cancel plans because of a “family issue” when in reality there is no family issue; we just want to get out of the plans without hurting someone’s feelings. And though we told a lie, because it’s just a little “harmless” white lie, we still believe ourselves to be honest.

Remember, the very definition of ethical fading is engaging in unethical behavior while believing that we are still acting in line with our own moral or ethical code.

There’s a great irony in all this. When we apply finite-minded solutions to address an ethical fading problem that finite-minded thinking created, we get more ethical fading. When we use process and structure to fix cultural problems what we often get is more lying and cheating. Little lies become bigger lies. And the behavior becomes normalized.

Decisions made by Lazy Leadership can often be very well intended. In the case of the Army, or any large organization for that matter, leadership may genuinely believe all the extra demands and requirements they place on soldiers are helpful. But because senior leaders are rarely subjected to those extra demands themselves, they may be oblivious to the problems their “solutions” cause. However, if they were aware of or also subjected to the hypocrisy, dysfunction or excessive bureaucracy, then like my boss at the agency, they too could become complicit in the charade. When that happens, those leaders are likely also engaging in rationalization and self-deception. And the slope grows slipperier.

The best antidote—and inoculation—against ethical fading is an infinite mindset. Leaders who give their people a Just Cause to advance and give them an opportunity to work with a Trusting Team to advance it will build a culture in which their people can work toward the short-term goals while also considering the morality, ethics and wider impact of the decisions they make to meet those goals. Not because they are told to. Not because there is a checklist that requires it. Not because they took the company’s online course on “acting ethically.” They did so because it’s the natural thing to do. We act ethically because we don’t want to do anything that would do damage to the advancement of the Just Cause. When we feel a part of a Trusting Team, we don’t want to let down our teammates. We feel accountable to our team and the reputation of the organization, not just to ourselves and our personal ambitions. When we feel part of a group that cares about us, we want to do right by that group and make our leaders proud. Our standards naturally rise.

As social animals, we respond to the environments we’re in. Put a good person in an environment that suffers ethical fading, and that person becomes susceptible to ethical lapses themselves. Likewise, take a person, even one who may have acted unethically in the past, put them in a stronger, more values-based culture, and that same person will also act in accordance with the standards and norms of that environment. As I’ve said before, leaders are not, by definition, responsible for the results. Leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results. It’s a job that requires constant attention because when little things compound, things eventually break.

If ethical fading is powered by self-deception, maintaining ethical behavior demands complete honesty and constant self-assessment. Ethical lapses happen and are part of being human. Ethical fading, however, is not a part of being human. Ethical fading is a failure of leadership and is a controllable element in a corporate culture. Which means the opposite is also true. Cultures that are ethically strong are also a result of the culture the leaders build.

they go on to introduce their Common Threads Initiative, a program they hope will help advance them toward their goals. The initiative includes a commitment to make high-quality clothes that will last a long time, so they don’t have to be routinely replaced (which reduces waste); a promise to repair their products for free, so that people don’t throw them out (which reduces waste); a partnership with eBay, so that people can “reuse,” buy and sell secondhand products (which reduces waste); and when a product finally does come to the end of its life, Patagonia will take it off your hands to recycle it rather than have us throw it in the garbage (which reduces waste).

While some companies go out of their way to find loopholes they can exploit to enhance their performance, Patagonia goes out of its way to close loopholes that enhance their values and beliefs.

To certify as a B Corp, companies are required to identify their most deeply held social and environmental values, then abide by them, honoring their responsibilities to their employees, customers, suppliers and communities—as well as to the financial health of their investors.

A Worthy Rival is another player in the game worthy of comparison. Worthy Rivals may be players in our industry or outside our industry. They may be our sworn enemies, our sometimes collaborators or colleagues. It doesn’t even matter whether they are playing with a finite or an infinite mindset, so long as we are playing with an infinite mindset. Regardless of who they are or where we find them, the main point is that they do something (or many things) as well as or better than us. They may make a superior product, command greater loyalty, are better leaders or act with a clearer sense of purpose than we do. We don’t need to admire everything about them, agree with them or even like them. We simply acknowledge that they have strengths and abilities from which we could learn a thing or two.

Traditional competition forces us to take on an attitude of winning. A Worthy Rival inspires us to take on an attitude of improvement. The former focuses our attention on the outcome, the latter focuses our attention on process.

An infinite mindset embraces abundance whereas a finite mindset operates with a scarcity mentality. In the Infinite Game we accept that “being the best” is a fool’s errand and that multiple players can do well at the same time.

When a new company joins an industry with such force, it often spooks the incumbents. They frequently lose sight of their vision and start focusing on competing with the new player based on product comparisons and other standard metrics. Which means, if they weren’t already playing with a finite mindset before, the choice to view the new entrant as a competitor rather than a Worthy Rival will drag them into the finite quagmire before too long.

Cause Blindness is when we become so wrapped up in our Cause or so wrapped up in the “wrongness” of the other player’s Cause, that we fail to recognize their strengths or our weaknesses. We falsely believe that they are unworthy of comparison simply because we disagree with them, don’t like them or find them morally repugnant. We are unable to see where they are in fact effective or better than we are at what we do and that we can actually learn from them.

Here, people would be fully immersed in a perfect illusion. “I think what I want Disneyland to be most of all is a happy place—a place where adults and children can experience together some of the wonder of life, of adventure, and feel better because of it,” said Disney. It is a place where “you leave TODAY . . . and enter the World of YESTERDAY and TOMORROW.”

An Existential Flex doesn’t happen at the founding of the company, it happens when the company is fully formed and functioning. To all the finite-minded observers, it is existential because the leader is risking the apparent certainty of the current, profitable path with the uncertainty of a new path—which could lead to the company’s decline or even demise. To the finite-minded player, such a move is not worth the risk. To infinite-minded players, however, staying on the current path is the bigger risk. They embrace the uncertainty. Failure to flex, they believe, will significantly restrict their ability to advance the Cause. They fear staying the course may even lead to the eventual demise of the organization.

Instead of leading the digital revolution, Kodak’s executives chose to close their eyes, put their fingers in their ears and try to convince themselves that everything was gonna be just fine. And I guess it was . . . for a time. But it didn’t last. It couldn’t last. Finite strategies never do.

Bankruptcy is so often an act of suicide. When we look back at the decisions that put once successful companies on a path to bankruptcy, we discover an uncomfortably high number of leaders who were obsessed with the finite game. Their Cause abandoned, instead they are left desperately clinging to business models that may have helped them become successful but could not stand the test of time. In most cases, it’s not the “market conditions” or the “new technology” or any of the other stock reasons usually offered as explanations that are responsible for their company’s demise. It was the leaders’ inability to make the necessary Existential Flex that was the problem. If they had abandoned their Cause, they also abandoned the capacity to Flex. Call it “existential inflexibility.” At some point, every single organization will need to make a Flex. Though that need might not happen during one particular leader’s tenure, part of any leader’s responsibility is to build their organization with the capacity to exercise Existential Flexibility should they or their successors need to do so. That means adhering to the Just Cause as a guiding light and maintaining a culture rich with Trusting Teams.

The people who worked at Kodak were pioneers in almost every part of the industry. It was only their finite mindset that left this once great company to be disrupted by the visionary technology they themselves invented.

In February 2014, CVS Caremark announced that it would stop selling any tobacco-related products in all of their over 2,800 stores. It was a decision that would cost the company $2 billion per year in lost revenue. It was a decision they chose to make even though there was no competitive pressure to do so. There was no loud public demand that they make the decision. There was no scandal. There was no online campaign to force them to make the decision.

The Courage to Lead is a willingness to take risks for the good of an unknown future. And the risks are real. For it is much easier to tinker with the month, the quarter or the year, but to make decisions with an eye to the distant future is much more difficult. Such decisions may indeed cost us in the short term. It may cost us money or our jobs. It takes the Courage to Lead to operate to a standard that is higher than the law—to a standard of ethics. And when we are pressured to do things that violate that ethical code, it takes the Courage to Lead to speak up, to make those who would pressure us to do otherwise aware of the situation they are creating. And it takes courage to offer our help so they may fix it. It takes the Courage to Lead to make decisions counter to the current standards of business and it takes the Courage to Lead to ignore the pressure of outside parties who are not invested in or believers in our Just Cause.

So how are we to find the courage to change our mindset? We can wait for a life-altering experience that shakes us to our core and challenges the way we see the world. Or we can find a Just Cause that inspires us; surround ourselves with others with whom we share common cause, people we trust and who trust us; identify a Rival worthy of comparison that will push us to constantly improve; and remind ourselves that we are more committed to the Cause than to any particular path or strategy we happen to be following right now.

Chapman (about whom I wrote extensively in Leaders Eat Last) is an outspoken voice for the idea that the best leaders and the best companies prioritize people before numbers. That his company consistently thrives beyond expectations with a people-before-profit philosophy earns him invitations to speak to the converted and skeptics alike.

The senior executives decided to give all their flight attendants and all their pilots a midcontract raise of 5 percent and 8 percent, respectively, and asked for nothing in return. The decision would cost the company over $900 million over the next three years. It was a decision they knew Wall Street would hate. And they were right. On April 27, 2017, when American made the announcement, Wall Street’s reactions were predictably disapproving. One analyst, Kevin Crissey, who specializes in the airline industry for Citi, wrote to his clients, “This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers.” A letter from a group of J.P. Morgan analysts echoed the sentiment. “We are troubled by AAL’s wealth transfer of nearly $1 billion to its labor groups,” said the opening line of the letter. “We’re sensitive to American’s desire to ‘build a foundation of trust’ with its labor stakeholders,” the letter later explained, “but we think this latest agreement goes too far. . . . The solution to a rising wage bar is not to chase it, in our view. Sometimes, the timing of one’s commitments is simply fortuitous.” By “fortuitous,” I believe they were saying “possibly unfair, but in our favor.” Fortunately, the leaders at American Airlines had the courage to make a decision to strengthen their company without considering Mr. Crissey’s and the J.P. Morgan team’s annual bonus structures.

The good news is, Parker, his team and the board of directors are working hard to be less reactive to the noise and to stay focused on the long term. “We need to care for our team so that they can care for our customers,” said Parker. “That’s how we will create value for our shareholders.”

If leaders of organizations go so far as to state a Just Cause, or purpose, for their organization, then it’s kind of necessary that they must actually believe in that Cause. The whole point of having a statement of Cause or purpose is that they actually believe it. That they really believe the purpose of business is bigger than making money. A Cause can only advance if they do the things that help advance it. If they don’t, what’s the point of having a Cause written on the wall or on the website?

Only when organizations operate on a higher level than federal, state and local laws can we say they have integrity. Which, incidentally, is the actual definition of integrity—firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility.

Integrity does not just mean “doing the right thing.” Integrity means acting before the public outcry or scandal. When leaders know about something that is unethical and only act after the outcry, that’s not integrity. That’s damage control.

Few if any of us have the courage to change from a finite mindset to a more infinite one alone. We must find others who share our sense of responsibility, who share our beliefs that it is time to change and who share our desire to work together to do it.

Our lives are finite, but life is infinite. We are the finite players in the infinite game of life. We come and go, we’re born and we die, and life still continues with us or without us. There are other players, some of them are our rivals, we enjoy wins and we suffer losses, but we can always keep playing tomorrow (until we run out of the ability to stay in the game).

Though we do not get to choose the rules of the game, we do get to choose if we want to play and we get to choose how we want to play. The game of life is a little different. In this game, we only get one choice. Once we are born, we are players. The only choice we get is if we want to play with a finite mindset or an infinite mindset.

To live our lives with an infinite mindset is to live a life of service.

To parent with an infinite mindset, in contrast, means helping our kids discover their talents, pointing them to find their own passions and encouraging they take that path. It means teaching our children the value of service, teaching them how to make friends and play well with others. It means teaching our kids that their education will continue for long after they graduate school. It will last their entire lives .

To live a life with an infinite mindset means thinking about second and third order effects of our decisions. It means thinking about who we vote for with a different lens. It means taking responsibility for later impact of the decisions we make today. And like all infinite games, in the game of life, the goal is not to win, it is to perpetuate the