The Infinite Game

by Simon Sinek

Players with an infinite mindset want to leave their organizations in better shape than they found them.

products they think they can sell to people, the infinite-minded player makes products that people want to buy. The former is primarily focused on how the sale of those products benefits the company; the latter is primarily focused on how the products benefit those who buy them.

To ask, “What’s best for me” is finite thinking. To ask, “What’s best for us” is infinite thinking.

Any leader who wants to adopt an infinite mindset must follow five essential practices: Advance a Just Cause Build Trusting Teams Study your Worthy Rivals Prepare for Existential Flexibility Demonstrate the Courage to Lead

The motivation to play in an infinite game is completely different—the goal is not to win, but to keep playing.

A Just Cause is a specific vision of a future state that does not yet exist; a future state so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices in order to help advance toward that vision.

In an organization that is only driven by the finite, we may like our jobs some days, but we will likely never love our jobs. If we work for an organization with a Just Cause, we may like our jobs some days, but we will always love our jobs.

A Just Cause is not the same as our WHY. A WHY comes from the past.

A Just Cause is about the future. It defines where we are going.

Many of the organizations we work for now already have some sort of purpose, vision or mission statement (or all of them) written on the walls that our leaders hope will inspire us. However, the vast majority of them would not qualify as a Just Cause. At best they are uninspiring and innocuous, at worst they point us in a direction to keep playing in the finite realm.

Even some of the best-intentioned attempts are written in a way that is finite, generic, self-centered or too vague to be of any use in the Infinite Game.

A Just Cause must be: For something—affirmative and optimistic Inclusive—open to all those who would like to contribute Service oriented—for the primary benefit of others Resilient—able to endure political, technological and cultural change Idealistic—big, bold and ultimately unachievable

Being for something, in contrast, is about feeling inspired. Being for ignites the human spirit and fills us with hope and optimism. Being against is about vilifying, demonizing or rejecting. Being for is about inviting all to join in common cause. Being against focuses our attention on the things we can see in order to elicit reactions. Being for focuses our attention on the unbuilt future in order to spark our imaginations.

Few Americans, except for scholars and the most zealous of history buffs, can rattle off even one of the complaints listed later in the document, things like: “He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”

“primary.” Service orientation does not mean charity. In charity, the vast majority, if not all, the benefit of our contributions must go to the receiver. And any benefit the contributor gets is the good feeling that they contributed.

This is what “servant leadership” means. It means the primary benefit of the contributions flows downstream.

The requirement that a Just Cause be service oriented is consistent with how infinite games are supposed to be played. The infinite player wants to keep the game going for others.

so. America’s Just Cause has yet to be fully realized, and for all practical purposes it never will be. But we will die trying. And that’s the point.

It is important to celebrate our victories, but we cannot linger on them. For the Infinite Game is still going and there is still much work to be done.

die? I am often surprised how many visionary leaders don’t think they need to find the words for or write down their Cause. They assume that because their vision is clear to them it’s clear to everyone else in the organization. Which of course it’s not.

Without finding the words for the Just Cause and writing them down, it dramatically increases the risk that, in time, the Cause will be diluted or disappear altogether. And without the Just Cause, an organization starts to function like a ship without a compass—it veers off course.

Without a Just Cause to guide them, finite-mindedness s...

A Just Cause that is preserved on paper can be handed down from generation to generation; a founder’s instinct cannot.

The so-called moon shot is often invoked by leaders who are trying to inspire their people to reach for something that seems impossible. And because moon shots pass most of the tests of a Just Cause, it usually works. In the case of Kennedy’s actual moon shot, it is affirmative and specific. It is inclusive, service oriented and definitely worthy of sacrifice. However, it is not infinite.

More than an ideal future state, it is what Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, calls a BHAG, a big, hairy, audacious goal. It’s easy to mistake a BHAG for a Just Cause because they can indeed be incredibly inspiring and can often take many years to achieve.

But after the moon shot has been achieved the game continues. Simply choosing another big, audacious goal is not infinite play, it’s just another finite pursuit.

Promise Keepers million man march

Though moon shots are inspiring for a time, that inspiration comes with an expiration date. Moon shots are bold, inspiring finite goals within the Infinite Game, not instead of the Infinite Game.

Imagine you walk out of your house one morning and see your neighbor packing up his car. “Where are you going?” you ask. “Vacation,” he replies. “Nice. Where are you going?” you follow up, curious. “I told you, vacation,” he replies again. “I got that,” you say, “but where are you going?” Exasperated, your neighbor replies again, “I told you, VAY-CAY-SHUN!” Realizing that your line of questioning will not reveal the answer you’re looking for, you try a new strategy. “Okay,” you say, “how do you plan to get to your vacation?” And immediately your neighbor offers their plan. “I’m going to drive down the I-90 and my goal is to drive three hundred miles per day.”

If the question asked is, “What is your company’s Cause? Why does your company exist?” and the answer offered is “growth,” that’s a lot like your neighboring responding “vacation” to the question “Where are you going?” The leaders of these growth-oriented companies can rattle off their strategies and targets for growth, but that’s like explaining which highway and how many miles you plan to travel when heading on vacation; it doesn’t paint a picture of why you set off in the first place or where you hope to go. It doesn’t offer a larger context or purpose for that growth.

Money is the fuel to advance a Cause, it is not a Cause itself. The reason to grow is so that we have m...

To offer growth as a cause, growth for its own sake, is like eating just to get fat.

A corporate social responsibility (CSR) program is not a Just Cause. And a company is not cause driven because they sponsor walkathons, donate to charity or give employees paid time off to volunteer. Nor are they cause driven because they give away their products to people who can’t afford them.

CSR programs are, for the most part, business-speak for giving to charity.

If history or 18th-century brogue-tongued philosophers are not your jam, we need simply look at how capitalism changed after the idea of shareholder supremacy took over—which only happened in the final decades of the twentieth century. Prior to the introduction of the shareholder primacy theory, the way business operated in the United States looked quite different.

It was only after Friedman’s 1970 article that executives and directors started to see themselves as responsible to their “owners,” the shareholders, and not stewards of something bigger.

Capitalism today is, in name only, the capitalism that Adam Smith envisioned over 200 years ago. And it looks nothing like the capitalism practiced by companies like Ford, Kodak and Sears in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before they too fell prey to finite thinking and lost their way.

As Henry Ford said, “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.” Companies exist to advance something—technology, quality of life or anything else with the potential to ease or enhance our lives in some way, shape or form. That people are willing to pay money for whatever a company has to offer is simply proof that they perceive or derive some value from those things.

Finite-focused leaders are often loath to sacrifice near-term gains, even if it’s the right thing to do for the future, because near-term gains are the ones that are most visible to the market.

In order to increase the infinite value to our nation, our economy and all the companies that play in the game, the definition of the responsibility of business must: Advance a purpose: Offer people a sense of belonging and a feeling that their lives and their work have value beyond the physical work. Protect people: Operate our companies in a way that protects the people who work for us, the people who buy from us and the environments in which we live and work. Generate profit: Money is fuel for a business to remain viable so that it may continue to advance the first two priorities.

Simply put: The responsibility of business is to use its will and resources to advance a cause greater than itself, protect the people and places in which it operates and generate more resources so that it can continue doing all those things for as long as possible. An organization can do whatever it likes to build its business so long as it is responsible for the consequences of its actions.

Too often, when performance lags, the first thing we do is blame the people. But in Noah’s case, he is the same person in both his jobs. The only difference is the leadership environment in which he is asked to work.

The finite-minded leader tends to show a bias for the score. As a result, they often opt for choices that demonstrate results in a short time frame, even if doing so, “regrettably,” comes at a cost to the people.

The Container Store has always prided itself on being an employee-first kind of company. So when the recession hit, they refused to take the expedient route and lay off employees. But they had to do something. As they presented the plan to freeze salaries and 401(k) matches for an undetermined time period, leadership wasn’t sure what to expect in response. They hoped their people would be understanding and agree that it was better that they should all share the hardship than ask a few to suffer more.