The Infinite Game

by Simon Sinek

Great leaders set up their organizations to succeed beyond their own lifetimes, and when they do, the benefits—for us, for business and even for the shareholder—are extraordinary.

Infinite games have infinite time horizons. And because there is no finish line, no practical end to the game, there is no such thing as “winning” an infinite game. In an infinite game, the primary objective is to keep playing, to perpetuate the

When we lead with a finite mindset in an infinite game, it leads to all kinds of problems, the most common of which include the decline of trust, cooperation and innovation. Leading with an infinite mindset in an infinite game, in contrast, really does move us in a better direction. Groups that adopt an infinite mindset enjoy vastly higher levels of trust, cooperation and innovation and all the subsequent benefits.

Despite the fact that companies are playing in a game that cannot be won, too many business leaders keep playing as if they can. They continue to make claims that they are the “best” or that they are “number one.”

Which means, to succeed in the Infinite Game of business, we have to stop thinking about who wins or who’s the best and start thinking about how to build organizations that are strong enough and healthy enough to stay in the game for many generations to come.

The true value of an organization is measured by the desire others have to contribute to that organization’s ability to keep succeeding, not just during the time they are there, but well beyond their own tenure.

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

Where a finite-minded player makes 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.

A company built for the Infinite Game doesn’t think of itself alone. It considers the impact of its decisions on its people, its community, the economy, the country and the world. It does these things for the good of the game.

An infinite perspective frees us from fixating on what other companies are doing, which allows us to focus on a larger vision. Instead of reacting to how new technology will challenge our business model, for example, those with infinite mindsets are better able to foresee the applications of new technology.

A finite-focused company may come up with “innovative” ways to boost the bottom line, but those decisions don’t usually benefit the organization, the employees, the customers and the community—those who exist beyond the bottom line.

In contrast, infinite-minded leaders don’t ask their people to fixate on finite goals; they ask their people to help them figure out a way to advance toward a more infinite vision of the future that benefits everyone. The finite goals become the markers of progress toward that vision. And when everyone focuses on the infinite vision, it not only drives innovation, but it also drives up the numbers.

An infinite-minded leader does not simply want to build a company that can weather change but one that can be transformed by it. They want to build a company that embraces surprises and adapts with them.

Prioritizing comparison and winning above all else, finite-minded leaders will set corporate strategy, product strategy, incentive structures and hiring decisions to help meet finite goals. And with a finite mindset firmly entrenched in almost all aspects of the organization, a sort of tunnel vision results. The result of which pushes almost everyone inside the company to place excessive focus on the urgent at the expense of the important.

According to a study by McKinsey, the average life span of an S&P 500 company has dropped over forty years since the 1950s, from an average of sixty-one years to less than eighteen years today.

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

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.

However, when there is a Just Cause, a reason to come to work that is bigger than any particular win, our days take on more meaning and feel more fulfilling. Feelings that carry on week after week, month after month, year after year. 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. It is an origin story. It is a statement of who we are—the sum total of our values and beliefs. A Just Cause is about the future. It defines where we are going. It describes the world we hope to live in and will commit to help build.

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

Where the first offers us a problem to solve, the second offers a vision of possibility, dignity and empowerment. We are not inspired to “reduce” poverty, we are inspired to “grow” the number of people who are able to provide for themselves and their families. Being for or being against is a subtle but profound difference that the writers of the Declaration of Independence intuitively understood.

A written cause works like a compass. And with a compass in hand, each succession of leaders, their gaze looking beyond the horizon, can more easily navigate the technologies, politics and cultural norms of the day without the founder present.

At some point in their careers, they traded any fantasy of feeling like their work would contribute to something bigger than themselves for a rat race or a hamster wheel or some other unfulfilling running rodent metaphor. Racking up finite wins does not lead to something more infinite.

The question that a Just Cause must answer is: What is the infinite and lasting vision that a moon shot will help advance? A Just Cause is the context for all our other goals, big and small, and all of our finite achievements must help to advance the Just Cause. Indeed, if we become overly concerned with a finite goal, no matter how inspiring, we leave ourselves open to making decisions that are only good for the finite but may do damage to the infinite.

Again, vision or mission statements act like compasses. They guide our direction. However, because there are no standards on how to write such statements, ones like the above have become too common. Broad and generic, they offer little to no value to a company that wants to adopt an infinite mindset.

Though saying “we are the best” may be great fodder for a rah-rah speech to rally a team, it makes for a weak foundation upon which to build an entire company. Infinite-minded leaders understand that “best” is not a permanent state. Instead, they strive to be “better.” “Better” suggests a journey of constant improvement and makes us feel like we are being invited to contribute our talents and energies to make progress in that journey. “Better,” in the Infinite Game, is better than “best.”

In fact, Sculley at Apple and Rollins at Dell did such damage to their respective organizations that their more infinite-minded predecessors, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell, were brought back to try to repair the messes they made. The problem isn’t how skilled an executive is when they take over as CEO. The problem is whether they have the right mindset for the job they are given.

A CVO is not an operations or a finance job. Whereas CVOs focus on up and out, CFOs and COOs focus on down and in. One requires eyes on the infinite horizon, the other requires eyes on the business plan. One envisions the very distant, abstract future. The other sees the steps to take in the tangible near term.

The average life of a company in the 1950s, if you recall, was just over 60 years. Today it is less than 20 years.

“Disruption” is likely not the cause of the challenge, it’s a symptom of a more insidious root cause. It is not technology that explains failure; it is less about technology, per se, and more about the leaders’ failure to envision the future of their business as the world changes around them. It is the result of shortsightedness. And shortsightedness is an inherent condition of leaders who play with a finite mindset. In fact, the rise of this kind of shortsightedness over the past 50 years can be traced back to the philosophies of a single person. In a watershed article from 1970, Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize–winning economist, who is considered one of the great theorists of today’s form of capitalism, laid out the foundation for the theory of shareholder primacy that is at the heart of so much finite-minded business practice today. “In a free-enterprise, private-property system,” he wrote, “a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.”

In other words, according to Friedman, the sole purpose of business is to make money and that money belongs to shareholders. These ideas are now firmly ingrained in the zeitgeist. Today it is so generally accepted that the “owner” of a company sits at the top of the benefit food chain and that business exists solely to create wealth, that we often assume that this was always the way that the game of business was played and is the only way it can be played. Except it wasn’t . . . and it isn’t.

The finite-minded form of capitalism that exists today bears little resemblance to the more infinite-minded form that inspired America’s founders (Thomas Jefferson owned all three volumes of Smith’s Wealth of Nations) and served as the bedrock for the growth of the American nation. 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. What many leaders in business practice these days is more of an abuse of capitalism, or “capitalism abuse.” Like in the case of alcohol abuse, “abuse” is defined as improper use of something. To use something for a reason other than that for which it was intended. And if capitalism was intended to benefit the consumer and the leaders of companies were to be the stewards of something greater than themselves, they are not using it that way today.

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. Which means the more value a company offers, the more money and the more fuel they will have for further advancements. Capitalism is about more than prosperity (measured in features and benefits, dollars and cents); it’s also about progress (measured in quality of life, technological advancements and the ability of the human race to live and work together in peace).

When we tie pay packages directly to stock price, it promotes practices like closing factories, keeping wages down, implementing extreme cost cutting and conducting annual rounds of layoffs—tactics that might boost the stock price in the near term, but often do damage to an organization’s ability to survive and thrive in the Infinite Game.

As King Louis XV of France said in 1757, “Après moi le dèluge.” “After me comes the flood.” In other words, the disaster that will follow after I’m gone will be your problem, not mine. A sentiment that seems to be shared by too many finite leaders today.

Where a finite-minded leader sees fast growth as the goal, an infinite-minded leader views growth as an adjustable variable. Sometimes it is important to strategically slow the rate of growth to help ensure the security of the long-term or simply to make sure the organization is properly equipped to withstand the additional pressures that come with high-speed growth.

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. And the pressure this mindset exerts on others in the company to focus on the near-term often comes at the detriment of the quality of the services or the products we buy.

Consider how differently we drive a car we own versus one we rent, and all of a sudden it will become clear why shareholders seem more focused on getting to where they want to go with little regard to the vehicle that’s taking them there.

If our goal is to build companies that can keep playing for lifetimes to come, then we must stop automatically thinking of shareholders as owners, and executives must stop thinking that they work solely for them. A healthier way for all shareholders to view themselves is as contributors, be they near-term or long-term focused.

Where Friedman’s finite definition of the responsibility focuses on maximizing resources, a revised infinite definition also considers the will of the people.

A better question to ask is, “How do I create an environment in which my people can work to their natural best?”

It’s not the people doing the job, it’s the people who lead the people doing the job who can make the greater difference.

In any game, there are always two currencies required to play—will and resources.

Will, in contrast, is intangible and harder to measure. When we talk about will, we’re talking about the feelings people have when they come to work. Will encompasses morale, motivation, inspiration, commitment, desire to engage, desire to offer discretionary effort and so on. Will generally comes from inside sources like the quality of leadership and the clarity and strength of the Just Cause. Will represents the sum of all the human elements that contribute to the health of the organization.

Very often, finite-minded leaders believe the source of will is externally motivated—pay packages, bonuses, perks or internal competition. If only that’s all it took to inspire a human being. Money can buy a lot of things. Indeed, we can motivate people with money; we can pay them to work hard. But money can’t buy true will. The difference between an organization where people are extrinsically rewarded to give their all and one where people are intrinsically motivated to do so is the difference between an organization filled with mercenaries versus one filled with zealots. Mercenaries work hard only so long as we keep paying top dollar for their effort. There is little loyalty to the company or the team. There is no real sense of belonging or feelings that anyone is contributing to something larger than themselves. Mercenaries are not likely to sacrifice out of love and devotion. In contrast, zealots love being a part of the organization. Though they may get rich doing what they are doing, they aren’t doing it to get rich. They’re doing it because they believe in the Just Cause.

The difference between an organization where people are extrinsically rewarded to give their all and one where people are intrinsically motivated to do so is the difference between an organization filled with mercenaries versus one filled with zealots. Mercenaries work hard only so long as we keep paying top dollar for their effort. There is little loyalty to the company or the team. There is no real sense of belonging or feelings that anyone is contributing to something larger than themselves. Mercenaries are not likely to sacrifice out of love and devotion. In contrast, zealots love being a part of the organization. Though they may get rich doing what they are doing, they aren’t doing it to get rich. They’re doing it because they believe in the Just Cause.

How we treat people is how they treat us.

Unlike resources, which are ultimately limited, we can generate an endless supply of will. For this reason, organizations that choose to operate with a bias for will are ultimately more resilient than those who prioritize resources. When hard times strike (and hard times always strike), in companies with a bias for will, the people are much more likely to rally together to protect each other, the company, the resources and their leaders. Not because they are told to, but because they choose to. This is what happens when the will of the people is strong. “We built a sense of family—of love and loyalty to each other, our customers, vendors and communities. Our intention was to build a business where everyone associated with it thrives,” says Tindell.

There is a difference between a group of people who work together and a group of people who trust each other. In a group of people who simply work together, relationships are mostly transactional, based on a mutual desire to get things done. This doesn’t preclude us from liking the people we work with or even enjoying our jobs. But those things do not add up to a Trusting Team. Trust is a feeling. Just as it is impossible for a leader to demand that we be happy or inspired, a leader cannot order us to trust them or each other. For the feeling of trust to develop, we have to feel safe expressing ourselves first. We have to feel safe being vulnerable. That’s right, vulnerable. Just reading the word makes some people squirm in their seats.

“Trust is the stacking and layering of small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time,” says Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston in her book Dare to Lead. “Trust and vulnerability grow together, and to betray one is to destroy both.”