The Infinite Game

by Simon Sinek

Feeling safe to express our feelings is not to be confused with a lack of emotional professionalism. Of course, we can’t rage or disengage because we’re feeling upset with someone on our team. We are still adults and we must still act with respect, courtesy and thoughtfulness. However, this does not mean we can or should even try to turn off our emotions. To deny the connection between feelings and performance is a finite-minded way of looking at leadership. In contrast, leaders like Rick Fox understand that feelings are at the heart of Trusting Teams . . . and Trusting Teams, it turns out, are the healthiest and highest-performing kind of teams.

The way one SEAL team member put it, “I may trust you with my life but do I trust you with my money or my wife?” In other words, just because I trust your technical skills doesn’t mean I think you are trustworthy as a person. You might be able to keep me safe in battle, but I don’t trust you enough to be vulnerable with you personally. It’s the difference between physical safety and psychological safety.

Only when a team member proves uncoachable—is resistant to feedback and takes no responsibility for how they show up at work—should we seriously consider removing them from the team. And at that point, should a leader still decide to keep them, the leader is now responsible for the consequences.

The process of building trust takes risk. We start by taking small risks, and if we feel safe, we take bigger risks. Sometimes there are missteps. Then we try again. Until, eventually, we feel we can be completely ourselves. Trust must be continuously and actively cultivated.

To help them feel safe from humiliation, for example, he depersonalized the problems his executives faced. “You have a problem,” he would tell them. “You are not the problem.”

Nothing and no one can perform at 100 percent forever. If we cannot be honest with one another and rely on one another for help during the challenging parts of the journey, we won’t get very far. But it’s not enough for leaders to simply create an environment that is safe for telling the truth. We must model the behavior we want to see, actively incentivize the kinds of behaviors that build trust and give people responsible freedom and the support they need to flourish in their jobs. It is the combination of what we value and how we act that sets the culture of the company.

Infinite games, remember, require infinite strategies. Because crime is an infinite game, the approach Chief Cauley’s officers are taking is much better suited to that game than an attack-and-conquer mindset. The goal is not to win in the overall scheme of things; the objective is to keep your will and resources strong while working to frustrate the will and exhaust the resources of the other players. Police can never “beat” crime. Instead, the police can make it more difficult for the criminals to be criminals.

Anecdotally, the officers report a significant increase in the number of people in the community who will wave them down just to say thank you. They report significantly more people buying them cups of coffee at coffee shops. Crime is under control and the community is more willing to help out too. “The community sees us as problem solvers,” says Chief Cauley, “not the enforcers.”

In weak cultures, people find safety in the rules. This is why we get bureaucrats. They believe a strict adherence to the rules provides them with job security. And in the process, they do damage to the trust inside and outside the organization. In strong cultures, people find safety in relationships. Strong relationships are the foundation of high-performing teams. And all high-performing teams start with trust.

One of the primary jobs of any leader is to make new leaders. To help grow the kind of leaders who know how to build organizations equipped for the Infinite Game. However, if the current leaders are more focused on making their plant as big as possible, then, like a weed, it will do whatever it needs to do to grow. Regardless of the impact it has on the garden (or even the long-term prospects of the plant itself).

It’s a phrase I will repeat again in this book: leaders are not responsible for the results, leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results.

When leaders are willing to prioritize trust over performance, performance almost always follows. However, when leaders have laser-focus on performance above all else, the culture inevitably suffers.

Ethical fading is a condition in a culture that allows people to act in unethical ways in order to advance their own interests, often at the expense of others, while falsely believing that they have not compromised their own moral principles. Ethical fading often starts with small, seemingly innocuous transgressions that, when left unchecked, continue to grow and compound.

Ethical fading is not an event. It doesn’t just suddenly arrive like a switch was flipped. It’s more like an infection that festers over time.

When problems arise, performance lags, mistakes are made or unethical decisions are uncovered, Lazy Leadership chooses to put their efforts into building processes to fix the problems rather than building support for their people. After all, process is objective and reliable. It’s easier to trust a process than to trust people. Or so we think. In reality, “process will always tell us what we want to hear,” Dr. Wong points out. “[Process] gives us a green light,” he continues, “but it may not be telling us the truth.” When leaders use process to replace judgment, the conditions for ethical fading persist . . . even in cultures that hold themselves to higher moral and ethical standards.

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.

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.

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.

An excessive focus on beating our competition not only gets exhausting over time, it can actually stifle innovation.

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.

“We’re not going to chase market share,” he said. “We’re not going to put out vehicles where demand is not there and then discount and make it even worse.” If Ford was to stay in the game, they would have to change the way they played the game. And that meant it had to relearn to make cars that people actually wanted to drive.

The manner in which Apple responded to IBM entering the PC market was the total opposite of what normally happens. 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. This is exactly what happened to the Canadian cell phone maker BlackBerry.

Disruption, remember, is often a symptom of a finite mindset. Leaders playing with a finite mindset often miss the opportunity to use a disruptive event in their industry to clarify their Cause. Instead, they double down on the finite game and simply start copying what the other players are doing with the hope that it will work for them too.

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.

Cause Blindness blunts humility and exaggerates arrogance, which in turn stunts innovation and reduces the flexibility we need to play the long game. Less able to engage in any kind of honest or productive practice of constant improvement, we end up repeating mistakes or continue to do many things poorly.

As hard as it may be to recognize a player as one of our Worthy Rivals, especially if we find them disagreeable, to do so is the best way to become better players ourselves.

Having a rival worthy of comparison does not mean that their cause is moral, ethical or serves the greater good. It just means they excel at certain things and reveal to us where we can make improvements. The very manner in which they play the game can challenge us, inspire us or force us to improve. Who we choose to be our Worthy Rivals is entirely up to us. And it is in the best interest of the Infinite Game to keep our options open.

The advanced player in the Infinite Game understands this and works to remain humble at the loss of a major Rival. Cautious not to let hubris or a finite mindset take hold, they play knowing that it is just a matter of time before new players emerge. Patience is a virtue in infinite play.

Highly successful players with lots of money and many strengths can get away with ignoring their weaknesses for a while. But not forever. Fast-growing companies with strong products, marketing and balance sheets, for example, often neglect to give time and attention to leadership training or to actively nurturing their culture. Things that can come back to haunt them later.

Even Republicans and Democrats used to be able to agree that the Soviet Union represented a greater threat to the United States than each other and could always come together in a clear common cause. That is no longer the case. Absent an identified external Worthy Rival, the two parties now see each other as the existential threat to the nation. All the while, the real threats to America grow ever stronger.

What got us here won’t get us there, and knowing who our Worthy Rivals are is the best way to help us improve and adapt before it’s too late.

Without a Worthy Rival we risk losing our humility and our agility. Failure to have a Worthy Rival increases the risk that a once-mighty infinite player, with a strong sense of Cause, will gently slide into becoming just another finite player looking to rack up wins. Where once the organization fought primarily for the good of others, for the good of the Cause, without that Worthy Rival, they are more likely to fight primarily for the good of themselves. And when that happens, when the hubris sets in, the organization will quickly find its weaknesses exposed and too rigid for the kind of flexibility they need to stay in the game.

This is the plight of the infinite-minded, visionary leader. Once he realized that the company was on a path that could no longer advance his Cause, he was willing to put everything on the line to start over again. He didn’t leave because he saw an opportunity to make more money. He didn’t leave a failing business. He found a better way to advance his Just Cause and he leapt at it.

Existential Flexibility is the capacity to initiate an extreme disruption to a business model or strategic course in order to more effectively advance a Just Cause. It is an infinite-minded player’s appreciation for the unpredictable that allows them to make these kinds of changes. Where a finite-minded player fears things that are new or disruptive, the infinite-minded player revels in them. When an infinite-minded leader with a clear sense of Cause looks to the future and sees that the path they are on will significantly restrict their ability to advance their Just Cause, they flex. Or, if that leader discovers a new technology that is more likely to help them advance their Cause going forward than the technology they are currently using, they flex. Without that sense of infinite vision, strategic shifts, even extreme ones, tend to be reactive or opportunistic. Existential Flexibility is always offensive. It is not to be confused with the defensive maneuvering many companies undergo to stay alive in the face of new technology or changing consumer habits.

When an Existential Flex happens, it is clear to all those who believe in the Cause why it has to happen. And though they may not enjoy the upheaval and short-term stress such a change may cause, they all agree it is worth it and want to do it. Shiny-object syndrome, in contrast, often leaves people flummoxed and exhausted rather than inspired.

“Steve, if we invest in this, we will blow up our own company.” To which Jobs replied, “Better we should blow it up than someone else.”

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.

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.”

Looking through the lens of finite and infinite games, I can’t help but see these responses to CVS’s decision as exquisitely finite minded. If the game of business was a finite game and the future was easy to predict, the pundits would have been 100 percent correct. As it turns out, however, the game is infinite and the future is quite unpredictable.

When a company with the stated Cause of helping people live healthier lives made a courageous decision to deliver on that purpose, not only did it help make Americans a little healthier, but it also had a positive impact on overall sales at their pharmacies.

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.

When we have the courage to change our mindset from a finite view to a more infinite view, many of the decisions we make, like CVS’s choice to stop selling cigarettes, seem bold to those with a more traditional view of the world. To those who now see the world through an infinite lens, however, such a decision is, dare I say it, obvious.

However, trust is not built by pressure or force, trust is built by acting in a way consistent with one’s values, especially when it’s least expected. Trust is built when we do the right thing, especially when we aren’t forced to.

American Airlines is still in the early days of their new journey. But because they are now preaching more of a long-term story than in the past, they are, unsurprisingly, attracting the attention of more long-term-minded investors. The kinds of investors who care less about the short-term fluctuations.

More and more people say they want to work for a purpose-driven organization, especially Millennials and Gen Zers. But without committed, infinite-minded leaders willing to challenge accepted norms of how the working world works, statements of Cause are just feel-good marketing—stuff a company may say to curry favor with people inside or outside the organization, but may not actually believe in or do themselves.

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.

Courageous Leaders are strong because they know they don’t have all the answers and they don’t have total control. They do, however, have each other and a Just Cause to guide them. It is the weak leader who takes the expedient route. The ones who think they have all the answers or try to control all the variables. It requires less strength to announce layoffs at the end of the year to quickly squeeze the numbers to meet an arbitrary projection than it does to explore other, maybe untested, options. When leaders exercise the Courage to Lead, the people who work inside their organization will start to reflect that same courage. Like children who mirror their parents, so too do employees mirror their leaders.

If we choose to live our lives with a finite mindset, it means we make our primary purpose to get richer or promoted faster than others. To live our lives with an infinite mindset means that we are driven to advance a Cause bigger than ourselves. We see those who share our vision as partners in the Cause and we work to build trusting relationships with them so that we may advance the common good together. We are grateful for the success we enjoy. And as we advance we work to help those around us rise. 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 . . . and there may not be any curriculum or grades to guide them. It means teaching our kids how to live a life with an infinite mindset themselves. There is no single, greater contribution in the Infinite Game than to raise children who will continue to grow and serve others long after we are gone.

None of us wants on our tombstones the last balance in our bank accounts. We want to be remembered for what we did for others. Devoted Mother. Loving Father. Loyal Friend. To serve is good for the Game.