The Infinite Game

Simon Sinek wrote a book called The Infinite Game.

Simon Sinek is a renowned leadership expert and the founder of 'The Optimism Company', which provides programmes for leadership development. He is also the best-selling author of the books, 'Start With Why', 'Leaders Eat Last', 'The Infinite Game', and 'Find Your Why'.

You can purchase Simon's book, 'The Infinite Game', here: https://amzn.to/4bYWNte

So for example, if I'm introducing finite infinite games, right. I will say something like during the Vietnam War most people don't realize that the United States actually won most of the battles it fought.

When I read your book The Infinite Game, one of the big things it changed in my life was I remember I was on a plane. I read the book, started writing some stuff, came back to our office in the UK and I did a big presentation to all my teams about how we create a sustainable company because if what you're talking about in the book is true then and we're not playing a finite game here. How do we redesign the business from the ground up so that it is fundamentally sustainable?

Yeah, I came up with this thing called WWW. Work, welfare and wealth which is the three reasons why we exist. We made 2020 goals, so this was in 2019, 20 goals before 2020 for each of these areas and I'm thinking about it again a lot now which is like if I was to design my business in a way where my team members would stay working here forever, how would I go about that? You've just answered it by saying the point about honesty.

when I read your book The Infinite Game one of the big things that changed in my life was I remembered I was on a plane, I read the book, started writing some stuff, came back to the office and did a big presentation to all my teams about how we create a sustainable company because if what you're talking about and the book is true then we are not playing a finite game here.

whose books about business -- including "Start with Why," and "The Infinite Game" -- offer guidance to founders that is especially timely right now.

First, can you just kind of outline what this idea of the infinite game is?

particularly for business leaders who want to try and adopt an infinite mindset.

Simon's books include Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together Is Better, Find Your Why and The Infinite Game.

Simon Sinek an international speaker and bestselling author of the books Start With Why The Infinite Game and Find Your Why.

I also was sort of reading a Simon Sinek book called, called The Infinite Game, which is a great book.

He returns to the show to discuss his latest offering, The Infinite Game, which offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset in a limitless world.

James Carse, philosopher who used to teach at NYU for many years, he's 87 now, some amazing guy, he theorized in 1986 and he wrote a little book about these two types of games, finite games and infinite games.

Now a finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules, and an agreed-upon objective. Baseball, there's a beginning, middle, end, the goal is to win, and if there's a winner, there has to be a loser, right?

Then you have an infinite game, and an infinite game is defined as known and unknown players, the rules are changeable, which means you can play however you want, there's no referees, and the objective is to perpetuate the game, to stay in the game as long as possible.

We are players in infinite games every day of our lives. These are games that have no finish line, right? There's no agreed-upon metrics, there's no agreed-upon rules, there's no agreed-upon timeframes.

James Carson wrote in his book there's finite games and infinite games and a finite game is there's a start and a stop like a baseball game and all those two teams care about is winning the game so we'll do anything to win that game in that finite period of time an infinite game you basically the only incentive of the players in the game is you keep on playing the game and right now we all want to live life we want to experience life to its fullest in relationships and all the things we all care about and therefore it makes sense that we only care about doing things that help all of us continue to play the game

The new book is called 'The Infinite Game'. All his books are good. They're a good read.

James Carson wrote in his book there's finite games and infinite games and a finite game is there's a start and a stop like a baseball game and all those two teams care about is winning the game so we'll do anything to win that game in that finite period of time an infinite game you basically the only incentive of the players in the game is you keep on playing the game and right now we all want to live life we want to experience life to its fullest in relationships and all the things we all care about and therefore it makes sense that we only care about doing things that help all of us continue to play the game

The new book is called 'The Infinite Game'.

all his books are good, they're a good read

James Carson wrote in his book there's finite games and infinite games and a finite game is there's a start and a stop like a baseball game and all those two teams care about is winning the game so we'll do anything to win that game in that finite period of time an infinite game you basically the only incentive of the players in the game is you keep on playing the game and right now we all want to live life we want to experience life to its fullest in relationships and all the things we all care about and therefore it makes sense that we only care about doing things that help all of us continue to play the game