Unlimited Game

Infinite Race: Lead Your Own Life with Infinite Perspective

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Introduction to Infinite Race

Infinity Race author Simon Sinek, the speaker in the very popular 2017 movie What Went Wrong with Millennials in the Workplace, is an acclaimed speaker and author. He is best known for his book, Ask First, Why? , which mentions theGold Circle ConceptThe company emphasizes that "clarity of why supports passion and serves as a filter for decision-making, helping us to clarify our goals, find allies, and make a difference."

The book "The Infinite Game" approaches the discussion of leadership from a different perspective. He emphasizes that leaders should view the world as an "infinite game" and build organizations that can succeed over the long term.

Good leaders don't think in terms of "short-term" versus "long-term" choices. They know that the focus is not just on the next quarter or the next election, but on the next generation.

What is an "Infinity Game"?

Before understanding finite and infinite, we have to discuss what a tournament is. A tournament is an event that involves more than two players, so all tournaments are tournaments, as are the competitions that precede the organization.

What is a limited tournament? A limited game is a game with fixed rules and fixed players. For example, playing soccer. After a fixed time or a fixed goal is accomplished, the game is over. The result may be a win, a loss, or a tie.

Unlimited games are games that have no time limit and may be changed by the players. Players can follow certain routines, but there are no set rules. The game will not end. Most games in life are actually infinite games, where there is not necessarily a winner or a loser, such as in relationships or even politics.

The primary goal of Unlimited is to keep playing and keep the game going.

An Infinity game is more of a journey, and the real goal should not be to beat the competition. The measure of success may be self-defined or it may follow a commonly used definition, so there is no absolute victory or defeat, but once resources are exhausted or the will to play is lost, the player must exit the game.

The Benefits of Unlimited Thinking

Although most organizations are in an infinite race, leaders often fall into a limited mindset and set the goal of being first. On the other hand, an Infinite Thinking leader's goal is to inspire people to make the organization better than it was before. Why is infinite thinking better than limited thinking? Because a limited mindset keeps moving toward short-term goals, so the race is over quickly and the ability to move on to the next goal is lost. For example, if we eat desserts all the time because we want to enjoy life, we lose our health. A player with limited thinking only cares about reaching the end of the game, so he is likely to ignore other effects.

When we lead with a finite mindset in an infinite game, all sorts of problems arise, the most common being the erosion of trust, cooperation and innovation.

Infinite thinking is more like fitness than competition, and consistently getting better than you were before is far more important than being better than another person in a certain scoring format. Maintaining infinite thinking is difficult because the temptation to win closer to home encourages us to repeat the same behavioral patterns over and over again.

Five Requirements for Infinite Thinking

According to Sinek, there are five conditions necessary for a business to achieve infinite thinking.

  • Noble Faith
  • Trusted Team
  • Treating other players as honorable opponents
  • The Contingency of Survival
  • Leadership Courage

Noble Faith

It's not about winning in the Infinity Game, so what is it about? In the Infinity Game, a leader must have clear and noble convictions. The lofty beliefs mentioned here are actually a vision or mission statement. This is different from a personal "why". An individual's why is a sum of values and is relatively fixed. But a noble belief is an indeterminate image, one that can be shaped and evolved over time.

A noble belief is a concrete vision of a future that does not yet exist; a future so desirable that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to realize it.

It is necessary to write down noble beliefs in clear language. A noble conviction must be able to paint a picture so concrete and inspiring that people are willing to contribute to it. It must have the interests of others beyond the contributor at heart, and be able to stand the test of time and transcend the goods on offer. It must also be an ideal that cannot be fully realized, but can be worked towards.

Noble beliefs are things we stand for and believe in, not things we fight against.

Shaping lofty beliefs is not easy. Some visions that are well intentioned can be vague, self-centered, or ambiguous when described in writing. The author gives an example, such as "to provide high-performance smart products with the latest technology, while saving consumers money at affordable prices". This kind of description doesn't tell us what the end goal of everything is.

Accumulating a limited number of victories does not bring about an unlimited number.

Trusted Team

The reason teams need to build trust is that if people trust each other, they feel psychologically safe and they are able to work in the best way possible when they are given the freedom to do so. This is similar toZero RulesThe freedom and responsibility emphasized in this article are quite similar.

Good leadership coupled with a trusting team allows the team to do their best work, creating a culture of solving problems rather than hiding them.

An environment that lacks trust requires a lot of processes to manage. However, processes always have their drawbacks, and we often hear that "there is a policy at the top, but there is a solution at the bottom". The best way to improve performance is to create an environment where information flows freely, awareness is consistent, and everyone is moving in the right direction.

Leaders are not responsible for results; leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results.

Honorable opponents

Leaders should see other players as opponents who can help them get better, not as competitors who must be defeated. The point is not to win or lose in an infinite game, everyone can be good at the same time. If you lose an honorable opponent, the game is over.

While the traditional competitive mindset has led us to adopt a winning attitude, our honorable opponents have inspired us to adopt an attitude of improvement.

The Contingency of Survival

In order to be more effective in promoting noble beliefs, it is sometimes necessary to change strategies and even goals. Many companies that were once successful were later eliminated because they did not have the courage or ability to adapt. A famous example is Kodak, once a giant in the photographic industry, and even the first to invent digital photography, but it was unable to transform its business model because it was so obsessed with the huge benefits of its existing business model that it eventually went bankrupt when its patents expired.

A critical response is the ability to subvert existing business models or strategic routes in order to more effectively advance a noble belief.

Leadership Courage

The significance of belief or mission lies in the fact that people really believe that the mission of a business is more important than making money. Beliefs can only be promoted if people really act on them.

Decisions that are good in the long run may be painful in the short run. Even those who have the ability to respond or the vision do not necessarily have the courage to lead. It is not easy to resist the pressure to make the right choices, and in the case of corporations, it is easy to be led by the nose by Wall Street. The three largest drugstores in the U.S., CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid, all want to help people get healthy, but only CVS had the courage to make the decision to stop selling cigarettes.

Integrity is not just "doing the right thing"; integrity is taking action before a public protest or scandal occurs.

what one learns from one's mistakes

This book is very easy to read, and Simon Sinek, true to his reputation as an orator, is very good at giving examples. From the very beginning, he takes the Vietnam War as an example to illustrate the difference in thinking between the Vietnamese government and the U.S. government during the war, bringing out the difference between the "finite" and the "infinite". It must be said that the main focus is on the perspective of the leader's operation, but from another perspective, the concept of "infinite game" is also helpful for individuals to operate their lives. Life should not only focus on winning and losing, but more importantly, it is more important to make progress to pursue one's own "noble beliefs". What are your noble beliefs?

It's hard to keep seeing the world in infinite terms, so here's an excerpt for all you self-leaders out there.

there areThe common denominator of all the struggles and frustrations of Limited Thinking Leaders is their own Limited Thinking.


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