We're bringing you the best insights written in the world of marketing today, thanks to our sponsors at Integrate.
"Trust is a feeling, we can't tell people to trust us," says Simon Sinek. This is a sentiment he brings to his seminal work The Infinite Game.
For Simon most leaders are playing the wrong day. They are playing with a finite mindset in a landscape and industry that is infinite, which leads to lost trust, cooperation, and innovation.
This book bounces from James Carse's ideas from Finite and Infinite Games, where he explains how finite-minded business people and leaders play to win, whereas infinite-mined individuals play to keep playing, which is ultimately for the good of the game. So, Sinek takes this, evaluates finite and infinite leadership within different institutions, and shows how different the results for each can be.
Imagine a world in which the vast majority of us wake up inspired, feel safe at work and return home fulfilled at the end of the day.
– Simon Sinek
We're bringing you the best insights written in the world of marketing today, thanks to our sponsors at Integrate. Stay tuned for more! 📖📚
For many companies, business is not working very well. Simon suggests that approaching business as a finite game is the problem. The solution is a genuine mindset change.
In the book, he makes one key, integral point: business is not a game with a final clock, it is an infinite game. The biggest implication that comes from this is that business people have to play a long game, a very long game. It means ignoring the idea that it's only the next quarter that matters, which many leaders stick to.
We all know what a finite game is right – In football, there are known players, fixed rules and an agreed-upon objective that, when reached, ends the game.
By contrast, an infinite game has no finish line, no exact rules, we may not know who the players are – and there is no such thing as ‘winning’.
So what does Sinek classify as an infinite game? Marriage is an example, as are politics and business.
It’s learning to strategize for the infinite game that Sinek suggests will give effective leaders a competitive edge. And what are the vital ingredients for that strategy?
Simon is an unshakeable optimist and passionate ethnographer, who truly imagines a world in which the vast majority of us wake up inspired, feel safe at work and return home fulfilled at the end of the day. He has gone on to write more bestsellers and help transform company culture and create a better working world.
Credentials
He is also the creator of the Golden Circle model, which helps give focus to how a business can stand out from similar competitors by communicating its differences. It explains how leaders can inspire cooperation, trust and change in a business, by starting with the "why".
It suggests why some people and organisations are able to inspire others and differentiate themselves successfully. This is because humans respond best when messages communicate with those parts of their brain that control emotions, behaviour, and decision-making.
Fun facts
According to the book and its author, if you want to adopt an infinite mindset, you'll need to follow just five principles. These are:
The work also outlines three pillars of business, which are:
Purchase The Infinite Game on Amazon and Audible
Stay tuned for more! 📖📚