The premise of this book is quite interesting. Some games are finite, like chess or football. There are defined rules and goals and at the end, there is a winner and loser. Then there are other games, think most RPG's and other phone apps, where you build up treasure to improve your character who in turn will build up treasure that you spend on your character, like World of Warcraft. You use resources to stay in the game. The idea is that business should have an infinite game mindset, and yet they don't. They set goals to be the best in their field and then after awhile they may declare themselves the winner. The only problem is that they defined the time and the goal and the rules, and their competitors may have defined what success is different, whether it is profits over X amount of time, or number of sales or employees or outlets, or customer satisfaction. There aren't agreed goals of achievements, but instead, they should be thinking about how they can stay in the game the longest.
Simon suggests that business need the following to stay in the game: a just cause, the will to and the resources needed to say in the game, trusting teams, a worthy rival, flexibility and 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" this can be about being inclusive, for a cause or a service or something bold that is unachievable. To get to this vision, people will need to buy into it, and be willing to sacrifice for it. A company also needs to create an environment for this to happen, which involves trust. Having a worthy rival will help you to have an attitude of improvement. With an infinite mindset, the idea is not being the "best" but instead "better". It is about continuous improvement (which takes me back to my IT days, when my slogan was "it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be better" - I picked it up in my ITIL course).
To have to grit for this, we need courageous leaders who are willing to admit they don't have all the answer, who are willing to pivot from what they have always been doing to help change the course of where they are going, to keep focusing on the great cause and not become so self-absorbed when they make more profits or get too big. They and their company needs integrity, and just do focus on what the letter of the law is. All of this is quite idealistic, but some of it is also inspiring.
There are many examples from various industries that help make his point. How an oil rig increased trust, allowing people to question a few things, resulting in a safer environment, how different companies changed their direction when different CEO's changed, mostly from good to bad. Initially, there is a visionary, but then in the next generation, they are so big and have a lot of investors, companies just think about the bottom line and how to impress shareholders, and not how they go about their just cause.
However, early on in the book one of the examples was the founder of Kodak, George Eastman, who sought to give average folks access to cameras. He was a visionary who also used the profits to fund "hospital, founded a music school, and gave generously to institutions of higher learning, including the Mechanics Institute of Rochester (which was later renamed Rochester Institute of Technology) and the University of Rochester." He died and then under the new direction, their company failed to make key decisions when digital photography came about, as they didn't know if the risk to their investor's opinions would pay off in the end. This was a nice example, and George Eastman was held up as this model infinite thinker, however, this book does fail to mention that Eastman committed suicide and left a simple letter "To my friends, my work is done – Why wait?". I'm unsure if that is really is infinite thinking or not.
There are underlying economic theories that are behind some of this book. Sinek takes on Milton Friedman with his extreme free-market ideas. There is pushback against the motivation for companies to appeal to their shareholders, instead of a just cause and a great work environment. These should trump share prices and profits. Money after all is just the fuel to go somewhere else. There is a great value put on the company to act ethically and not to focus on profits and market value and financial quarters. However, I do wonder, what if someone was offered more money for a similar job in a different company without a just cause? What if that individual has their own personal cause and having more money will allow them to do that? Would it be immoral for that individual to follow the profits? It all depends on where the locus of "good" or "justice" can be done. There may be a utopian idea that it is the companies or the private sector that can do the most good.
This book did make me think about my context in a church. We have quite a good just cause if I do say so myself. We believe the good news is that because of Jesus we get God. We can learn what it to be truly human under our loving creator God. That we can be forgiven for our sin and guilt and live for a cause bigger and more longer lasting than countries. The church also operates on a very minimal budget, mostly driven by volunteers, who opt into giving up their time, money, skills and emotions. We also do try to operate ethically, and even have quite high standards and hold to objective values that we spur each other on to. And our leaders, our good ones, do have the courage to lead, that is counter-cultural to the standards of the world, to ignore the pressures of the external and have the "willingness to completely change our perceptions of how the world works". We, after all, hold that the first will be last and the last will be first. That our saviour came not to be served but serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. Simon even promoted servant leadership and how this helps benefits in organisations flow downstream. I wonder where this great idea came from?
This was a good read, mainly for its ideas on creating good teams and its little insights onto leadership. I do think it is a little utopian and lacking a fuller, more complex view of human nature and by extension the economy.
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