Review of The Infinite Game

Book Link: https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Game-Simon-Sinek-ebook/dp/B079DWSYYB/

I've tried to move away from business-y speak and motivational/self-help type book and while I would classify this book as that genre, it was one of the better ones that I have read. This was "assigned" to read for work and I think it lays out an ideal workplace vision of planning for the infinite instead of the finite and provided many examples to support its case. That is, however, why I stopped reading these types of books -- they always feel like cherry picking of success stories and framing their experience and motivations to align to whatever central purpose or "hack" they are trying to promote. In this case, it focused heavily on businesses that (seemingly) operate for a Just Cause first, and revenue is only for funding the Just Cause of the company. I can definitely get behind that framing, and the shitting on Milton Friedman along the way made it even better. But, I can't fully commit to the belief that any publicly traded company is operating out of the goodness of their heart to fulfill a larger purpose. The whole point of going public and turning your company over to shareholders is the opposite of that. I liked the message of the book in general, and I think it has a lot of relevance to individuals and how they live and orient their lives. It also has relevance to employees and consumers to vote with their feet and wallets to support companies that operate in this way and actively stay away from companies that don't. I especially like the chapter on Ethical Fading, it was an interesting take on how I perceive mass media and social capital is flourishing on that principal. In the end, good book and would recommend reading it, but I don't fully understand why this was assigned as a work reading when most companies (and especially my current company) are not operating with these principles and at times are intentionally against them.

Some highlights from my reading: 1. If we want to be as healthy as possible, the lifestyle we adopt maters more than whether or not we hit our goal on arbitrary dates we set 2. A Just Cause is not the same as our WHY. A WHY comes from the past. It is an origin story. It is a statement of who we are -- the sum total of our values and beliefs. A Just Cause is about the future. It defines where we are going. It describes the world we hope to live in and will commit to help build. 3. A Just Cause must be: For something -- affirmative and optimistic. Inclusive -- open to all those who would like to contribute. Service oriented -- for the primary benefit of others. Resilient -- able to endure political, technological, and cultural change. Idealistic -- big, bold, and ultimatelt unachievable. 4. This is what "servant leadership" means. It means the primary benefit of the contribution flows downstream. In an organization where service orientation is lacking (or treated as a sideshow rather than the main event), the flow of benefits tends to go upstream instead. 5. The infinite player wants to keep the game going for others. 6. "Finite exhaustion". Because they did well and were paid well for hitting each goal set for them, they kept repeating that pattern. At some point in their careers, they traded any fantasy of feeling like their work would contribute to something bigger than themselves for a rat race or a hamster wheel or some other unfulling running rodent metaphor. Racking up finite wins does not lead to something more infinite. 7. Just as we don't buy a car simply so we can buy more gas, so too must companies offer more value than their ability to make money. A company, like a car, is more valuable to all constituents when it takes us somewhere to which we would otherwise be unable to go. That place we envision going to is the Just Cause. 8. Even well-intended finite-minded leaders often have the perspective of "make money to do good". An infinite perspective on service, however, looks somewhat different: "Do good making money". 9. The order in which a person presents information more often than not reveals their actual priorities and the focus of their strategies. 10. The responsibility of the most senior person in an organization is to look beyond the organization. "I will go up and out. I need you to go down and in" is how she framed her responsibility every time she took a new command. 11. The company's interests should always be secondary to the interest of the consumer (ironically, a point Smith belived so "self-evident" he felt it was absurd to try to prove it, and yet here I am 12. writing a whole book about it). 13. As Henry Ford said, "A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business" 14. When we tie pay packages directly to stock price, it promotes practices like closing factories, keeping wages down, implementing extreme cost cutting and conducting annual rounds of layoffs -- tactics that might boost the stock price in the near term, but often do damage to an organization's ability to survive and thrive in the Infinite Game. 15. The definition of the responsibility of business must: 1. Advance a purpose: Offer people a sense of belonging and a feeling that their lives and their work have value beyond their physical work. 2. Protect people: Operate our companies in a way that protects the people who work for us, the people who buy from us, and the environments in which we live and work. 3. Generate profit: Money is fuel for a business to remain viable so that it may continue to advance the first two priorities. 16. To determine the kind of person who belongs in the Navy SEALS, one of the things they do is evaluate candidates on two axes: Performance versus trust. 17. Ethical fading is about self-delusion. Anyone, regardless of their personal moral compass, can succumb to it. The leaders we point out and vilify for running their business unethically and then accepting a handsome reward for doing so don't think they've done anything wrong. And if you don't think you are doing anything wrong, what incentive do you have to do things differently? 18. 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, date I say it, obvious.