Simon Sinek, the author and motivational speaker who made his name answering a question with a question, talks about his new book.
The first question, posed by the company’s leaders, was: “How do I inspire employees and customers, day in and day out, even beyond their appreciation of what my business does?” The response from the author and motivational speaker was «Start with why»People will be motivated, he explained, when they understand the fundamental reason why you do what you do.
In his new book, The Infinite Gamepoints out that running a business is a journey with no final destination. The goal is not to win, but to keep playing, which means building an organization that can outlive its leaders.
That requires making choices that sometimes preclude conventional business imperatives, such as growing at any cost. Inc. spoke with Sinek about the choices made by infinite-minded leaders.
Inc.: The operating principle in your first book is “why.” In this new work it is “just cause.” How are they different?
Sinek: Simon Sinek: The difference between the “why” and the “just cause,” which is the first practice of the infinite game, is that the why comes from the past. It is the sum total of who we are. It is objective and never changing, and we only have one of them. The just cause is a vision of the future. It is subjective and changing, and you can have more than one. The infinite game is less about where we came from and more about where we are going, and understanding the world in which we operate.
For a company, is a just cause the same as a vision statement?
Sinek: The problem I ran into was that everyone had a different definition of a vision statement, and they were all written in completely different ways. Some were good and some were garbage.
What is the difference between good and rubbish vision statements?
Sinek:A lot of vision statements sound more like long-term goals. And they’re pretty self-centered. Be the largest, most respected company X in the industry by date X. Deliver the most value with the highest quality products. That’s not a description of the world we want to live in. That’s a description of the company you want to build. That sort of thing is fine but it’s not visionary. A good vision statement would be to create a world where the vast majority of people wake up inspired, feel secure at work, and go home satisfied at the end of the day.
If you are an entrepreneur playing an infinite game, can you only work with investors who play the same game? I imagine that decreases your chances of funding.
Sinek: I’ve had this question many times from CEOs. My investors pressure me to do what I know is wrong. Well, we can choose who we take money from. And if that means there’s less choice because there are fewer infinite-minded investors, then so be it. We can also take less money from these people, so their influence diminishes. Nothing comes for free.
What role do metrics play in an infinite gaming company?
Sinek: There’s nothing wrong with traditional metrics. But they are a measure of speed and distance. How fast we’re growing and how far we’ve come. Too many companies, especially smaller ones, obsess over hypergrowth. Who said growing fast was a good thing? Is that healthy? Growth should be a dial, not an absolute.
Here’s an example: There’s a retail operation with ambitions to open 2,000 stores in a year. They want to prove they have hypergrowth. The problem is that they’re not hiring good people and taking the time to train them. So, in every store they open, people have a terrible experience, and those stores will eventually start to close. Hypergrowth can actually weaken a company.
If you’re trying to create an infinite-minded culture, how do you reward finite gains, which you still need?
Sinek: An infinite game is not the absence of a finite game: it is the context in which the finite game exists. And traditional metrics still have value but they cannot be unbalanced. I am a big believer in team incentives that also include behaviors other than performance. Things like trust, cooperation, and teamwork should also be considered in people’s compensation.
Sales, arguably, is the hardest place to incorporate an infinite mindset.
Sinek: Of course. We should create an environment where selling alone is not what warrants the bonus. I knew a company that does something they call 50-50 bonuses. Your contribution to revenue is 50 percent, and your contribution to culture is 50 percent. So if all you’re doing is driving sales, you’ll get 50 percent of your bonus. If all you’re doing is walking around,
Absolutely. We should create an environment where selling alone is not what warrants the bonus. I knew a company that does something they call 50-50 bonuses. Your contribution to revenue is 50 percent, and your contribution to culture is 50 percent. So if all you’re doing is driving sales, you’re going to get 50 percent of your bonus. If all you’re doing is walking around checking on people, you’re going to get 50 percent. It takes an infinite-minded leader to want to do that.
Infinite-minded CEOs become true partners with their COOs and CFOs. If the three of you are founding a business together, how would you structure that relationship for optimal results?
Sinek: It’s one of the biggest and most frequent mistakes I see. The person who wants to run the company, who wants the big job and the responsibility, usually gets the CEO job. Visionaries who aren’t as ambitious take the backseat. Then you have an operator sitting in the visionary position. That’s why I suggested this new title of Chief Vision Officer, which doesn’t have the baggage that the CEO title has. The CVO should be the true visionary of the company. The person who’s going to run the day-to-day should be the COO.
How does playing an infinite game affect how leaders deal with failure?
Sinek: It allows them to take everything more calmly. There is a wonderful Chinese story of a young man born with an incredible talent for horse riding. Everyone in the village says you are very lucky. The monk says, we will see. The young man falls off his horse and breaks his leg, and his career is over. And everyone in the village says, you are so unlucky. The monk says, we will see. And then war breaks out, and all the young men go off to battle. But this young man can’t go because of his broken leg. And everyone in the village says you are very lucky. The monk says, we will see.
This is a journey. If we look back on our lives and some of the trials and tribulations we’ve been through, we’ll rarely say we want to go through them again. But we learned something from them. And we became better versions of ourselves because of them.
So should all entrepreneurs aspire to infinite-minded leadership?
Sinek: It’s not a question of right or wrong. It’s about what kind of company we want to build. We don’t get to choose the rules of the business game. The only choice we have is how we want to play. Choosing to play with a finite mindset comes at a cost. The cost of trust. The cost of cooperation. The cost of innovation. The cost of longevity. Choosing to play with an infinite mindset may mean that your growth numbers are a little slower than your friend down the street. But the goal isn’t to beat your competition. The goal is to outlast them.
