to me this is a world is flat moment that the people who've learned to game the system that this discomfort that we feel we're we actually are right like they actually don't understand the game they're in business is an infinite game and when you play with a finite mindset lots of people suffer including the companies that they themselves are trying to build that's the great irony the great irony is the way you build great companies is with an infinite mindset the way you build great companies is by prioritizing people before profit the way you build great companies is will before resources both things important but there has to be this general leaning where we can feel when we come to work and feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves where we feel that our work and our effort is worth more than simply the money we make [Music] hey everyone welcome to impact theory today's guest is a multiple time best-selling author with one of the most viewed ted talks of all time his talk which popularized the notion of starting with y has been viewed roughly 45 million times and translated into 48 languages the speech he gave on millennials the first time i interviewed him broke the internet garnering well over 300 million views and making him youtube's fifth most searched term of the entirety of 2017. his unconventional views have made him one of the most sought-after speakers on the planet and have seen him invited to meet with the leaders of some of today's most important businesses and institutions including disney american airlines microsoft the united nations the united states congress and multiple branches of the us military he is a self-described unshakable optimist who has dedicated his life to bringing to fruition a world where people feel fulfilled by their work he is truly helping to shape the minds of the next generation of leaders he is also helping to shape public discourse through continued contributions to such prestigious media outlets as the new york times wall street journal the washington post the huffington post msnbc and countless others so please help me in welcoming the man who has been described as a visionary thinker with a rare intellect the author of start with why leaders eat last and now the infinite game simon cynic good to see you too man so the new book dude it is wicked i'm it's really been interesting to see you call your babru shot say that you want to start a movement and now be insanely consistent with the bricks that you would have to lay to actually get a mass of people on board with a movement it was pretty exciting to read thank you really interested knowing how much your ideas are like mind viruses that get inside people's heads and really do echo through culture dude in a pretty cool way it'll be interesting to see what happens with this one because i think you're right on the money about something incredibly powerful define for us an infinite game so in the mid 1980s a theologian named james carsey wrote this little book called finite infinite games in which he defines these two kinds of games finite games which have known players fixed rules and agreed upon objectives football right there's always a beginning a middle and an end and the the objective is to win the game and then there's infinite games infinite games are defined as known and unknown players you don't necessarily know who all the other players are the rules are changeable you can play however you want and the objective is to perpetuate the game to stay in the game as long as possible what i find so fascinating about this idea when i first learned about it is we are players in multiple infinite games every day of our lives there's just no such thing as being the winner in your marriage you know there's no such thing as winning global politics and there's definitely no such thing as winning business business is an infinite game um and yet when we listen to the language of too many leaders they talk about being number one being the best and beating their competition based on what there's no agreed upon objectives there's no agreed upon time frames and so what ends up happening is you have people building organizations and leading with a finite mindset playing to win in a game where there's no such thing as winning and when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game there's a few very predictable and consistent outcomes amongst which include the decline of trust the decline of cooperation the decline of innovation all of which contribute to the eventual demise of the organization itself um and so what i wrote about is is is what it means to lead with an infinite mindset because we teach leadership as if it were a finite game um you know people start business with the goal of winning or being number one and that's a problem um because that's impossible um so what i wrote about in the infinite game is is leading with an infinite mindset so talk to me about why revenue is a mistake because as a business leader when you walk in that actually seems like an agreed upon metric certainly if you're playing to wall street understanding your price per share like what that means the value that you're adding to shareholders like i think most people at that level of business would say what do you mean we all know what the the scoreboard is there's nothing wrong with revenues um there are two currencies in the infinite game will and resources resources is money you need money to stay in the game but you need the will of the people as well and um the problem is is that when we organize to win that means the score is more important than the inspiration and motivation that people have to to give their blood sweat and tears and when we prioritize resources before will that's a problem i've never met a ceo that doesn't believe their people are important the problem is where on the priority list you know we've been to any number of presentations where they put their priorities on the wall you know number one growth number two shareholder value number three our customer number four our employees there it is see i do care about our people um and the reality is as social animals we wanna work for and we're willing to give our blood sweat and tears to leaders who understand that the balance of those two essential currencies the balance of those two things is will has to come before resources and that doesn't mean 90 10 when i talk about putting people before profit you know people freak out which is ridiculous you need fuel for the car to go money is fuel for the organization of course even if there's a leaning it's 5149 there has to be a slight leaning towards people because there will always be decisions that a company has to make in which those two cannot uh both be supplied and one will have to be sacrificed the question the question is which will you always prioritize let me give you a hypothetical example to make my point two ceos the first ceo says our number one priority is growth and of course our people are important because if we take care of our people we will meet and exceed our financial goals second ceo says our number one priority is our people and if we take care of our people we will always meet and exceed our financial goals which one would you rather work for i don't want the price i mean it's obvious right it's obvious um so this is what it means to prioritize will of resources it has of course of course uh money matters um but the people matter more yeah that's um it's one of those things when you get into business that probably intellectually feels obvious if you said that to people they'd be like yeah i get that but i think that it plays out so often the way that you explained it the first time like we want growth yeah of course like take care of the people it's really going to feel the growth all that and it's speaking from experience it is very easy to slide into that mentality and it is insanely difficult to execute at the level of no no my people really do come first they're going to come first in not just what i say they're going to come first in policies that we write they're going to come first and the actions that we do and one thing that i really liked about the book is um you're you're intimating and at times just flat out saying it's also the best way to run a business if secretly what you really want are the profits why is that true the best way to own a business when you secretly want the profits no it's the opposite it's the opposite do you think that's true because i have actually seen like i and maybe i saw in your book what i wanted to see what it it seemed like you were saying to me was hey don't run your business for a profit don't even have it in the back your mind take care of your people but the irony of ironies is when you take care of your people and they trust each other yes the prophets will come oh yes yes yes yes yes of course yes of course people who are willing to give their blood sweat and tears make for better more profitable companies people who are only there for their own selfish needs and would be willing to jump ship as soon as they get a better better offer they're not the best people to help build a company for the long term we can throw money at people which will last for a while and you can make a company look successful for a while but it doesn't mean it can last we can't judge a ship by how well the crew performs in calm waters we judge a ship by how well the crew performs in rough waters and and um the problem is is uh is in good times we don't use all that extra money to take care of the people you know we use it to distribute and distribute and then when hard times come sometimes there's not enough padding and the culture hasn't been fostered over that time but that is the irony which is when we lead with an infinite mindset and the leaders that do lead with an infinite mindset have disproportionately more successful companies more innovative companies more profitable companies all of which are strong enough to to last for a very very very long time um uh and not because they just have the financial wealth to weather storms but but the company continues to grow and innovate and reinvent itself so that's it's relevant in the face of new technology and changing tastes and politics in the world um so that is the great irony but it has to be genuine meaning to say that i care about my people because they're a means to an end it's like we only we only like you because you help us make money uh makes us not only feel used but that that we're a mechanism for somebody else's success where when we say we care about our people and money is the mechanism by which we can take care of people you know the more money we make the more we can take care of our people and serve our customers um it has a profound impact on on our desire to to give more yeah it's um that's something that in founding impact theory so i i really learned at quest you're only as good as what you write down when you start scaling and really having to crystallize it and put something down it really does make your values insanely clear and i started thinking a lot about safety and trust which are two of like the big pushes in your book and i'd love to know like what do you see is the difference between the the way that safe is being used now is like safe space versus the way that you talk about safety in the book to you are they one and the same do you differentiate from a safe space like how do you think about safety it has all those definitions i mean we want to feel safe at work which means we feel that we can be ourselves it means that we feel safe enough to raise our hands and say i made a mistake or i don't feel qualified for the position you've given me i need more training or i'm struggling at home it's affecting my work i'm scared i need help and to say any of those things with the confidence that our boss or any of our colleagues would rush to support us because if we don't create those psychologically and sometimes physically safe spaces but those psychological safe spaces what we end up is with a group of people who come to work every day lying hiding and faking they're hiding mistakes they are um uh not admitting if they don't know how to do their jobs um they will never admit that they don't know something um for fear that it makes them vulnerable for fear that it maybe makes them the weak link that they'll find themselves on some short list at the next round of layoffs uh and the problem is is how do you run a successful organization that's supposed to sustain over the long term uh thrive over the long term if people are literally hiding things that go wrong not admitting that they don't know how to do their jobs and never admitting they need help that doesn't last that doesn't last and the problem is is when um someone leads with a finite mindset where they attempt to incentivize performance and by the way you can't incentivize performance you can only incentivize behavior then bad things eventually happen that's interesting talk to me more about why can't you incentivize performance and how do incentives end up influencing behavior well you can't incentivize performance because somebody has to do something to achieve that performance there's there's a there's a cause and effect you know you you can't incentivize an effect you can only incentivize the cause that would hopefully yield that effect which is behavior so if i say to you um i will give you a massive bonus if you hit a certain target at the end of the year no matter what what you're incentivizing is that i will do certain things to achieve that goal that you've set for me but the problem is is when we apply excessive amounts of pressure and it's at all costs like my very livelihood depends on that it can accidentally incentivize some quite unseemly behaviors like hoarding information right because this is what gives me my value and i don't want to share information or things that i've learned with my colleagues and co-workers which is madness or unethical behavior stabbing other people in the back and this is one of the problems with i think our modern business today which is too much of businesses is run right now with an excessive amount of finite thinking now there are always finite games within the infinite game the infinite game however provides the context and without that infinite mindset all you have is win win win win win win which is unsustainable an infinite game is not a series of finite games um it's unsustainable because nobody has that energy and there's no such thing as a perfect growth chart it doesn't exist really fast tell me why why isn't an infinite game just a series of finite games for the same reason you can't just keep eating chocolate cake every day because it feels good um because simply driving people driving people driving people driving people driving people driving people gets exhausting it destroys the the foundations of trust it destroys the foundations of cooperation and when we don't work well together share information admit mistakes there's no innovation and we we know what's simply driving a series of finite games looks like it looks like investment banking before 2008 which produced an artificial uh a man-made recession and so much of the the the finite thinking that we have today unfortunately is a really reasonably modern invention it's it's not like business is always operated this way the the thinking of milton friedman the the 1970s economist has really dominated sort of business theory today he theorized that the responsibility of business this is his definition the responsibility of business is to maximize profit within the bounds of the law right he what about ethics you know like a a pharmaceutical company that raises the price on essential drug 200 300 500 800 percent it's not illegal it is unethical right it makes us uncomfortable and yet the law is not broken that's not a good enough standard to run a business and it was his thinking that gave rise to the the theory of shareholder supremacy which was a theory proposed in the late 1970s where um we prioritize the once needs and desires of a shareholder over the needs of the customer or the employee which is like a coach who's trying to build a great team by doing what the fans want versus what the players need right that's basically shareholder supremacy and as i said it was just a theory proposed in late 1970 that was popularized during the boom years of the 80s and 90s mass layoffs where we use the livelihoods of human beings to meet arbitrary projections on an annualized basis at the end of the year did not exist did not exist as a standard business practice prior to the 1980s did not exist it was popularized during during the 80s and 90s the dismantling of glass-steagall which was an act passed after the great depression to prevent another great depression from happening and by the way was extremely effective between the dismantling of the glass-steagall in the 80s and 90s and the great depression there were a total of zero stock market crashes since then dismantling all in the name of corporate profit we've had three we had uh the dot-com boom black monday in 2008. um in other words when we play simply with a finite mindset we actually do long-term damage to our own system that's supposed to benefit all of us um and and and i find that upsetting um we've seen the rise of of of milton's uh friedman's thinking rather and like i said his theories dominate business today and we feel it not only have we had those those stock market crashes but anybody who goes to work today there's a general feeling of unease you know especially if you work for a company that embraces annual or even quarterly layoffs to meet arbitrary projections keep in mind a lot of the companies that employ uh mass layoffs are profitable just not as profitable as they would like it's not like they're losing money and they had to do this to save the sinking ship that's something completely different these are highly profitable companies that missed a projection and so they laid people off so they could meet that projection there's something fundamentally wrong with that and we know it because we feel it at work we see this decline of trust we are not loyal to our companies anymore why would we be they're not loyal to us and leaders set the tone so when companies are loyal to us we will give loyalty back to them when they're not loyal to us why would we be loyal to them i'm tired of of ceos telling me that you know millennials these days don't stick around very long well why would they if you don't offer them any kind of loyalty uh back and it's not for the people to prove to you that they're loyal it's the other way around leaders set the tone and so it's because of this general business theory that we've seen a steady decline a steady erosion of loyalty in in the business world today we don't want to work at a company for 20 or 30 years mainly because we're not sure we could uh we're not sure that the company actually cares to keep us around that long and so we constantly have our eyes open and we're constantly scanning we come to work feeling uncomfortable that some of the decisions that are being made don't benefit the good of the employee that it really benefits this this artificial constituency that we call the shareholder which is really just a bunch of institutional investors there's this shareholder myth because there's been a steady decline of the middle class being involved in the stock market for years and the whole point of the stock market was that we all get to share in the wealth that we helped build because it's on the back of average joe employees that produced the great wealth in the nation and the whole point of the stock market the genius of the modern day corporation the genius of the public company was that we all get to share in the wealth that we're helping produce unfortunately over the course of the 80s and 90s we've seen systems produced where we're seeing the general population the middle class actually be less included in in that success and the reason i wrote the infinite game was because i myself got tired of being told by people in positions of authority or people of extreme wealth that i was naive that i don't understand how business business works and for many years i believed them i thought maybe i am the dumb one right we all kind of feel that because they have the power they have the authority they have the money they know more than we do but we still go to work and feel uncomfortable and it turns out that that discomfort that gut feeling that says that there's something wrong here turns out that the majority actually knows something uh and to me this is a world is flat moment that that the the the people who've learned to gain the system that this discomfort that we feel we're we actually are right like they actually don't understand the game they're in business is an infinite game and when you play with a finite mindset lots of people suffer including the companies that they themselves are trying to build that's the great irony the great irony is the way you build great companies is with an infinite mindset the way you build great companies is by prioritizing people before profit the way you build great companies is will before resources both both things important but there has to be this general leaning where we can feel when we come to work and feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves where we feel that our work and our effort is worth more than simply the money we make we know that right and so for me i got tired of being told i was naive i got tired of being told that that that i don't understand how business works and it turns out that me and the majority of people actually understand more we may not understand the mechanics but we understand that what's happening isn't right it doesn't feel right did you have a breakthrough moment like what was the thing that made you go actually i'm not wrong um [Music] well well you know the discovery of of of this definition of the infinite game um was was a large part of it um because i recognized that business is an infinite game and almost all of the leadership in business today is finite minded and so there's literally you can't show up to a game of basketball ready to play football like it's not going to go well we overuse sports analogies in business but sports has beginning middle and end there actually is a finish line right we overuse the analogies they're incorrect analogies you know running a business is the same as as getting healthy it's a lifestyle leadership is a lifestyle an infinite mindset is a lifestyle right so for example you can't get healthy by going to the gym for nine hours it doesn't work right um but if you go every single day for 20 minutes you'll absolutely get into shape 100 but i don't know when and it's different times for different people right and leading is the same thing you can absolutely have fitness goals you can absolutely have finite goals within the infinite context of being healthy but there's a practice that you have to do you have to get enough sleep you have to go to the gym you have to eat well you have to protect your relationships you know because healthy relationships really matter to our health and you have to do all those things vigilantly and if you miss your health goal it's okay you keep working at it and you know you will hit it business is the same who says that you have to meet this goal on this arbitrary date now it helps to drive and it's good to have incentives and we we're very goal-oriented species that's fine but if we miss the thing it's fine we just keep working towards it like their guidance they're not absolutes because they're arbitrary dates and arbitrary numbers and even if you do hit your fitness goal you don't get to stop working out you should not just you have to keep going for the rest of your life right and this is what leading with an infinite mindset means here's an example this is a normal scenario in business right we will give a team um uh a target a goal to hit by certain time frame usually a year um because that's usually when we pay taxes right that's the only reason things are done in years right if we pay taxes every 18 months all the goals would be 18 months right so we usually give people a financial target and there's two teams one that is driven solely by hitting that goal because all they care about is getting their bonus at the end of that goal morale is up and down if they happen to have a good month morale is up if they have a bad month morale is down retention is terrible they can't hold on to employees nobody really trusts each other the boss is toxic and right before the end of the financial year they have some mad push where they're dropping prices all over the place and they're managed to drive revenues and hit the goal right the problem is we bonus that team we bonus that leader because of what uh because of the goal they hit right and basically what we're doing is spreading a message to the rest of the company saying we don't care how you get there we don't care if you step on your people we don't care if you act unethically if you hit your number you're going to do very well in this company versus another team that's doing extremely well it's good steady slow growth like really really on target you know not the highs and lows the peaks and valleys morale is super high retention is amazing it's a model team they trust each other they share information and they miss their goal on the agreed upon date right at the end of the year they're just shy of it but clearly you can see from the trend data they're going to hit it at 13 or 14 months the problem is we don't give that person anything we don't give that team anything right and this is part of the problem when you have an infinite mindset absolutely have the goals but the trend matters more how you get there matters as much if not more and we pay attention to that so even if i hit my fitness goal i'm eating better i'm sleeping better my relationships are great i'm going to the gym yes i miss my goal but i know if i just keep going i'll hit it i'm getting healthier and healthier right i just got the timing wrong and this is what we need to build into business that infinite mindset yes have the goals yes have the ambitions yes have the annual targets if we miss them as long as we're doing the right things we have the right lifestyle to take us there that's a much healthier way to live a life and a much healthier way to build an organization so let's talk about that recipe you break it down pretty eloquently i'd say the book is actually organized around the five elements that seem like yeah the very things you're talking about now what are those and ultimately where i want to get maybe not right now but ultimately what i want people at home to be able to do is if they're not a business owner understand what to look for in that and understand how they can play a role in shaping it so there are five practices in order to lead uh with an infinite mindset you have to have a just cause you have to have trusting teams you have to have a worthy rival you have to have a capacity for existential flexibility and you have to have the courage to lead so just cause we have to give our people something to advance a cause so just that they would be willing to sacrifice their interests in order to do so in other words turn down a better paying job or frequent business trips or working late hours and though i may not like those things i do them because it feels worth it because i believe in what i'm a part of here because i feel that i'm helping advance because there's no achieving in the infinite game the goal is not final achievement the goal is advancing to progress in the infinite game and to have that vision of an idealized state of the world um that um all men are created equal right it's an ideal that a nation is striving towards that we'll never actually get there but we'll die trying that's the point and we can offer people the same thing inside an organization in fact in fact we have to to give them something to advance now how is this different from the why a y comes from the past it is an origin story every single one of us has our own unique why it is our birthright it comes from the sum total of how we were raised as kids it is objective you have one and you have one for the rest of your life the only one right and the rest of our lives are about making the decisions that help us uh keep in balance with our why a just cause doesn't come from the past it just causes about the future it's about where we're going right you can have multiple just causes you can have one professionally you can have one personally you can have one for your family you can have one for your church and we're involved in all of these there's massive pressure put on people especially young people to what's your vision well we're not all steve jobs and bill gates we're not all visionaries we don't have to have a vision but we do have to find a vision that we can find someone else's vision and we are so compelled by it that we want to make it our own that's what it means to go work for a company with a visionary leader that we believe in that vision so clearly that we take their vision and we make it our own and we will happily contribute our work our effort in order to advance what is now my vision right martin luther king had a vision he stood on the steps of the lincoln memorial and told us his vision but his vision became our vision so i may not have come up with that vision but i found it and i'd like to devote time and energy to help advance it even beyond him we have to give our people a just cause we have to have trusting teams we have to create environments inside our organizations in which people feel psychologically safe safe enough to raise their hands and say i made a mistake or i need help the absence of trusting teams means we have groups of people lying hiding and faking and that comes from good old-fashioned leadership leadership is not about being in charge it's about taking care of those in our charge and the very responsibility of a leader is not to drive performance leaders are not responsible for the results leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results and the problem is is we don't teach people how to lead right when you're very very junior we give people tons of training how to do their jobs some people get advanced degrees how to do their jobs so that they'll be good at them and if you're really good at your job will promote you and eventually you get promoted to a position where you're now responsible for the people who do the job you used to do and we don't teach you how to do that so how can we expect people to be good at their jobs if we don't train them how to do it like would you go see a doctor that didn't go to medical school no so why would we work for a leader who has no training in being a leader that's why we get managers that's why we get micromanagers that's why we get toxicity it's not because they're bad people it's because they don't know what they're doing and they're making it up as they go along and those lucky times that we get to work for a great leader well they were lucky that they probably had a great leader before them or they learned it somewhere else or maybe they had a terrible leader and they committed to do the total opposite of everything the point is they learned it well we have to teach leadership so that leaders can create environments in which all of us can work to our natural best that produces trusting teams all right i don't want to derail because i know we have three more but i think this is so important what in a crash course format like what does that type of leadership look like how do you create the environment where people are going to thrive and create those results that you're talking about what does it you're asking me the question um uh what does it mean to be healthy you're asking me the question what does it mean to be a great parent like i don't have five things to be a great parent right it's a lifestyle and it comes number one with the commitment that i am responsible for the life of another human being the growth of another human being the closest thing to leadership is parenting you have to be an infinite student of parenting you know you want to be a parent you ask your friends you ask your own parents you join groups you read magazines you watch talks whatever it is you're constantly consuming how to deal with this constantly changing challenge of being a parent and it's ups and downs and successes and failures you know and that's what it is leadership is the same leaders great leaders are students of leadership no matter how achieved they may be they're still learning and it's a lifestyle it's the lifestyle of what i need to do to look after people which includes things like listening learning how to give and receive feedback learning how to have effective confrontations how to discipline when necessary in a way that's constructive um roam the halls get to know people learning what it means to to ask somebody questions how do you ask questions you know like some people are naturally good at being curious about other human beings and some people are uncomfortable because they're introverts or whatever socially awkward but we can learn you know how do you learn to remember people's names oh i'm bad at names no you've just decided you're bad at names we can learn to be good at names so that when we walk down the hall and say hey tom oh my god he remembers my name it's a nice feeling it's a lifestyle it's a lifestyle there are many many things we have to do and constantly work on to be a great leader to create that environment that's pretty damn good i'll take that all right so that was two trusting teams yep uh worthy rivals uh this one's a funny one this one this one i actually get more questions on than any of the others believe it or not i love the way you rolled it out in the book so so i'll tell the story so there's another guy who does what i do uh he's extremely well respected um he does extremely good work um i hate him i haven't i haven't you know it's he's always been very nice to me when i've seen him professionally just i have an irrational hatred of him and uh whenever his name comes up i like it drives me nuts like people bring it like we're we hired him and i was like [Music] uh and and because i'm because i hate him uh i'm really competitive with him and so i will go online and look at my book rankings and i'll immediately check his and mind you i don't look at anybody else's just his and uh if i'm ahead i've got this like smug feeling and if he's ahead i get really pissed off you know um so anyway we had the opportunity to uh speak at the same event i don't mean like me in the morning in the afternoon afternoon like we were interviewed together on the stage and the interviewer thought it would be fun if if we introduced each other and so i went first and then i looked at him and i said um you make me really insecure all of your strengths are all of my weaknesses and when your name comes up it makes me really uncomfortable and he looked at me and he said funny i feel the same about you the reason i had such an irrational hatred of him had nothing to do with him it had to do with me he's my worthy rival his strengths revealed to me my own weaknesses and instead of confronting and taking a hard look at myself and evaluating those weaknesses and working on those weaknesses it was much easier to take all of that negative energy and direct it towards him in other words to be competitive to want to beat him right it was a very cathartic experience we've since become very close friends have worked together i no longer check his book rankings and because we share the same cause we can actually work together and so and so what i recognized was so often in business we have these competitors sometimes on our own teams that we want to beat them we've all had the experience where one of our colleagues got a promotion and we got upset we got angry we got angry at somebody else's success think about that for a second why couldn't we share in the joy right what is it about them that's being revealed in us that's the problem right and so having worthy rivals instead of competitors competitors are other players we set out to beat but the problem with that is there's no finish line and so we're obsessed with beating the other company then at some point sure you're ahead in whatever metric you chose until when right at what expense at what cost uh that's not sustainable but rather the other players inside our industry outside our industry on our own teams we can choose our own worthy rivals their strengths reveal to us our weaknesses and by having our weaknesses reveal to us it means we have the opportunity to grow and improve and the infinite game at its core is basically a game of constant improvement and so our worthy rivals reveal to us our weaknesses and our opportunities to improve yeah that's that's one of the areas where switching your mindset really has a powerful impact and beginning to change the way that you think that one and i mean oh god all these are pretty powerful the next one the existential um flexibility flexibility this one maybe has the headiest title what is it and how do we watch out for it existential flexibility is the willingness to make profound strategic shifts in order to advance your cause 180 degrees right this is not the daily flexibility that you need in business a leader or even us as individuals may never have to perform an existential flex um and at most you might ever have to do it in an entire career once or never but the responsibility of the of any leader is to prepare their organizations for an existential flex should it need need to happen so what is an existential flex um so the best case is really uh steve jobs um and his just cause uh jobs and wozniak had a very clear just cause which is to empower individuals to stand up to big brother right they're revolutionaries at heart and they saw the personal computer as a brilliant tool to help them advance that to empower individuals to stand up to big brother and steve wozniak imagined a time in which an individual could compete in business against a corporation thanks to a personal computer impression right um apple's already had success from the apple one the apple ii it's already a big company steve jobs is already a famous ceo and in december of 1979 jobs and a bunch of his senior executives go and visit xerox park which was xerox's r d division and xerox shows them a new invention of theirs called the graphic user interface that allows a user to click a mouse on a desktop to move icons and folders to use the computer instead of having to learn an entire computer language now jobs who believes in empowering individuals sees this technology and says to his team we have to invest in this graphic user interface thing and the voice of reason i guess in the team says steve we can't we can't do it we've already invested millions of dollars in countless man-hours in a different strategic direction if we suddenly change directions we're going to blow up our own company to which jobs actually said better we should blow it up than someone else and that decision led to the macintosh um the first properly graphic user interface computer that had in mass market appeal um that was so profound um that the entire platform of windows windows 2.0 was basically designed to act like a macintosh you know and the reason we all have computers on our desks today the reason it's a household appliance the reason any one of us can compete against a corporation is because of this profound shift he was willing to do that now i call it a capacity for existential flexibility because it's not shiny object syndrome which you know too many entrepreneurs are subjected to you know this is it this is it guys you know flavor of the moment um uh it's done with the very specific reason of advancing the cause i found a better way to advance the cause and you have to have the just cause otherwise how do you know what to shift and you have to have the trusting teams because you will put the organization through short-term hell and that and the numbers probably will go down in the short term and the team has to be willing to say we agree we understand why you're making the shift let's do this and it's going to suck but we're in and they hunker down and they figure it out if you don't have a just cause you're literally just chasing something and if you don't have the trusting teams this happens a lot where sometimes the leader has the just cause but the team doesn't know it and if you don't have the trusting teams then people will think you've lost your mind and they'll start abandoning shep or you respond to the pressures from wall street or outside because the numbers start to go down but but existential flexibility like i said if you don't have to do it you have to prepare the organization for the for your success for your successor to be able to do it which means keep the cause alive and and maintain the the trusting teams yeah the existential flex to me is where your the the brilliance of what you're talking about comes into crystal clear focus because it's where all the things come together you have to have the trust of your team which is something i think about a lot i think about it a lot because storms come inevitably um and i think that if you can invest in your employees before you ask them to invest in you in the moment where you need them to show up for you they will i think that if people are you oh you have a quick three-word phrase you use but basically people are keeping their head down they're afraid of being punished it's like then you're never going to get these revolutionary ideas a lot of this points back at courage what are your thoughts around courage how do people get the courage to to play the long game to not the long game it's the infinite game because a long game could be five years right true yeah this is forever uh how do people build that everything that we talking about in the infinite game is really really really really hard it is so much easier to build a company based on short-term ambitions than it is an infinite cause it just is right it's also fun right until it's not um less inspiring but sometimes sometimes fun right hitting a goal feels good right um it's much easier to just hire and fire people frequently hire fast fire fast as to hiring slowly and and firing slowly because we we try and take care of our people as best we can it's just it's hard to build teams all of that stuff we talked about leadership like what am i supposed to do to build a trusting team well i wish i could give you a list of five things it's really really hard to be a parent it's much easier to be an uncle or an ad or not have kids right it's hard right so why do it you know it's fun and and exciting to be to try and beat our competitors you know but to to have to face our own weaknesses every day oh that's exhausting you know existential flexibility i'd rather not i just would rather not you know so so the reason this takes courage to completely change our mindset a about the game that we're actually players in and how we want to approach these things and do we want to shift our mindset and our organizations to prepare for the infinite game to be organized for the infinite game it takes courage because we're going to be swimming upstream in a world that is very finite driven you know the pressures on us are overwhelming from wall street or our own egos or from internal incentive structures or our bosses whatever it is the pressures are overwhelming for us to play the finite game and so how do you stand up to massive external pressure courage and courage is something that comes from relationships you know it's external a a world-famous trapeze artist would never attempt a brand new death defying act for the first time without a net they would never do it so why do we think that we could do something difficult without external support too i've had the opportunity to meet real heroes people who've risked their lives to save the lives of others with the belief that they were going to die and they didn't and when asked why did you do it they all say something similar which is they would have done it for me it's external and so we have to have we have to take the time to foster and take care of people around us to nurture our relationships because when we're going to be doing something difficult when we're going to be swimming upstream when we're going to be innovating and and and and doing something different there are days we're going to doubt ourselves there are days we're going to get knocked in our ass there are days that storms are going to rise and we have to have people who say i got you back you need to do this we need you the world needs this keep going i believe in you you know um and so courage courage comes from from not only our willingness to do that for others but then their willingness to do it for us and if we commit ourselves to a just cause and we're willing to to do those things then you know the great thing is we take a lot of people with us and change the world for the better and isn't that sort of the point of an infinite life to leave this world in better shape than we found it to leave the companies that we work for in better shape than when we started to leave our families stronger and better capable than than what they can do without us you know isn't isn't that what it means to live an infinite life that we can literally literally live on beyond our own lives so now when people have that and they take that mantle on and they have the ecosystem around them that gives them that powerful support that they need to really be courageous and i'll assume for a second that the people watching this they have that one thing that i imagine a lot of people feel helpless to do is influence the culture of the company that they're already in so is your what is your advice for somebody that's in a company that they they don't have an infinite minded culture don't don't be there no don't try and influence that which you cannot influence don't control that which you cannot control you know an infinite mindset means that is something i can't do but i can influence and take care of the people to the left of me and to the right of me i can take care of the people who work for me i can even take care of the person i work for sometimes we have a toxic boss not because they're bad but because we don't understand the pressure they're under sometimes to simply exhibit empathy to our boss you know hey boss you were really harsh on us today everything all right what's going on i'm worried about you you know um i'm here like we can we can succeed together i'm we're here to help you you know if we're no matter where we are inside an organization leadership is not about rank or authority leadership is taking responsibility for the people around us and so any anybody on any team at any rank at any level can be a leader the first choice is that we have to want to be a dear friend of mine lieutenant general george flynn from the marine corps said that the first criterion to being a leader is you have to want to be one um so any of us can volunteer to be a leader and that's what you do you commit yourself to seeing that the people with whom we work on a daily basis love coming to work they feel that someone's got their back they feel supported they feel that they have top cover they feel someone cares about them as a human being listens to them knows their story allows them to be themselves we can be that leader and what you start to see is those teams becomes really high performing those teams become super tight and you start to hear rumors across the company because everybody wants into that team because apparently it's a great team to work with to work on and before you know it one of those people goes and moves to another team and they take everything that they learned because leadership has learned and they do it for another team and if we take that infinite mindset then eventually the tail will wag the dog and it doesn't matter if it's this ceo or another ceo because we will outlast whoever's in charge right now and that's the goal we're doing this for the good of the organization we're doing this for the good of the cause right and the tail can wag the dog dude i love that i think you've got your finger on something so important right now and i can feel this shift it was it i can feel that there's a shift happening but they need the words to understand it and i feel like your book delivers that and to me it was when you were explaining that the breakthrough moment for you was when you read about infinite games and suddenly you had the lexicon with which to conceptualize all this and i feel like what your book is delivering on is giving people the the framework with which to understand it i can't remember where i saw this but there was something that said oh there's this color a shade of blue that's been lost forever not because it doesn't exist in in wave forms of light but because we don't have a word for it and because we don't have a word for it we can't conceptualize it and thusly our brain just shunts it off into one of the colors that we do have a name for i thought whoa that's so powerful and so true and so accurate to the way that the brain works and reading the book that's what this felt like it was like now people are going to be able to talk about it in a way that's going to let them conceptualize what a company culture can be the way that the company can be driven by something bigger than the profits it gives them that organizing principle i think that's so incredibly powerful thank you i appreciate that and i i agree and i mean that's what happened for me which is i found words for the discomfort i had i had i had words for you know when people called me naive and said you don't understand how business works i didn't have a response because i didn't have words i just had a feeling and they had more success than me and they had more power than me so i didn't say anything you know call me old-fashioned i'd like to work for a company that outlasts me i'd like to work for a company where i can feel like i can be myself when i go to work i'd like to work for a company where i feel that my boss actually cares about me like i'm a human being rather than a you know just a number on a spreadsheet i'm with you there working people find more about you where can they engage in this movement you know all the usual places uh you know the interwebs and linkedins and facebooks and twitters and instagrams and all those things um you know i think the the question is you know when people say how do i join the movement how do i be a part of it um i always ask people the same thing which is be the leader you wish you had become a student of leadership study it read about it watch things about it practice it every day you know like be a parent you know like join the movement means i'm i'm going to take care of my team sometimes i'm in a leader leadership position and sometimes i'm not and it doesn't matter i'm going to practice leadership if i'm a salesperson you know if i'm if i work at the if i work at uh the check encounter of an airline i'm gonna take care of the people i work with i'm gonna take care of the customers as if as if they're my family you know like practice leadership learn about it study it um because i do these things because i recognize i'm just a piece of a jigsaw puzzle you know it's one of the reasons i wanted to come talk to you on camera it's because you know when we do a jigsaw puzzle the first thing you do is lean the the picture the the box against the wall and then you start putting the pieces together to build that picture my job in this movement i'm the guy who points at the box right i'm the one who's pointing at the picture pointing at the picture maybe pointing out a couple of the pieces and where they go but i need lots of people to join me we need lots of people to join us who say i have a piece of the puzzle i'm willing to lead this way i'm willing to abandon milton friedman ideals and and do something bigger something more follow that you know live with an infinite mindset lead with an infinite mindset and put their piece down and say how can i help build that vision we there's we need the army and so how people can engage in the movement is actually practicing all the stuff more than anything else that's what we need what's the impact that you want this book in particular to have i know you're your life mission you've articulated that well but what do you hope is the impact of this book the book is written for two reasons one it's to rally those who who know that we have to do things differently and give them the words and some of the guidance on how to do things differently how to play with an infinite mindset in the infinite game and the and the other reason is to help us recognize those finite players because we're going to have to work for them buy from them and invest in them and it's okay if they're finite-minded but we have a right to know so when companies say we're purpose-driven but they don't actually make decisions to advance their purpose you know we have the right to be able to try and figure out are they lying to us or not because we have to work for them buy from them and invest in them um and and and so it's it's uh it's to help us not only do it ourselves but recognize when others are doing it or not i love that simon thank you so much for coming on thanks so much thanks for having me back of course guys if you haven't already gone so deep into this man's world that you are missing out it is absolutely extraordinary if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care that was wonderful it looks amazing your idea of tom is just this vast collection of narratives that you've constructed around your own experiences and it's layer on top of layer on top of layer on top of layer