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The infinite game is a brilliant book by Simon Sinek talking about purpose, just cause and continued value creation for the business. He touches on a very important point about the life of a business vs focusing on longevity. I’d encourage you to read the book as it will spark some very exciting thought processes to evolve. In this article, I want to talk about the 5 highlights of The infinite game for me.

Just Cause – Purpose of a business

The book draws a huge parallel with his ‘Start with the Why’ – the main reasons why you want to create a business or a startup. And yes – Making money is a bad answer. The odds are that you’ll have better luck at making money at a 9-5 job with smart investment plans. Entrepreneurship/startup is a place to create value and bring ideas into fruition.

If this is something that motivates you – figure out why you want to start a business in the first place. It will give you the motivation to continue in hard times. A solid ‘Just Cause’ or purpose not only acts as a long term motivator but enables you to build your team as well. For a startup, your investors will be keener on your ability to build a team because that’s hard work! (Related: What investors look for to fund a startup)

Long Term Mindset

We’re often swayed by the short term mindset – private equity culture where you build a business to sell. Simon makes a very interesting point in his book that most of the new age businesses have cut short their life span by 20 years. It makes me wonder – how many businesses are focusing on providing continued value to customers?

Ultimately businesses are about creating value. If they need to survive, these startups or businesses need to innovate continually. The best way to innovate is to keep your customer in mind and continually ask the question – what gives them the ultimate value. If we’re chasing the share prices and profits, all we can ask is – where can we make more money? And truly, as the creator of an idea, what do you want to be thinking about?

Winning Vs Losing

I loved this concept in the Infinite Game – the entire premise of winning or losing is completely flawed. Winning and losing are both based on a game where a timeline is defined. If your business idea/startup is focusing on being a forever business – does winning matter at all?

Instead, can we replace this thought with the sheer pleasure of continued improvement and innovation? This leads us to think beyond a limited mindset of just hitting our numbers at the end of a quarter. Instead, it is just about the idea, value and benefactor of this. Ultimately, this all translates into loyal customers!

Competition

Every business or individual needs a worthy rival. But it’s very important to identify what we’re competing on. If we’re competing about some vanity metrics, then it’s pointless to think about rivals. Instead, rivals must encourage you to think about the betterment of the entire community.

Here, I’m referring to either technology as a whole or even improving the quality of a game rather than fighting to get extra profits. It might sound theoretical, but isn’t it an awful goal to just keep competing. This will force you to forget the other beautiful competitors who will come and change the way the game is played forever. I can loosely allude to the threat of new entrants in Porter’s 5 forces.

Doing the right thing vs Ethical Fading

Personally, I loved this part – our business ethics are driven by the goals we set ourselves. Sometimes, if we set numeric goals, we might miss out on key ethical concerns or even cut corners. Simon Sinek coins this as ethical fading where we compromise our ethics for short term wins.

As a founder or startup creator – your values form a quintessential part of the value proposition. Your idea defines what you’re going to do and how exactly value is created for a customer. Please make sure that it is at the forefront of your strategy. It is your guiding light when these vanity metrics come into play. And the pressure is real – sometimes for a startup, it is a question of survival vs ethical fading. Ultimately, leadership is about being bold and challenging ourselves, isn’t it? There’s probably not 100% right or wrong, but internally, we’ll have a voice that tells us what to do.

This is only an urge to listen to that quiet murmur that keeps telling us something.