Are you playing an infinite game?
One of the hardest and most rewarding things we do at Basecamp is to guide organizations through strategic planning (aka strategic design, aka strategic visioning). [1]
In a recent strategic plan gathering, we shared Seth Godin’s thought experiment around Hyatt and Nike. First Godin asks: If Hyatt Hotels started making sneakers, what would you expect to get? Most people have no idea how to respond. Then Godin asks: If Nike were to make hotels, what would you expect? The answers flow immediately.
The point? Nike stands for something bigger than itself. [2]
So we asked the strategic planning committee, “What does your school stand for? What is your non-negotiable core value?”
For some schools, the answer to this question is something like “academic excellence” or “developing well-rounded leaders.”
For other schools, the answer to this question is something like, “curing injustice” or “advancing the Common Good.”
The first school is trying to play a finite game. They think they “win” if their students have the highest SATs and APs, most acceptances to highly selective colleges, etc.
The second school is playing an infinite game. They know that there is no way to “win” at educating kids; their goal is to stand for a “Just Cause” [3] and to play the game for as long as possible.
These ideas come from Simon Sinek’s latest book, The Infinite Game. [4] It is a must-read—for leaders, for those who aspire to leadership, and for anyone who does not know the difference between treating work (and life) like a finite game vs. an infinite game.
Three crucial questions to ask:
Is your school playing an infinite game?
If so, what is your Just Cause?
Are all of your stakeholders aligned around that Just Cause? [5]
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[1] When we do this work with schools, we often partner with Leadership+Design. L+D’s design thinking approach places human needs at the center of the process and builds a school’s capacity to do more human-centered design work after we are gone.
[2] Nike has also inconsistently stood for something bigger than itself. As Sinek points out in The Infinite Game, “Human beings are messy and imperfect. There is no such thing as a perfectly infinite-minded leader and there is certainly no such thing as a perfectly infinite-minded organization. In reality, even the most infinite-minded companies can stray onto a finite path. And when that happens, it takes Courage to Lead to recognize that the organization has strayed from its Cause and it takes courage of leadership to get back on course.” (Unorthodox capitalization is original to the text and refer to concepts within Sinek’s broader argument.)
[3] According to Sinek, “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 ultimately unachievable.”
[4] Sinek acknowledges at the outset that he has borrowed the terms and concepts of finite and infinite games from Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility (1986) by James Carse.
[5] We see schools stumble all too frequently at this junction: they say they stand for something bigger than themselves, but their actions suggest that they’re trying to “win” a finite game.