Review "The Infinite Game" - Simon Sinek's perspective on the mindset for leader
I have been excited about his ideas and approaches since I saw Simon Sinek's TED Talk at the Golden Circle a few years ago. The talk focuses on the "why"—the question of why, both for personal and professional ambitions, for companies and clubs.
In his book The Infinite Game, Sinek deepens his thought about the Why and differentiates between the finite ("finite") game, which has clear rules, a start, and an end, comparable to a football game that can be won. In contrast, he presents the infinite ("infinite") game that affects us all, be it as an individual or as an organization.
The key does not lie in profit or striving to be the best afterward but in pursuing a "just cause"–a profound reason—to develop and serve a greater purpose than yourself constantly.
Sinek explains the crucial step of choosing the mindset of the "Infinite Games" in the chapters of his book. He illustrates his concepts using prominent examples from large companies to show how decisions and management styles can influence the result, depending on whether a finite or infinite mindset prevails.
A central sentence that he emphasizes is:
Consistency becomes more important than intensity
Which is of central importance for both personal development and the continued existence of an organization. Although Simon focuses on managing large organizations, it is easy to derive for personal growth and smaller companies. Profits and maximizing profits are not primary goals; results are responsible for economic action.
Finally, I would like to highlight two aspects that I have mainly remembered: the value of "Trusting Teams," in which the performance of a person is not exclusively based on their performance but rather according to the trust that the person embodies, and the idea of the "Worthy Rival," which can inspire us to get better constantly and to invest more in ourself.
Conclusion
Overall, the book describes the same fact in various ways–the catastrophe of the finite mindset in the infinite game–which can make some readers monotonous. At the same time, the different perspectives and considerations stimulate what exactly is the purpose of such a book. The book gave me good impulses–if you like holistic approaches, this book is worth a recommendation.
What's next
My next book will be something more technical: "Software Architecture: The Hard Parts" by Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage, and Zhamak Dehghani, published by O'Reilly. I look forward to diving deeper into the technical aspects and keeping the knowledge from Sinek's infinite game in mind.
