Book reviews the game

There can't be a winner in an infinite game. It's impossible to be the best, you can just strive to continuously become better. The book shifts the perspective from looking at competitors as so Amazingly inspirational, as everything that comes from Simon Sinek is.

The book shifts the perspective from looking at competitors as someone who can beat you, to looking at them as the rivals that help you deliver your vision and grow. From this perspective, you can never achieve the end - instead, you keep working on delivering your vision regardless of how the circumstances change.

Companies that embrace this perspective become resilient to market disruptions and thrive with every change. Jan 23, Anu rated it did not like it. Read the actual Carse book that this book is based on instead of the mutated regurgitation in this book. Feb 22, Frank Theising rated it liked it Shelves: economics. He admits himself, infinite games are not a new idea, but one that he is trying to popularize. I like many of the ideas that Sinek uses throughout the book and agree with most of it.

Especially a more conscientious capitalism that cares about employees and communities as well as profits. That said, I hardly see this as a universally applicable way of looking at business.

I also tend to think that Sinek has a canny knack for cherry-picking examples that fit his narrative and never mentioning those that might undermine it. Sinek does go on a lengthy tirade against economist Milton Freidman for putting capitalism onto its present course. He builds his argument off a single unnamed article from , where Freidman argues for the theory of shareholder primacy is the end-all-be-all of capitalism.

Essentially this one article changed forever the thinking of business leaders so that their focus was on finite minded goals increasing shareholder value and company profit, at the expense of serving their customers or employees. There is probably a kernel of truth in this, but Sinek tends to blow it all out of proportion relative to the impact Friedman actually had.

Overall, a good little book on leadership with some interesting ideas to tuck away for future reference but one that is not without flaws. I think it is definitely worth your time to give it a read. What follows are some of my notes on the book: There are two kinds of games: finite and infinite games.

Finite games have fixed rules and there is an agreed upon objective that, when reached, ends the game i. Infinite games in contrast are played by known and unknown players, and there is no exact or agreed upon set of rules. There may be conventions that govern behavior but players can really operate however they want and can choose to break with convention.

Infinite games have infinite time horizons. The primary objective is to keep playing, to perpetuate the game Many of our leaders today do not understand they are in an infinite game. Their language, conduct, and desire to win or beat the competition show they are operating with a finite mindset. He proposes to show how to do so in an infinite game creates problems including a decline in trust, innovation, and cooperation 5. Leaders need to not worry about winning an unwinnable game and think about building organizations that are strong enough to stay in the game for generations 7.

In the Infinite Game, the true value of an organization cannot be measured by the success it has achieved based on a set of arbitrary metrics over arbitrary time frames. A finite-minded player makes products they think they can sell to people, the infinite-minded player makes products people want to buy.

The former is primarily focused on how the sale of those products benefits the company; the latter is primarily focused on how the products benefit those who buy them An infinite-minded leader uses the value of their career to enhance the long-term value of the company.

Five essential practices of an infinite mindset 25 : 1. Advance a Just Cause 2. Build Trusting Teams 3. Study your Worthy Rivals 4.

Prepare for Existential Flex 5. Demonstrate the Courage to Lead A Just Cause is a specific vision of a future state that does not yet exist; one appealing enough that people are willing to make sacrifices in order to advance it. When there is a Just Cause, people have a reason to come to work that is bigger than any particular win. It makes work fulfilling and meaningful.

A Why comes from the past, a Just Cause is about the future. His Just Cause is to build a world where people are inspired and fulfilled Not sure I really see any difference…seems like semantics. But sorry, life involves toil and hard work and sometimes the hard work is never going to be inspiring no matter how it is spun janitors, dishwasher, garbage collection, etc…only in our cushy, 21st century life does everybody need to be inspired all the time.

A Just Cause must be: 1. For Something — affirmative and optimistic 2. Inclusive — Open to all 3. Service Oriented - For the benefit of others 4. Resilient — able to endure change 5.

Vision statements that place a product at the center of the vision are only useful until something better comes along. They failed to recognize that they had a vision statement that put the focus on the product rather than the service and so missed the rise of smartphones that displaced them i.

In a watershed article from , Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman argued for the theory of shareholder primacy where the corporate executive is an employee of the business, with direct responsibility to the owners shareholders to make a profit and increase shareholder value while staying within the rules of the game.

Sinek goes on to argue that this became the default understanding of business and destroyed previous method of capitalism where companies focused on their customers and employees. These excesses came from the finite mindset promoted by Freidman. Ethical fading: Retells the story of Wells Fargo focusing too much on new accounts that led thousands of employees to across the country to open accounts fraudulently in order to meet company targets.

Ethical fading is a condition in a culture that allows people to act in unethical ways in order to advance their own interests while falsely believing that they have not compromised their principles Organizations with a finite mindset are prone to ethical fading. Companies that focus on short term goals quarterly or annual profits place intense pressure to meet those targets and reward those who do, even if corners were cut to do so.

Meanwhile, those that acted with integrity are overlooked for advancement. In the military, there is intense pressure to meet requirements, to do more with less. The result is that is commonplace for soldiers to find creative ways to check the boxes at the expense of the intent behind the task clicking through computer based training without learning the info they are supposed to convey. Rather than see their actions as cheating or lying, many simply see it as checking the boxes or part of the bureaucratic process of doing what leadership asks them to do.

When these seemingly minor transactions become pervasive it is a sign of ethical fading. When we apply finite solutions CBTs to fix cultural problems, we often only get more lying and cheating. Little lies become bigger lies as they get normalized Ethical fading is a people problem and we need people to be the solution. The best antidote to ethical fading is an infinite mindset. Worthy rivals keep us honest, help us improve, and get better at what we do He talks about being willing to read the terrain and make an existential shift his big example being Walt Disney leaving his successful animation industry to open Walt Disney World theme park.

Existential flexibility is the capacity to initiate an extreme disruption to a business model in order to advance a Just Cause. An example that failed is Eastman Kodak. They had developed digital photography technology but refused to act on it because they made so much profit off of selling cameras, film, developing film, etc. Had they stuck to their Just Cause making photography accessible to the common man instead of their product, they could have remained in the game and been a key player in digital photography instead of a niche company for film photography enthusiasts.

Facebook was an infinite player that is moving towards an finite path. Other companies Microsoft, Walmart, Disney, Ford all did likewise, though these have returned to their stated purpose according to Sinek Others failed to think with an infinite mindset and all but disappeared from the game Kodak, Garmin, Blockbuster, etc. Leaders who prioritize themselves first, breed employees that do the same. Parenting is an Infinite Game that too many parents treat as finite. Well written with lots of good advice, as usual.

In this book, Simon Sinek is not trying to make a point or "win" the argument, he is simply trying to share with his readers his vision of a world where everyone feels happy and fulfilled. Once he explains what an "infinite mindset" leader is and how she thinks, he moves on to provide several traps and landmines of trying to operate with an infinite mindset in a world that is largely "finite minded".

The traps are often set by our own tendencies a Well written with lots of good advice, as usual. The traps are often set by our own tendencies and additions. He provides great examples, some from his own experience, on how a person who wants to have an infinite mindset could reframe their problems and thoughts in order to see them in light of what he calls the Just Cause, i.

I wish he could have spent a bit more time explaining how a infinite-minded-wannabe can engage and work with a finite mindset person. The reality for most of us is that we're all surrounded by both finite and infinite mindset people and we can't just stop interacting with the finite minded ones.

Jan 05, Gregory Koberger rated it liked it. I heard about this a lot on twitter and wanted to give it a try. Like many business books, it uses the formula of taking a simple premise and attributing the success of every successful company to simply following the title of the book. Oct 31, Maddie Nastase rated it it was amazing. It's good to have you back, Simon!

Aug 24, Daniel Pereira rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction , audiobooks , emprestados , business. Like children who mirror their parents, so too do employees mirror their leaders. Leaders who prioritizes themselves over the group breed cultures of employees who prioritize their own advancement over the health of the company.

The Courage to Lead begets the Courage to Lead. Before my current company, I worked at places in which the leaders clearly had a very finite view of the game they were playing and that, because of it, the organization was suffering; there was, among other things, a huge sense of distrust between the people working there, which led them to care only about their interests and not advancing the company's cause. You worked for a paycheck and you hoped you weren't fired.

In this book, Simon Sinek presents the concept of infinite games, being that business is one of them; there isn't a finite goal of winning because the game is infinite, and we should play according to that. Then he provides a lot of examples of how finite and infinite players run their companies and what are the actions of an infinite-minded leader in the midst of pressures from more finite-minded investors, for example. I really liked this book, I wasn't expecting it to be so much about business I hadn't really search much about it , but it was a pleasant surprise, because it is an area I wasn't really versed in.

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The list below contains some main brands as dicegeeks, na, new-line-home-video, national-geographic, ws-game-company, playmonster, game-traveler, far-future-enterprises. These pages make up the cards in the deck, split between black and white pages that can come as either Words or Keys. At the beginning of the game a zargovar consists of two Words and one Key, with these number increasing as Vasilisa levels up. Many cards have effects that will be familiar to those who have played modern card games — such as direct damage, a shield, or statuses that deal damage each turn — but as seals are broken and new cards are unlocked some interesting twists enter the formula.

In particular, the way the player is able to layer buffs and debuffs has a compounding effect. For example, Waste applies damage every turn and decreases that number by one every turn. By comparison, Decomposure increases waste every turn by its value and then decreases by one. There are attempts made to shake up the combat. The first are puzzle battles, which give the player a set hand of cards and a turn limit in which to defeat the given enemies.

The difficulty of these is all over the place; some are fairly simple to get on the first attempt, others are more complex. They do provide an opportunity to teach the player some of the intricacies of the combat system but often they just devolve into trial and error. At some points, Vasilisa will run into other Koldun with whom she can have duels.

The twist on the battles here is that the whoever casts the shorter zargovar will go first in the turn order, unlike normal battles where Vasilisa always goes first. These battles are much more interesting, as they require the player to rethink their strategies and become more particular about the timing of their attacks.

It would be convenient to just click on the doorway to move there but, annoyingly, the floor is the only place the game recognizes. During major events in the game, players can directly control Vasilisa through point-and-click movement, but the camera stays level with the character, making it awkward to direct her where she needs to go. She also has a tendency to get caught on things in the environment.

These moments are few and far between, and with the exception of the stealth section near the end, none of them get in the way of progress, but they stand out as really rough. On the whole, Black Book is a fun adventure that does enough to stand out from the crowd. The combat and card play are different enough from its contemporaries that those looking for a more traditional entry point into deck-building can give it a shot, even if the game begins to wear out its welcome by the end of its thirty or so hours.