Understanding Finite and Infinite Games in Business: Insights from Simon Sinek

[Music] hello everybody and welcome to talks at Google Our Guest today describes himself

as an unshakable optimist who believes in the bright future and our ability to build it

together a trained ethnographer and author of three bestselling books he has discovered some remarkable patterns that

help leaders around the globe make an impact on their organizations thank you for coming and please welcome

Simon cic thanks um so I thought I'd share with

you some new stuff that I'm working on because it's fun and then we'll spend most of the time just doing Q&A because

that's also fun so I'm working on a new book and I've recently become completely uh Smitten by Game Theory um

specifically finite and infinite games in Game Theory there are two types of games finite and infinite games a finite

game is defined as known players fixed rules and an agreed upon objective like baseball we all agree to the rules we

all agree that whoever has more runs at the end of nine innings is the winner and the game ends and we all go home

nobody ever says we can just play three more Innings I know we can come back from this deficit it doesn't happen that

way an infinite game is defined as known and unknown players the rules are changeable and the

objective is to keep the game in Play to perpetuate the game when you pit a finite player versus a finite player the

system is stable baseball is stable when you pit an infinite player versus an infinite player the system is also

stable like the cold war was stable because there cannot be a winner and there cannot be a loser so we just try

and keep the game in Play and in infinite games because there are no winners and losers what happens is

players drop out of the game when they run out of the will or the resources to continue to play right so technically

the United States didn't win the Cold War the Soviets dropped out because they ran out of the resources of the will to

continue to play problems arise however when you pit a finite player versus an infinite player because one is playing

to win and the other one is playing to keep playing right so invariably what happens is the finite player will always

find thems in Quagmire so this was the United States and Vietnam the United States was fighting to win and the North

Vietnamese were fighting to survive very different set of Standards this was the Soviet Union in Afghanistan the Soviets

were fighting to beat the mujahadin and the mujahadin would fight for as long as is necessary and invariably what happens

is the finite player will find himself in Quagmire until they drop out of the game and leave the game because they run

out of the will or the resources to stay in the game right so this gets me thinking let's look at business the game

of business is an infinite game right it obeys all the rules um there are known and unknown players you don't know all

the competitors necessarily in one industry to another the rules are changeable we haven't all agreed what

the rules are and there is no winning the game of business right the game just perpetuates in fact the game of business

has existed longer than every single company on the planet today and it will Outlast every single compan company on

the planet today if you look at the Dow index of 30s something odd companies that make up the Dow index something

like 70 or 80% of those companies are 35 years or younger right so it gets me thinking if you

listen to the language that companies use they don't know what game they're in they talk about being number

one talk about beating their competition based on what agreed upon criteria based on what agreed upon time frame is it

market share is it profits is it revenues square footage number of employees over what one month 5 months 6

months a year 5 years 10 years the life of the company I haven't agreed to those rules and so companies can arbitrarily

declare themselves number one in anything they want if they set the standards and the time frames and the

only reason we do these things on annualized basis is we tend you we tend to compare ourselves to other

organizations annually is only because we pay taxes annually if we pay taxes every 18 months

that would be sort of the standard but again we still haven't agreed what the metrics are to be number one that means

the companies that are playing the infinite game are playing against most of the others who are playing the finite

game means those finite companies find themselves in Quagmire almost every single bankruptcy

not almost every every single bankruptcy is a company that's run out of the will or the resources to play they drop out

of the game the game will persist another company will fill their space it's not like it's not like the business

stops or the industry ends and uh the companies that are playing the infinite game will frustrate

those finite players which I absolutely adore so I spoke at an education Summit for

Microsoft I also spoke at an education Summit for Apple now I would say about 70 to 80% of the executives at Microsoft

spent about 70 to 80% of their PowerPoints talking about how to beat

Apple at the Apple Summit 100% of the executives spent 100% of their presentations talking about how to help

teachers teach and how to help students learn one was obsessed with their Journey with their Vision with their

cause the other one was obsessed with their competition guess who's stuck in Quagmire guess who's frustrated by their

competition so at the end of my talk at Microsoft they gave me a gift they gave me the new Zoom when it was a

thing and I have to tell you this was one of the most remarkable beautiful pieces of Technology I've ever used the

UI was gorgeous the design of the the actual Hardware was beautiful it was uh logical in the way I I could use it it

was intuitive it was absolutely fantastic now it didn't work with iTunes which means I couldn't use it that's a

different problem altogether but this was a magical piece of technology so at the end of my talk at I'm sharing a cab

with one of the senior Apple Executives of sort of an employee number 12 kind of guy and I decide to stir the pot so I

turn to him and I say you know I spoke at Microsoft and they gave me the new zoon and it is so much better than your

iPod touch and he turns to me and he says I have no doubt conversation over because the infinite player understands

sometimes your product is better and sometimes it's not sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind the

goal is not to to beat your competitor the goal is to outlast your competitor what you find is that the infinite

players don't actually compete against their competition they compete against themselves the finite players the ones

who wake up every day trying to beat somebody else the infinite players the ones who say how can we be a better

version of ourselves how can we advance our metrics how can we make our products more refined more beautiful than they

were last week it's totally fine to study our competition tactically there's nothing wrong with knowing what our

competitors are doing but the number of companies that study their competition strategically blows my mind they look at

what their competition is doing and they make sudden sharp left and right turns to change the course of their company

based on the movement of their competition that's the point that's what ra wa wasts resources the constant

changing of your mind the constant going in this direction that direction based on the Wind of your competition assuming

that they know what they're doing I find that fascinating and the number of companies that play finite is the vast

vast vast majority so it begs the question how does one play the infinite game how does one build an organization

constructed for for the infinite game so up here you have the infinite game um this is where the why exists I talk

about the why the purpose cause or belief about the organization this is where our values lie these are never

changing they are permanent they will Outlast all of us and they should Outlast uh they've been here from the

birth of the company and they should last length of the company right uh the infinite stuff the Y stuff and the value

stuff is inherently intangible and it's inherently difficult to measure right now down here you have

the finite game and this is where our interests lie this is where what I would call your

whats lie right this is where our products lie and things like that it is inherently tangible and inherently very

easy to measure now now the goal is to run all decisions through our values through our purpose or cause first and

then through our interests so what is a values based decision what does that even look like so here's a values-based

decision when our uh military goes into battle and we shoot a bad guy we will take their injured body we will send our

Medics onto the battlefield to rescue the injured body of our enemy we will put them on our helicopters apply them

to our hospitals put them in our hospital beds our doctors will use our medicine to nurse them back to health

that is not in our interest however that's kind of who we are right it's what defines Us in other

words we're wasting our resources because our values are more important than saving those resources doing

something purely in our interests it's like torture right the reason torture was done offshore and the reason uh we

tried to keep it a secret is because it kind of everybody kind of knew it violated our values because if we were

totally fine with it everybody would like just do it here it's totally fine why just somewhere in Wyoming

right um and that's the point so great organizations are making values-based decisions all the time and then our

interests come into play but the problem is when you're playing a finite these things get ignored and every time we

make a decision we decide what to what we do in in a vacuum so your competitor comes out with a new product how do we

react quickly come out with something similar um uh what's going on with the marketplace you make some other reaction

what's going on in this particular country and every single decision we make in a vacuum seems perfectly good

we're making rational decisions based on our interests right the problem is is when we pull back and look at all of the

decisions all the people we've hired this is what happens when you only hire people based on their resumés for

example smart guy get that person on board right when you pull back your culture is a mess and nobody knows what

you stand for the whole idea of making values-based decisions is we can look at almost all of the decisions and every

now and then one can go sideways but we look at all of decisions the people you hire the things you do the things you

believe in the things you stand for everything tangible and we can say of you or your organization I know what you

stand for I believe what you believe I would like to be a part of your organization I would like to buy from

your organization this is where loyalty lies right but the only way we can judge each other is down here it's like human

beings right we want our friends to act and speak and do the things based on who they are we want our friends to be you

know that word that's always thrown about authentic which means saying and doing the things we actually believe

that's what we mean and the reason is is because we want to know who they are we want to know what we want them to be

predictable right I can't see anybody now can we turn the lights back on was that better for you oh yeah oh

sorry oh okay but now you can fall asleep cuz I can't see um but that's the idea that's

the idea so this is what I'm doing I've become fascinated by this game theory stuff and I'm running it through all

kinds of scenarios I'm looking at relationships I'm looking at business I'm looking at politics I'm looking at

War and nation states and how this plays out in the real world because the game is the game we don't get to change the

rules there of course there are always finite games within the infinite it's the difference between a goal and a

vision right a goal is 26.2 miles count the metrics count the mile markers and when you reach the goal you the game

ends it's over vision is having a crystal clear sense of what the Finish Line looks like far from the distance

but but having no idea how far away it is so far away that for all for all practical purposes we'll never get there

take the United States the Declaration of Independence here's a nation who declared why

we needed our own country and it didn't start off by complaining or griping about the king and Great Britain it

started off with an ideal we believe that all men are created equal that all of us are endowed with certain

unalienable rights amongst which include life liberty and the pursuit of happiness we'll never actually get there

but the goal is that we will die trying and within that infinite contest there are many finite games that we hope to

advance that infinite contest or even little infinite GES within that like civil rights we've never actually

reached the point where we have perfect civil rights but we're continuing to get better and better and better that's the

point it's constant refinement it's Kaizen it's no matter how good we do we can always do better right but the goal

is we have a North star we have a thing to point us in a direction it's not random so in the United States when we

have civil rights so women's suffrage or gay rights or education for everyone or healthare for everyone however what form

it takes it's our way of trying to get close closer and closer and closer to the ideal upon which the nation was

founded I wish all organizations they don't have to be nation states I wish all organizations did the same thing

operated not just in their interest but also have a sense of code or values and a sense of purpose and

vision it matters because we want to stand for something we want to work for something we want all of our hard work

the products we produce everything we want it to count towards something not some not simply be against something or

make something in the short term I see this so often with senior Executives with people who are making more money

than they've ever made they have more power and influence than they've ever had and yet later on in their careers

they don't feel as successful as they did when they were Junior when we're Junior the first promotion we get the

first raise we get the first bonus we get the first client we win whatever it is it's all very exciting right we're

living down here and everything's very exciting but after you've had a bunch of bonuses and you won a bunch of clients

and you've had a bunch of product releases and bunch of promotions it's exciting for a little bit like go out

for a nice dinner with your family that's about it and then it wears off right and so what starts to happen is

our work no longer feels like it has any sense of purpose and so we default back to when we were young we thought well

when I won the client win more clients well when I reached a million dollars get more millions of dollars that gave

me the feeling the first time it'll get me the feeling again it doesn't that's like winning one Marathon thinking it's

amazing you keep running marathons for the rest of your life and at some point you're like why am I running all these

marathons they have to contribute to something they have to contribute to something so I'm fascinated by the

companies that play the FI the infinite game because they frustrate inherently they frustrate their competition for

years Apple frustrated Microsoft especially when it was run by Steve Balmer he was a guy run who ran the

company based on interests alone versus competing against an organization that was doing something bigger you know

Costco versus Walmart Southwest Airlines versus everybody right organizations that seem to not care about what Wall

Street thinks about the quarter of the year and when you listen to the language of people like Jim senagal who's the

founder of Costco he says I don't care about Wall Street wall Street's worried about how my company does in in a month

or in a year I care about what my company does for the next 50 years that's the company I'm building you

listen to the language ones who are focused on teaching kids how to learn and teaching helping teachers how to

teach versus how to beat our competition it makes for a much more fulfilling life and it makes for much

more realistic existence when your competition slightly ahead and you think that's okay you know can't stay ahead

forever based on some arbitrary perspective arbitrary metrics anyway anyway so that's what I'm working on I

think it's fun I think it's interesting we've made some changes even in the way we do business uh based on this we've

become more infinitely organized which means we are much more interested in Trends than we are in absolutes right

because absolutes exist down here but ongoing exists up here so for example let's say you will get a bonus if you

hit a certain Target by a certain date that Target is arbitrary that date is arbitrary right somebody made it up

that's that's how most of our bonus structures are are built on arbitrary numbers on arbitrary dates and let's say

that that person is doing good work in building good systems but they miss the target they miss the number right but if

you were to pull back and look at how they've been doing and you see this beautiful steady line we can see that

they're doing good work that they're building good systems there's huge stability there they just miss the

arbitrary number and the arbitrary date give that person a bonus because we want that person to continue building those

systems and the odds are they'll probably hit the number two or three months later which is totally fine

because then it's going to grow grow and grow versus the person who stabs people in the back plays politics their

performance looks like this there's no stability it's all over the place they happen to meet the number on an

arbitrary date give that person a bonus why they're breaking the company along the way the point is the finite player

only looks at these discreet moments in time where the infinite player is much more preoccupied with the trend of

things so in our in our business we've become absolutely preoccupied with the trend there's some projects that we've

wanted to implement that I wished took a year and they took years and I can it doesn't matter how much I say I want it

done at the end of the we missed it but you know what we were building good systems along the way we just missed the

prediction and the result is we have much better systems much better product and we're much more motivated by it

because nobody was penalized for missing arbitrary numbers and arbitrary dates I'm sort of learning how to I'm learning

how to build and run a business for the infinite I somebody asked me recently in an interview about my competition like

how do I compete against the people in my space the answer is what compete against what like what am I competing

for like am I going to compare how many views on Ted or how many book sales or how much my personal income is or how

much my corporate income is like what's the arbitrary standard cuz I can be ahead on some metrics and behind on

others I can drive myself crazy or I can be really proud of myself worse I'm choosing who my competitive set is but

the competitive set is way larger than I can imagine it's like I love it when the networks declare that they're number one

you do realize they're only comparing themselves to the few other networks that they want to compare themselves NBC

ABC CBS and fox compare themselves to each other they ignore Netflix Hulu HBO YouTube

YouTube and the rest of them but that's the point if you'd make your own competitive set you you'll be number one

everybody will have their day in the sun I I I get a kick out of that I get a kick out of that so especially for an

organization like YouTube the question is who's your competition the competition is yourself wish everybody

the best of luck let them make their own metrics let them declare themselves number one who cares they'll fall out of

the game before you that's the goal that's the goal all right should we do some

questions uh I think everything you just said is really interesting and it hits on something I've been wondering about

for a long time uh here at Google we have a phenomenal set of benefits and I think it's no argument that we're looked

to as a leader in kind of creating the utopian workplace for the smart creative or whatever terms you want to apply to

it uh and it seems congruent in a lot of ways you know the original Founders message with this infinite game and

everything you're describing but I wonder is this a luxury that we happen to have because we're such a

phenomenally profitable company that we can provide all these luxurious benefits and all these things and you look at

some of these other companies that maybe don't have the luxury of those these you know thick profit margins and they can't

afford to play the infinite game and they're focused on being tactical uh no no they can't afford to play a strong

finite game they can absolutely play the infinite game so because based on your logic every small company that's under

resources that under resource would never make it which is just not the case right so what holds and people aren't

loyal to free lunch I mean some people are but right right and and you see this in the tech space so much which is

people claim oh I want to work for a place with purpose and make a difference right they claim they're looking for

this but the reality is they really like free lunch and the other company didn't have free lunch so I'm going to take

this one because they have free lunch right in other words they went for the the rich company which may which may

last if the company's also an infinite player but if they're just a finite player it's going to R out some point

because when the company starts to struggle guess what things they'll start cutting and the and i' and like you have

we have friends in tech companies who don't work here right right who get free lunch and beautiful offices flat screen

TVs in every hallway gorgeous right and yet they were like but I think I mean I think you're

kind of cherry-picking a few different like very simple of those benefits I think think a lot of the things that

people kind of Herald are uh for instance uh long maternity benefits or you know anything associated with you

know child care and things like that maybe if you run a construction company and you have to have people show up and

lift the heavy thing and it's potentially dangerous and you can't give people flexible work Arrangements where

they can work from home and you know take their kids to daycare because you know you have to have the guy driving

the crane uh you know I begin to wonder like you know are we is it easy for us you

know you me all of us in here to sit here and say oh we want to focus on these ideals because the industry we

happen to work in is relatively uh it makes it easy to provide for those ideals let us not confuse feeling like

we belong and cushy I'm not cherry-picking right um there are many people who enjoy the benefits we all

enjoy the benefits why wouldn't we but does that mean that if the benefits weren't there we would immediately

quit I don't know I mean I I just think and and and what you find so so take a company like WD40 sure okay

um much smaller than Google does very well their offices are kind of a dump like the benefits they offer they're

nice to their people they when when where they can they offer all kinds of stuff and education and maternity stuff

and all of that stuff but it's not as cushy as as large huge tech companies that have you know huge amounts of extra

cash and the people who work there love working there and will come in every day full of Gusto because it's the people we

work with not the stuff we get the stuff we get the very point of the stuff we get is it runs out like it's finite you

have to keep injecting it right where the people we work with that's the relationships are the infinite component

of the of the company so if you love working here right I would I would say that if you're loyal and you really love

it m not like it but love it I would argue that you like you love the people with whom you work and if some of the

benefits were taken away for whatever reason that you would still come to work loyally and still love it because of the

people you work with and if there are only people who chased benefits from benefits to benefits and there are

people that's like chasing salaries sure then there's never loyalty and there's never love well I certainly do agree

with everything you just said but is when you're talking about for instance like these trend lines and uh you know

being able to miss the arbitrary number you if you're a smaller scrappier company maybe you can't afford to miss

these numbers whereas we have the luxury of this big war chest of money that if the goal is missed by a quarter or two a

quarters or in your case these projects it took additional years I mean isn't that sort of you know you can't you are

able to provide for that kind of flexible timeline because you have the Su the you know the Tailwind of success

there always finite games with the in the infinite of course of course so I that stuff I was wondering

about hey Simon how are you so my wife and I are both military vets and we work here at Google and I wanted to uh which

Force army army officers and I wanted to talk touch upon on your example about the military in one of your other talks

you you talk about Metal VOR recipients and basically they do these heroic things and they say why did you

do it and you you say in your talk because they would have done it for me right so that mentality is my question

you also mentioned in military we're willing to sacrifice ourselves for the gain of others right but in business

we're willing to sacrifice others for our own gain yes how do you build that military mindset in companies like here

or other companies leadership I mean it's it's leadership creat creates an environment and it's I mean this is what

I learned the the the the whole concept of Leaders Eat Last and those lessons that I learned from spending time with

folks in uniform um it was born out of my own experience where I I was going through a point of my career as my

career was growing all of a sudden you have new friends that I didn't have before and and that's wonderful and then

I learned the hard way that they weren't my friends they were playing me they wanted access or a deal or something

right and I and I I learned it the hard way and so I retreated I was like I wanted to be friends with nobody else

but the people I knew way back when which is also not a good way to live and yet simultaneously I'm spending time

with tons of folks in the military who you know in business we have colleagues and co-workers in the military you have

brothers and sisters and that's a different kind of relationship and as you know I have hugged more people in

uniform than I've ever hugged in suits I've cried with more people in uniform than I've ever cried with in suits I've

stood in the audience and listened to officers give talks and I've sat in the audience and cried I've never cried with

any CEO G gave a speech ever right so there's a different nature of relationship and my original conclusion

was they're better people that the reason you get a disproportionate amount of these kinds of behaviors is because

they're better people and better people are drawn to a life of service in the military which is why and we find a

disproportionately high number of them there and the more I started to learn the more I realized I was completely

wrong it's the environment it's the environment and when the leader creates an environment in which people feel that

someone has my back they will do extraordinary things and what I learned is that courage is not this deep down

internal fortitude right it comes externally it's like a a trapeze artist would never try

a brand new death defying act unless they had a net the courage didn't come from the trapeze artist the courage came

from the net and it's the same in the military which is especially when you're in life and death situations when you're

when you're when you're in theater you people who you don't like you still rely on to save your life and the reason it

works is because you don't have to look behind your shoulders and that mentality and you know better

than anybody which is when you when you are deployed into dangerous places nobody sort of loves deployment but

people have warm feelings towards deployment which is really strange and suicides rarely happen in in combat

situations they usually happen back home and it's the intensity of the relationships that create that warmth

and the sort of weird enjoyment of really bad uncomfortable and D dangerous circumstances it's because this we're

human beings and human beings as social animals feel our safest when we trust each other and good leaders are capable

of producing that so great businesses look very much like well-run military organizations and you

know there's poorly run military organizations as well but great businesses look exactly the same where

the leaders give the glory they distribute Authority they put down the ranks let

people make decisions if they screw up there's no risk of getting fired if the company misses its arbitrary projections

on its arbitrary date we do not use the people to balance the books we figure out other ways or we even invite the

people to help solve the problems these are the things that produce that Circle of safety that produces the exact same

outcome where people will love each other cry for each other sacrifice for each other you see it in business plenty

but it it always boils down to leadership I I mean I can't help but talk about it like let's look at United

Airlines what just happened shortly it's going to come up that is that usually when things like

that happen that is a red flag that they have a leadership problem right it's very rare that you have something like

that just show up out of nowhere what that probably is is an environment in which people are operating in a

fear-based culture where if you don't follow the rules exactly as we've told you you're

going to get in trouble and the rule book says offer them an incentive and then it says if that didn't work it says

randomly pick people and then it says if that doesn't work call security and I'm just following the rules I'm just

following there's no discretion where everybody knows that's stupid right like the like when when the

CEO announced that we're no longer going to forcibly remove P like why was that ever a policy that's like food companies

saying now with no chemicals it's like wait wait wait why were there ever chemicals

right but that's the point which nobody has discretion so I was boarding a flight

I've told this story I was boarding a flight and a scene played out in front of me where one of the passengers

attempted to board the plane before their group number was called um and the gate Adent uh literally bered him sir

step aside I haven't called your group please step aside and wait till I call your group so I spoke up and said why do

you have to talk to us that way why can't you talk to us like we're human beings

and she looked me in the eye and said if I don't follow the rules I could get in trouble or lose my

job all she revealed to me is that she doesn't feel safe in her own company and her leaders do not trust her to do the

job for which she's been trained to do and guess who suffers us and the company the reason we love flying Southwest

Airlines is because the company trusts them to do the job they would they've been trained to do and they use

discretion we don't trust people to follow the rules we trust people to know when to break them and the problem is in

a fear-based society people fear for their own jobs more than common sense that was a perfectly a perfect scenario

of what happens when somebody in the company is too afraid to break the rule break the policy use discretion find

another way you know so almost predictable that something will happen and something will break at some point

appreciate thanks how you doing hey um so for some industries that we're in I feel like we're doing a really good job

of playing the infinite game like we have a set of values that I feel like we very much trying to follow as we come up

with new products and new features um my question is when after that's played out for five 10 years in some of these

industries it's clear we're reaching some sort of Maximum where following those values is only going to get us so

much of the market Y and even though we might not be like reactively looking to competitors to see what they're up to we

can't help but notice that they have most of the pie and even though we've stuck to our guns we're as far as we can

get without doing something different y so it's of course very tempting at that point to change start emulating what

other people are doing to get that bigger piece of the P so how much flexibility do you see when you're

playing the infinite game to change course depends the reason you want to increase the slice of pie just

cuz or because you have a message and you know that if you can get more of the pie that message will reach and help

more people like is it is it nobly pursued or is it selfishly pursued you know and who says the time frame has to

be now you know the women's suffrage movement pretty important get the women the vote pretty good idea do you know

that it almost all the founders of the suffrage movement died before the first woman ever voted because that's how long

it took took more than a lifetime for them to get it but the point was the pursuit the pursuit the pursuit would

they like to have it happened in their lifetime of course of course of course were they more preoccupied that it

happened absolutely and that's the point you build Legacy you build people who take that torch and and carry it without

you so the the problem is is that I think Vision here here's the here's the thing that's always boggled my mind

right why is it unbalanced unbalanced not always but unbalanced why is it that small companies tend to be more

Innovative than big companies right small companies that are underresourced can't necessarily get the best and

brightest they're going to go out of business any day and yet there're they come up with brilliant ideas and big

companies full of resources full of amazing people buy the little company that come up with a good ideas that's

usually how big companies innovate they buy the smaller ones right um why is that why is that the that the most

resource companies tend not and I think it's a question of reality and what I mean by that is small companies their

vision is is more distant than their grasp right they have delusions of Grande we're going to change the world

change Industries reinvent this reinvent that we have no money and no people but so so what the point is is the grasp is

shorter than the vision and I think what happens is as companies get bigger and bigger and bigger with more and more

resources what they start to do is one of two things either their their Visions become well within their grasp and they

don't readjust the vision or they actually bring the vision back to put within their grasps right make things

very achievable difficult but achievable for vision to truly be Vision it should feel unachievable when a small business

gets together and says here's Vision everybody goes like this how are we going to do that m in

big businesses we see here's a vision every goes all right yeah no got it we'll do a back plan we got

that and I I firmly believe that Innovation is born out of the struggle Innovation is born out of the the

resourcefulness that you forced to figure out because literally the vision is Way Beyond your grasp regardless of

how many resources you have it should always feel overwhelming and impossible take a group of people with tons of

resources to give them a vision they're going to go okay so I think that's part of it

yeah yeah I think that's part of it so so you've been at it for five years you've achieved a lot

congratulations so the question is well was the vision not big enough or you want more peace of the why

not just stay in the game like we have an obsession in America with growth not stability size we love size and growth

we have lists of fastest growing companies we have Fortune list of biggest companies we don't have list of

most stable companies en run Worldcom Tao Leman Brothers big companies Arthur Anderson Circuit City remember that one

right poof not like like right like big not stable fast growth we love fast growth we put

people's pictures on covers of magazines and say look at Groupon remember that one does anyone

really care about Groupon anymore it was like copy Groupon they're the future for now right and that's the point we for

some reason we're obsessed with growth and again it goes back to this growth to what end here's how I understand growth

right so um you you see your neighbor packing up his car across the street from you and you say hey where you going

and he says vacation you go cool where are you going he says vacation you go awesome where are you going he says

vacation so you go well how are you going to get there he says I'm going to take Route 95 and my goal is to drive

150 miles a day that's the same as growth like why did your company exist growth awesome to what end well we're a

business to grow love it how are you going to do it growth like well good what route are you going to take our

goal is to increase top Li revenues by 20% every year duh to what end and so you get on vacation everybody's so proud

of them of themselves and smacking each other on the back because we drove 150 miles we drove 180 miles we're above

goal in what direction and we see opportunities that actually aren't good somebody offers you a ride in their

private jet you're like oo quicker than a car Yes except they're flying in that direction as opposed to somebody who

knows their Vision I want to get to California how you going to get there Route 95 what's your goal 150 miles a

day and what happens if you drive 30 miles a day towards California it's okay we're going to find out how we can take

better routes or what if the highway is blocked so you're forced to go slower but it's okay because you know the

direction you're going in as opposed to firing off an old other directions and when somebody says hey I got a private

jet you want to fly on it you go where are you going Calgary not interested thank you very

much you get my point yeah thank you that's very helpful so yeah uh I just wonder uh about Apple we talk about

Apple how Apple be Microsoft at that time how do you see uh what's your observation of Apple now under the

leader of team Cook after Steve Jobs do do this do what value Do You observe or uh this do believe that they have I

figure that if I let you keep talking I don't have to answer no goad which is good so um I tend not to comment on

companies wait for it where the founder leaders are still there because people ask me about these

companies and the answer is we don't really know the kind of culture they've built until the founder leaders have

left because the founder leaders tend to be the personifications of the cause of the

values and you can really test the quality of the culture of a company and it stick with itness and whether they

truly have imbued into the company the values first after the founder goes so Walmart is a

great example Walmart used to be an amazing company it was all about this and then Sam Walton died and the first

CEO took over for him grew up with Sam and so he kind of got it and then all of a sudden it started to go sideways

because they became preoccupied with this and they completely forgot about that you see their tagline their tagline

is save money better life that's actually in the wrong order it should be better life save money that

would be a values based decision right it's one of the pieces so we see this all the time you know Bill Gates left

and then sort of Microsoft went a little bit sideways under bomber a bomber was obsessed with this over this so this

happens also very often when CEOs leave and replace themselves with their CFO or coo because we have a

flawed hierarchy in business we think CFO or coo is the number two job and many CFOs or coos

see themselves as in line for the big job the problem is it's not one and two it's one and a they are completely

separate skill sets and it's the combination the mom and the dad the Visionary and the and the operator the

the the the the person who sees far and the person who knows how to get there the person who sees the forest who lives

above the trees and the person who's down in the trenches trying to figure out their way through the trees it's

that magical combination that makes a business grow but too often we take a Visionary and we replace them with an

operator it happens all the time Mike Dell left Dell Mike Dell had to come back Howard Schultz left Starbucks

replaced himself by a CEO Howard Schultz had to come back Bill Gates left you know and there was sort of talk of Bill

coming back after bomber they have Sacha now who's a little more in Bill's you know a little more like Bill right so

Tim Cook was the COO so the problem is we judge CEOs based on what they've done in the past

we judge CEOs good Visionary based on what they can how far they can see in the future and if you look at the titles

that we give people CMO cioo CTO coo CFO in their title it says what their responsibility is finance operations

marketing what the hell is an executive chief executive officer it's the only job that literally doesn't have

job specs and it doesn't give away it should be CVO Chief Visionary officer because like I said we judge

somebody like that by how far in the future they can see and we want them to work with somebody who knows how to get

them there these things work together not separately right so I have concerns about Apple because it is run by an

operator good guy Smart Guy believes in the vision but the problem is he sees problems more than he sees future you

know these people are huge risk-takers these people are calculated risk-takers you know and so I think we're starting

to see cracks are they does it mean the end of Apple no but we're starting to see some of the cracks like they don't

seem to be leading markets anymore uh they don't seem to be defining product categories anymore in fact a few times

they've been the followers you know so you know you make this little joke like your phone doesn't work and you like H

ever since Steve died you know there's more there's like politics playing out in the company and it's

weirdness is it the end of Apple I don't think so of course not but but definitely it it makes me interested

uh I'm am a weird 21st century case of somebody who for whom Google is my first and only full-time employer and we often

I work in marketing uh sort of copy and paste the company's value statements into briefs that we write um in a way

that feels very mechanical and not really like to your earlier point I came here and I signed up to work for this

value uh can you speak to at the value setting stage what are the kinds of questions that you ask when you're

sitting down to think you know what do we really stand for how do I put a few words to these larger

ideas I'll wax philosophical it's a it's not a there's no sort of answer um so we're obsessed in our business with the

movement we obsess about the movement we never we never ask ourselves literally it never comes up is that good for the

company it just doesn't come up it does secondarily but we want to know a decision we're about to make a product

we're about to develop something we're about to sell whatever it is we always say is it good for the movement so what

it does is it forces everybody to put first the movement this Vision that we all share in our organization We believe

We imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired to go to work feel safe

when they're there and return home fulfilled at the end of the day our goal is to get closer to that stand as a

beacon that points towards that and offers the tools we can and Inspire others to help us build tools to get to

that world that's what we mean by the movement and we we're obsessed with it even when we talk about our p&l we don't

actually have a line on our p&l that says profit it says freedom because none of us are motivated by the abstract

thing called profit we're AB we absolutely are motivated by freedom because the more money we make it allows

us to stay in the game it's fuel fuel for the drive right it allows us to get our message out to a bigger and broader

audience it allows us to say yes to things that don't pay and say no to things that do pay but we don't like the

people that who who are calling us up it gives us discretion to give money away to people we like it it gives us

opportunities to give benefits to the to the question before and give Freedom so you're damn right I want to have more

freedom this month than I had last month right so I think it comes from an obsession from leadership and not just

me at all levels and sometimes that leadership comes from bottom up where we catch each other and we remind each

other because because it is tempting to put all this first because we can demonstrate and measure how we

can improve or D symmetric and the question I ask is to what end and not I don't mean rationalizing I mean explain

to me in hard words how this advances that not some backpedaling right which is very often what happens you know um

and and so clearly that everybody else in the room is going mhm not whatever if you say that you know like we all like

that's the funny thing about these things like we all know what the right thing to do is but we like to

rationalize sometimes um so I think I think there has to be an obsession with the cause to advance the cause and it

doesn't have to be the top person it can be somebody who signed up for it guys guys guys guys guys remember why we all

signed up for this right it's like the military example like everybody has the same flag on their shoulder and if

you're a Marines Army Air Force or or navy when you're in a combat situation the uniform disappears The only thing

that matters is this and and each other right we all signed up for the same thing do you believe in it or do you not

believe in it do you want to advance this cause or not do you care about changing the way the world Works into

making it into something better or do you not what can we do in our sphere of influence marketing product whatever

what can we do in our sphere of influence what little bit can we do what piece of the jigsaw puzzle do we have to

put down to help build the picture that's on the box but somebody has to be pointing to the picture on the

box and that's the job of the leader whether they have rank or not okay thank you so I manage a team

here uh I enjoyed talk i' lead a nobody wants to be managed people want be very helpful I I've got a group of finite

players from a personal situation and definitely infinite players so they don't need more money they they're here

for the purpose it's they're wonderful how do I get a team Dynamic and how do I get the infinite players aligned on the

vision they view part of their role here is to set that Vision well that's

not uh so there is Vision at the Google or alphabet level and all of the companies within alphabet should be

working in cones to advance the bigger vision and within that there should be you know

nested y as we would call it that Advan whatever you know it all goes up so ideally the question is

is what did they sign up for if they do they believe in the big vision and can they help Advance it and

I love that they're big thinkers and you want to combine big thinkers with big doers right good teams right I love that

what if going oh I can do that somebody else goes I can do that um but if they see themselves as the one who has to

come up with the vision the question is but what at what point do we start building like this is this happens very

often with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are in big businesses and not it has nothing to do with owning a

small business um where it's shiny object syndrome right every shiny object is something they want to pursue yeah

and at some point you're gonna have to pick one this is one of the things I actually admire in the Marine Corps if

you go to OCS at the Marine Corps in quano where they select their officers um they have something called

the um uh it's a I forgotten what the ter the term they call it but it's basically um leadership reaction course

the lrc uh basically it's mini little uh obstacle courses like 20 of them 10 wet 10 dry things like things like carry the

take these three planks of different sizes and lay them on the telephone poll sticking out of the water and get all of

your people and this ammunition across the water figure it out and they they give them a time constraint and they

have to run it twice when they assign the leader and when they don't right so one of the things that I'm fascinated

fascinated by in the lrc which is they're looking uh for the leader to take input

from everybody and then make a decision on the strategy of how we're going to get across right but they're also

looking to the followers because what they find is the best followers take advice and then make a decision and the

best followers will give advice but once the decision is made want to see their leader successful and

never never uh work to sabotage or stand on the sidelines because they didn't get their way or

enjoy the failure because they say I told you so but work tirelessly to see what that ever Direction was set is

highly successful so I hope that's happening here too thanks you're welcome Hey okay it's very garan hello Simon um

thanks for the talk my question is so what's the like worst thing happened in your life um I'm very interested in your

life story with regards to what my career uh your career or your life in general what do what do you want to

know I mean like I stubbed my toe that was really bad um so my my my whole journey this

whole why thing was born out of pain um I owned a small marketing business and uh I'd lost my love for my

work and people gave me stupid advice like do what you love Follow Your Passion like what am I supposed to do

with that like I'm doing the same thing I don't love it anymore and it was a very very dark place for me where I

spent all of my energy pretending that I was happier more successful and More in control than I felt I was lying hiding

and faking every day of my life right and it's debilitating quite frankly and it wasn't until a friend came to me and

said I'm worried about you did it give me this Courage the strength to admit that I was struggling and then to look

to find a solution and that Journey pointed me to this concept called the why uh I I knew what I did and I knew

how I didn't but I didn't know why and it's the biology of human decision- making and I realized there's a major

piece missing and so the pain of that which I never want to go back to but I'm glad it happened profoundly changed the

course of my life and career I mean it's it's why I'm here now is because of the pain that I went through back then quick

question you opened up this framework with very notable examples from politics yeah cold war Afghanistan Vietnam and

then we transition to business and it makes sense that you don't have to focus on the competition yeah but politics

sometimes you don't have that luxury yeah especially if it's a zero some game facing that leav anity outl and is

intrinsically motivated on the process how do you combat them is as simple as you last longer you're more infinity or

do you at a certain point do you if there's such a thing or is it at a certain point where to engage or not to

engage is a more important question it's such a good question and and the answer makes me really uncomfortable because

I'm looking at what the criteria are actually going through the necessities of what it what elements are required to

play an infinite game right it's what I'm working on right now and I'm uncomfortable with the fact but I think

the fact is is you have to have opposition and one of the reasons is having opposition having an adversary

actually allows for a game to exist because you can't play a game by yourself right um even if you're playing

like solitire you're still playing against the cards you know there there's an opposition um and uh so as

uncomfortable as I am even in the old Apple days they still wanted to take down IBM and then they wanted to take

down Microsoft but having an opposition in the infinite level is makes it easier for us to know what we stand for because

we can see what we're against so even if in the United States we struggle to put our vision into terms we could look at

the Soviet Union and say not that right but you still have to have the four it's still got to be there because when

players drop out and are replaced you you still stand for the same thing thing cuz if you're only against whatever

anybody else is then you're not going anywhere so you still have to have the four but you know so uh the Romans

debated on the floor of the senate for 50 years where they should just flatten Carthage which was their not that their

Soviet Union right and they finally decided to do it and they flattened car Carthage and then the Roman Empire

quickly went into decline right that's interesting to me um so I think you need opposition I think Apple needed

Microsoft George lucus talks about this he says what do you do when you become the thing that you

hate they hated you know um I and I think an an adversary at this level another infinite adversary is important

now it's not like more Infinity you have to keep the game in Play because we never know when it's going to end nobody

could predict that the Cold War would end when it ended we in fact it caught most people by surprise when the Berlin

Wall came down it sort of happen very quickly right the point is is you have to maintain a good business so you can

maintain resources so that you can stay in the game you have to run efficiently but you want to keep people uh um uh

ideologically invested you want to find allies right you want to be an ideological exporter you want to preach

your cause preach your cause preach your cause preach your vision preach your vision so that others will go me too and

you get allies other companies or Partners or vendors or employees who go I'm in I believe I'm loyal never going

to abandon you I'm in so the adversary makes all of that very easy the reason we stand for something is when one

adversary drops out while we're waiting for a new adversary which will show up we have to know what we stand for and if

you really want to get into geopolitics that was the single biggest mistake that the United States made after the Cold

War we're really going here which is we declared ourselves the winner but that's not what happened the other guy dropped

out and then we imposed our will on the world for about 11 years turns out the rest of the world didn't like it and new

adversaries started to show up is uh uh um uh uh Soviet style communism you know

we're both ideological exporters was replaced by Islamic extremism the nuclear power of the Soviet Union was

replaced by North Korea Pakistan uh maybe Iran right um uh the economic tension with the Soviet Union was

replaced by China the problem is is now it's diffused now it's it's it's separated but the cold war is Alive and

Well Cold War 2.0 right and they're we're still battling life liberty with Pursuit of

Happiness um it's more complicated now but we we we foolishly gave up what we stood for for a while so I think you

need both and I'm uncomfortable by the fact but I think you need adversaries you need to have a not

that we're clear of what we stand for because we know we don't want everyone we don't want ever want to be

that thanks very much for your time everyone appreciate it thank you