Book Review: The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

Title: The Infinite Game

Author: Simon Sinek
Book Format: Hardcover
Book Link: Click here

Publisher Description

The New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, and Together Is Better offers a bold new approach to business strategy by asking one question: are you playing the finite game or the infinite game?

In The Infinite Game, Sinek applies game theory to explore how great businesses achieve long-lasting success. He finds that building long-term value and healthy, enduring growth — that playing the infinite game — is the only thing that matters to your business.

My Short Summary

In this book, Sinek encourages you to read the game that you are in and lead it with an infinite mindset, that is for a Just Cause, includes and not excludes others.

Key Takeaways

• People are more fulfilled when working for a cause they believe in and not just for the money
• To play the game, the infinite game with the right mindset. There are no winners in life if the only goal is to accumulate money and power.
• Focussing on short term goals and losing the long term game by not working on a cause you believe in, building healthy relationships and a community will not achieve us a sense of fulfillment.

Favorite quotes

• To ask, “What’s best for me” is finite thinking. To ask, “What’s best for us” is infinite thinking.
• A Just Cause is not the same as our WHY. A WHY comes from the past. It is an origin story. It is a statement of who we are, the sum total of our values and beliefs. A Just Cause is about the future. It defines where we are going. It describes a world we hope to live in and will commit to helping build.
• A Just Cause should direct the business model, not the other way around… money is the fuel to advance the Cause, it is not a Cause itself.
• Leaders with a finite mindset often confuse having a successful product with having a strong company.
• When you have your cause, write it down… A written cause works like a compass.
• When companies make their people feel like they matter, people come together in a way that money simply cannot buy.
• It is the combination of what we value and how we act that sets the culture of the company… Culture = Values + Behaviors.

Who would I recommend it to?

This can be a good read for anyone looking for self-reflection and growth. This book has a lot of good advice with some great examples from business, military, and history. Since Sinek talks so much about leadership and how culture starts from the top and flows downward, this book is recommended to anyone who leads, whether it be a CEO or a parent.