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21 " The ability to succeed is not what makes someone a leader. Exhibiting the qualities of leadership is what makes someone an effective leader. Qualities like honesty, integrity, courage, resiliency, perseverance, judgment and decisiveness, "
― Simon Sinek , The Infinite Game
22 " It is important to celebrate our victories, but we cannot linger on them. For the Infinite Game is still going and there is still much work to be done. "
23 " Traditional competition forces us to take on an attitude of winning. A Worthy Rival inspires us to take on an attitude of improvement. The former focuses our attention on the outcome, the latter focuses our attention on process. That simple shift in perspective immediately changes how we see our own businesses. It is the focus on process and constant improvement that helps reveal new skills and boosts resilience. An excessive focus on beating our competition not only gets exhausting over time, it can actually stifle innovation. "
24 " Strong relationships are the foundation of high-performing teams. And all high-performing teams start with trust. "
25 " Better” suggests a journey of constant improvement and makes us feel like we are being invited to contribute our talents and energies to make progress in that journey. “Better,” in the Infinite Game, is better than “best. "
26 " Where finite-minded organizations view people as a cost to be managed, infinite-minded organizations prefer to see employees as human beings whose value cannot be calculated as if they were a piece of machinery. Investing in human beings goes beyond paying them well and offering them a great place to work. It also means treating them like human beings. Understanding that they, like all people, have ambitions and fears, ideas and opinions and ultimately want to feel like they matter. "
27 " How do I create an environment in which my people can work to their natural best? "
28 " the definition of the responsibility of business must: Advance a purpose: Offer people a sense of belonging and a feeling that their lives and their work have value beyond the physical work. Protect people: Operate our companies in a way that protects the people who work for us, the people who buy from us and the environments in which we live and work. Generate profit: Money is fuel for a business to remain viable so that it may continue to advance the first two priorities. "
29 " Think of a Just Cause like an iceberg. All we ever see is the tip of that iceberg, the things we have already accomplished. In an organization, it is often the founders and early contributors who have the clearest vision of the unknown future, of what, to everyone else, remains unseen. "
30 " Cause Blindness is when we become so wrapped up in our Cause or so wrapped up in the “wrongness” of the other player’s Cause, that we fail to recognize their strengths or our weaknesses. "
31 " Cause Blindness blunts humility and exaggerates arrogance, which in turn stunts innovation and reduces the flexibility we need to play the long game. "
32 " One of the primary jobs of any leader is to make new leaders. To help grow the kind of leaders who know how to build organizations equipped for the Infinite Game. "
33 " In an organization that is only driven by the finite, we may like our jobs some days, but we will likely never love our jobs. If we work for an organization with a Just Cause, we may like our jobs some days, but we will always love our jobs. As with our kids, we may like them some days and not others, but we love them every day. "
34 " Being the best simply cannot be a Just Cause, because even if we are the best (based on the metrics and time frames of our own choosing), the position is only temporary. The game doesn’t end once we get there; it keeps going. And because the game keeps going, we often find ourselves playing defense to maintain our cherished ranking. Though saying “we are the best” may be great fodder for a rah-rah speech to rally a team, it makes for a weak foundation upon which to build an entire company. Infinite-minded leaders understand that “best” is not a permanent state. Instead, they strive to be “better.” “Better” suggests "
35 " For the feeling of trust to develop, we have to feel safe expressing ourselves first. We have to feel safe being vulnerable. That’s right, vulnerable. "
36 " People will trust their leaders when their leaders do the things that make them feel psychologically safe. "
37 " If we believe trust, cooperation and innovation matter to the long-term prospects of our organizations, then we have only one choice—to learn how to play with an infinite mindset. "
38 " the best leaders and the best companies prioritize people before numbers. "
39 " so many leaders, even some of the best-intentioned ones, often ask, “How do I get the most out of my people?” This is a flawed question, however. It’s not a question about how to help our people grow stronger, it’s about extracting more output from them. People are not like wet towels to be wrung out. They are not objects from which we can squeeze every last drop of performance. The answers to such a question might yield more output for a time, but it often comes at a cost of our people and to the culture in the longer term. Such an approach will never generate the feelings of love and commitment that Noah has for the Four Seasons. A better question to ask is, “How do I create an environment in which my people can work to their natural best? "
40 " It’s a strange quirk of human nature. The order in which a person presents information more often than not reveals their actual priorities and the focus of their strategies. "