Simon Sinek: Leadership, Hard Work, Optimism and the Infinite Game

Lex Fridman introduces Simon Sinek as the author of Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last and The Infinite Game, and as one of the best communicators of what it takes to be a good leader, to inspire and to build businesses that solve big challenges.

Before the conversation Fridman reads ads for Cash App and Masterclass. He uses the Cash App segment to note that ledger debits and credits began about 30,000 years ago, the US dollar over 200 years ago and Bitcoin just over 10 years ago, recommending the book The Ascent of Money, and lists Masterclass courses he likes, including Chris Hadfield on space exploration.

Fridman, coming from AI and game theory, contrasts finite games, which engineers know how to handle, with infinite games, which lack fixed rules and objectives and have changing players, and asks Sinek for the objective function of the infinite game. Sinek credits the philosopher James Carse (transcribed as Kars) with the concept. A finite game, like football or baseball, has fixed rules, agreed objectives, known players, a beginning, middle and end, and a winner and loser. An infinite game has known and unknown players, changeable rules, and the objective of perpetuating the game; there is no winning in a game with no finish line.

He says that trying to win or be the best in a game with no agreed objectives, metrics or timeframes produces predictable outcomes: the decline of trust, cooperation and innovation. Fridman adds that reducing complex things like life, politics or business to something narrow loses what makes them work in the long term.