Which game are you playing?
A couple years ago, I read Simon Sinek's The Infinite Game where he talks about two kinds of games: finite and infinite games. Since then, I can't stop thinking about the possible implications of this on our industry.
Finite games, like sports and chess, have a known number of players and fixed, agreed-upon rules on how to win. The goal is for you to win the game. It's a zero-sum game that has a clear winner and loser. When someone wins, that's when the game is over.
Infinite games, Simon describes "like business or politics or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers, there is only ahead and behind." The game is over when you run out of the will or resources to keep playing the game and you drop out. The goal is to stay in the game as long as possible, outlasting your competition.
Simon points out that we often don't know which type of game we are playing–in work and in life. We may believe we are playing finite games where we can win by beating the competition or proclaiming ourselves "number one." However, the realities of the "game" we are playing in our professions are often more appropriately defined by the characteristics of the infinite game.
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For an industry like the arts that is so subjective and personal, it's shocking how "finite"-minded we can operate as individuals and as organizations. We are an industry that thrives on winning - competitions, positions, awards, titles, status, glamor, etc. We learn in school that we should strive to be "the best". And as individuals and organizations, we learn to gravitate toward identifying rank with those around us and viewing coming out at the top as the ultimate win of the game.
We assume this industry and our business is a finite game with fixed rules, known players, and clear endpoint. We allow that assumption to guide us in playing the game, but have we ever asked if all of us agreed on what the rules are for "winning" the game? Is it who has the highest ticket prices? Is it which organization has the highest percentage of full-time employees? Is it the number of Grammy-nominations? Is it the quality of employee engagement?
Which people were a part of that conversation to reach that agreement on the rules? Do they represent all the players in the game? And - do we even know who all the players are? Have they always been in the game or did they join recently? Who fell out of the game?
The reality is that we all come to the game making decisions about "winning" using different lenses. We are constantly playing with a chess board of changing opponents each bringing their own set of rules and perspectives. The problem is that we generally accept that everybody else agrees with our own rules when we really don't even know who we are playing with or if they think the same way. We are unaware that the game we are playing is perhaps "infinite" - with unknown rules and unknown players, where there is no such thing as ending the game by winning.
Our field is so full of nuance that we cannot possibly define rules as clearly as those of a basketball game. It's simply not the nature of our game. What is important for you may be unimportant for me (and that's OK). We all have different values.
Yet, our desire to seek the "number one" spot or to be "the best" is objectifying something that is inherently subjective and stripping away all the gray. At the same time, we also strip away the nuance of individual values in ourselves and in the people of our organizations.
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Well, if we are playing infinite games and don't know who all the players are nor what the rules are, how are we supposed to win?
Let's remember that the goal of the infinite game is to stay in the game, without losing the will or the resources to keep playing. To achieve this, you're not looking at how you compare to someone else or a competing organization. You are focusing on your own sustainability to stay in the game. It's almost cliché to describe it as you are competing with yourself, but it is true. The infinite game encourages us to clearly articulate our core values that become our own rules of engagement in playing the game, with our own benchmarks to beat.
While it may be more straightforward to focus on building the resources (especially financial ones) to keep playing the game, we can easily overlook the importance of "the will" to keep playing the game. This will is motivation - both intrinsic and extrinsic. We are typically incentivized by finite goals - for example, getting a bonus by getting the best results or feeling the rush of the competition win. Yet, those are often temporary, fleeting hits of motivation. We know from athletes who perform at the highest level that depression sets in quickly after major wins. It's difficult to maintain the will to keep playing the game if we are led to focus on only finite parameters of winning.
So in addition to hitting finite targets, we can also lead ourselves and our organizations to focus on infinite parameters such as clearly articulating and refining our own rules of engagement. What are our values? How do we behave based on those values? What difference are we making in the world and how would we know when we've achieved it? How do we want to become better in this endeavor? What are the milestones and markers we can focus on?
In a world that is prone to winning black-and-white finite games, it might just pay in the long run to identify, cultivate, and celebrate our unique shades of gray to play the infinite game.
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