Find your Just Cause: Lessons from ‘The Infinite Game’

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek was referred to me by a new friend and mentor, Howard Schultz. You probably know him as the former CEO and Chairman of Starbucks, but he’s also the co-founder, along with his wife, Sheri, of the mission-driven Schultz Family Foundation and an investor in Pacaso. I’ve been fortunate to get to know him over the past year or so, and I can’t thank him enough for recommending this book. It helped me crystalize the mission and vision for Pacaso during the earliest stages of the company’s development (before we’d even settled on a name!). "Embrace an infinite mindset" is even the first core value of our organization.

Embrace an infinite mindset

This book immediately resonated with me because it takes the concept of a long-term orientation to a whole new level: an infinite time horizon. Whether you’re thinking about personal goals, leadership or building a company, the core idea is to think about the opportunity as infinite, one that will last well beyond your own career or lifetime. Sinek calls that “embracing an infinite mindset.”?

In real life and business — outside of structured sports and games — there’s no such thing as “winning.” What matters is playing the game as long as possible. If you’re an entrepreneur or a leader, that means building a business that endures. To use a simple analogy, a finite mindset would be training for a single football game, where the score of the game is the outcome. An infinite mindset would be staying in shape over the long term, which serves you for a lifetime.?

5 essential practices

Sinek outlines five practices leaders need to follow in order to embrace an infinite mindset:

1. Advance a Just Cause
2. Build trusting teams
3. Study and learn from worthy rivals
4. Prepare for existential flexibility
5. Demonstrate courage to lead

I believe that advancing a Just Cause is fundamental to all the rest, and it really stuck with me when I was reading this book for the first time and thinking about the kind of company I wanted to build. In fact, when I revisited the book recently, I saw that I’d jotted down an idea for Pacaso’s Just Cause in the margin at the end of chapter 2, which, after some refinement, ultimately became our company mission: to enrich lives by making second home ownership possible and enjoyable for more people.?

Your Just Cause is your company’s north star

An important aspect of a Just Cause is that it’s a vision for the future — it’s a state that doesn’t yet exist. For something to qualify as a Just Cause, it must be:

• for something, not against something — it’s optimistic
• inclusive and available to anyone who wants to advance it
• service-oriented and benefiting others
• resilient and able to stand the test of time
• idealistic — a big, bold, yet achievable cause

Once you identify your Just Cause, then you can focus on attracting a trusting team of people who are equally passionate and motivated about that mission. It’s the CEO’s job to be the “chief vision officer” and keeper of the Just Cause, but that’s only the start. The CEO also needs to practice servant leadership, which enables their team to advance the Just Cause and do their best work.

In the book, Sinek points to The Container Store as an example of a mission-driven company that was able to overcome hardship because the employees embraced their Just Cause. During the Great Recession, the company faced a lot of financial strain, but instead of laying off employees, leadership went to the staff and said they’d have to put raises on hold and pause the 401(k) match. If the company hadn’t worked to establish an infinite mindset culture, its employees probably would have responded negatively. Instead, employees voluntarily participated in cost-cutting measures, like reducing travel and not expensing meals, to help ensure the company’s success. It’s a pretty powerful example that shows if your team is aligned around a Just Cause, they’ll be willing to make short-term sacrifices in order to advance the long-term mission.

Other key practices

I wanted to touch on the four other practices outlined in the book, starting with building trusting teams. What I think is most essential here is making sure your company and leaders embody the values of trust, integrity and ethics. Only then can you effectively attract and retain people who trust each other and feel like it’s safe to make mistakes, or make decisions that seem counter to the best interests of the organization in the short term but advance the Just Cause in the long term. Here's a little teaser — one of the most powerful stories in the book is about how Patagonia built a trusting organization, and it’s on page 152. That’s all I’m going to say, so you’ll have to read the book to learn the whole story

The practice of learning from worthy rivals replaces the concept of competition. Competitors aren't enemies — they’re worthy of respect and attention. Leverage what they do well and learn from them so you can improve. A great example is Blockbuster and Netflix. Blockbuster didn’t treat Netflix like a worthy rival, but if they’d paid attention and taken some lessons from Netflix’s approach, maybe Blockbuster’s outcome would have been different.?

Preparing for existential flexibility means being willing and excited to look outside of your industry or reinvent your business even when things are going well. In other words, don’t get complacent. An example is Steve Jobs, in the early days of Apple, recommending that the company develop a graphic user interface for its next computer. The executives at Apple were against the idea. They said the company was built on non-GUI technology, and investing in GUI meant blowing up what they’d already created. Jobs’ response was that it was better for Apple to blow it up than for a competitor to blow them up first.

Finally, you must demonstrate courage to lead. And that’s not easy — it takes a lot of courage to think long term, and even more to think infinitely. You have to be prepared for resistance, because not everyone will agree with you, and there’s a lot of pressure to make decisions based on near-term benefits even if they aren’t in the interest of your Just Cause. To end with another Steve Jobs reference, I’ve always loved his quote, “If you want to make everyone happy, don’t be a leader, sell ice cream.” Leadership requires a thick skin and a belief in your mission.?

Takeaways

• There is no winning — embracing an infinite mindset is about playing the long game and building something that will endure
• Find and advance your Just Cause — that’s the mission your team can rally around, and it will keep you focused on your infinite opportunities
• Be flexible and open to new ideas, whether that means looking to your rivals or looking within your open company and pushing for innovation?
• Be courageous and believe in your Just Cause, even when it’s easier to go for a quick win that doesn’t serve your mission

If you haven't read it yet, I hope you get a chance to learn from this book. If you're a longtime fan of Sinek and this piece, I'd love to hear your thoughts and takeaways in the comments.