Playing Simon Sinek’s Infinite Game in my Agoda Secondment role

Secondment - does this make you a second fiddle or a second to none??

It can be valuable for an employee to work in a different position while retaining their employment status with their company. A secondment allows employees to temporarily work with a different department or company, usually to complete a project while gaining experience. The employee benefits because they learn new skills, become familiar with a new industry and expand their career options. -Indeed

Bump into a colleague today and they questioned my second secondment in Agoda.

“You are everywhere but you don’t end up anywhere. Are you going nowhere?”

Their actual remark wasn’t as concisely witty as I conclude their comment. It does make me having a second thought about my secondment, what am I doing and why am I pursuing more uncertainties?

I turned to Simon Sinek’s book “The Infinite Game” and try to find the alignments (and validation) for the why to my what.

My secondment with People team happened after volunteering as social media ambassador and emceeing the KL Open House event:

In neuroscientist Karl Friston view of the brain, avoidance of surprise is a prime motivator because it conserves energy. Simon Sinek stresses that, “the infinite game is not the absence of finite games. The Infinite game is the context within which the finite games exist.” If all living creatures did was minimize surprise they would never get out of bed in the morning and evolution wouldn’t have progressed beyond the primordial soup.

Children are novelty seekers, and in that sense we start life with an infinite perspective. Sinek’s good parent (which will also make good leader) model is by nurturing exploration and play instead of setting predetermined expectations.

Secondment allow us being an active observer and questioning why more often- which leads to being more critical and having broader mindset due to the exposure of the new role.

Mental limitations from finite mindset can shorten an individual’s career as well. “Your career is a journey, not a destination, there’s no end point.” Somehow reminds me of Agoda’s employee experience motto: “Your best journey”. And that’s what I am experiencing in every of my secondment. It is all a journey by itself.

Anthony Kosher in his article section “The Mind of Work” said that rarely we thrive in the 21st century by working our whole life in the field we happened to study in college, or to ascend to a more senior version of the first job we fell into.

In fact, being adaptive and open to surprise is the way to slow down the clock and extend the game. Which is what a secondment purpose could be.

If the game is life, we each have to each ask ourselves, how are we contributing to it? “In business we call that value,” says Sinek, “if you’re making my life easier, better, or offering me some sort of improvement to the quality of my life.” Value, like life, is not a zero sum game. “Value is not a calculation,” he concludes, “It’s a feeling.”

Playing the infinite game is also more a matter of feel than calculation. It’s similar to Carol Dweck’s growth mindset and, more generally, to optimism. Sinek points out that “inherent in being an optimist is a recognition that the thing that you want is not necessarily here now.” And that’s what I feel about the secondment opportunities I have - it allows me to be closer to what I want at the same time effectively eliminating what I don’t want during the role explorations journey.

The optimist pursues the light at the end of the tunnel, but we don’t deny that we’re in the dark. Days juggling between roles can be challenging but doesn’t mean it stays that way forever.

Ultimately, the reason why our work is an infinite game is because there’s no intrinsic limitation on the ways we can improve other people’s lives through your labor and imagination. Secondment opportunities allow us to see that we are capable of creating value. This doesn’t mean that we don’t face significant, perhaps overwhelming, impediments to our secondment.

Having great managers in helping me managing my secondment is crucial. Good leaders, infinite minded in Sinek’s parlance, encourage teams to make the most of our talents, help clear blockers, and reward impact even if they have to move the goal posts. I don’t think I’d be trusted with any of my secondments without the infinite mindset from my leaders in Agoda as well.

Whatever our role is, Sinek encourages us to decide how we want to play. “We should come to work not to win. We should come to work to play the game of business. It’s for the joy of the play.”

Not only secondment bringing a chance of a second wind, it allows us to challenge the mental limitations and practically apply the infinite game at work. Pessimistic about secondment? Give a second thought. The uncertainty it brings at work might bring you more certainty in life.

I can’t shake the habit of cracking my head by making puns and inserting word play in my article. This is not sponsored by Agoda although it is the company that allows me explore various secondment roles. Do you want to experience the joy of the play in Agoda? Drop me an email to [email protected] or click here to explore available roles in Agoda.