What Game Are You Playing?
Friends!
As you know, I often talk about the importance of TIME on these pages. I have come to believe, with the deepest of convictions, that your time horizon dictates the quality of your outcomes when you make decisions. So much of our modern lives are measured in seconds, minutes, and months. Rarely in years, seldom in decades, and almost never in centuries.
Yet, deep inside, when we are in more reflective and less instant states, we know that the things that truly define genuine happiness are the things that have been shaped over time. Whether it is relationships, great music, beautiful architecture, or a good wine. Quality, meaning, and joy come from those deeper, intangible feelings of rootedness. Of realness. Of patina. Something that reminds us of the journey we have been on and the satisfaction we get from remembering, reliving, and appreciating the relationships, experiences, and emotions that got us here.
I have written about the fact that we live in a short-term world with long-term problems before. Here and here (2013), in particular. I also often quote the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard who so beautifully stated:
Life can only understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
This brings me to the frame of a game. We all play games. However, it is instructive to reconsider many of the institutions in our lives through the lens of a game. There are many types of games. As with our goals, the time horizon is also pivotal here. I was inspired by the thinking of James Carse (and later Simon Sinek), who suggested that the games we play in life are either FINITE or INFINITE. When most of us think of games, we consider them to be finite. That’s how they are designed. They are measured. Constrained. They have certain rules and the objective of the game is to win or lose. That is what makes the game fun. However, we also have many other really important games in life that are not quite as finite. They check some of the boxes of a traditional “game”: action, planning, strategy, and achievement shared between several players. Friendship, marriage, leadership, art, or farming could all be thought of as games – as hard as we may try, those are not games we can “win.”
I believe that the world of politics and business, as well as other institutions such as healthcare and education, are playing too much of a finite game. The goalposts are too close together. We would all be better off if decision-makers stepped off that field and started playing a more sustainable and infinite game, where the goal was to improve the system rather than score short-term points.
Think about the things you value the most. Are those "things" really a result of a game where you won or lost? I doubt it. Do you really "win" when cooking a great meal for your close friends or family? Do you “win" in the game of love? Do you really know if you are “winning” when you raise your children and (hopefully) ultimately get to witness them reaching their full potential? These triumphs in life are far sweeter than any “win” could ever be.
This infinite attitude is what defines mastery. The famed sushi chef Jiro exudes this kind of infinite game playing. He achieved his mastery by never declaring any particular victory. He constantly pushes the envelope and finds new unchartered territories. So do the most successful people in almost any field. They are never done. They are on a journey to perfect their craft. Winning, to them, if there is such a thing, is the joy and benefit of waking up another day still able to keep playing the game they are in love with playing. As it turns out, for the really important games in life, the goal is to keep playing. Not winning.
Here are some deep dives, short and long, in the world of infinite and finite games:
Simon Sinek wrote a book in response to an older book on the two types of games: here is a short 3 min video on why he wrote that book.
Here is a great podcast with Bréne Brown interviewing Simon Sinek on the concept of infinite games. (Thank you to my daughter Alex who turned me on to this one.)
Here is the original book by James Carse and here is Simon Sinek's book on the same topic.
On Capitalism, this is a good one by Dominic Barton, former head of McKinsey who wrote in HBR in 2011 about Capitalism for the Long Term.
And finally, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman's TED talk about the experiencing and remembering self. The notion that we can be happy "in our lives" and also happy "with our lives" and why it's easy to get confused about what happiness truly is about.
I will end with a quote from my dear friend, Charles Handy, who always has been such a source of inspiration and encouragement. Early on in my life, he convinced me that my emerging beliefs around a long-term world weren't entirely crazy. Without him, I might have changed my beliefs or gone mad. Or both! So, thank you, Charles.
“Set your sights on immortality, or as close to it as you can get, and most of the ethical dilemmas sort themselves out. But that requires leaders to think beyond their own demise. The men who designed and laid the first stones of the great cathedrals of the middle ages knew that they would never see them finished, yet they built them to last forever as the symbols of their belief. Today the skyscrapers of business tower over the old cathedrals. We must hope that those who build the enterprises within them are cathedral builders in their turn, for if they fail us then we all fail. Sadly, or perhaps not, we cannot legislate for cathedral thinking. It has, like all ethics, to be a matter of belief.”
— CHARLES HANDY, FROM FINANCIAL TIMES ON ETHICAL BUSINESS 1998
Time to change our game? Who's in?
