Finite and Infinite Games
This book was written back in 2011 but I found it and read it this year. It has been used in game theory and the concepts put into action in many video games. The concepts are transferable to business and when I heard Simon Sinek refer to the book on a podcast I put it on my kindle. While finite games are externally defined, infinite games are internally defined. The time of an infinite game is not world time, but time created within the play itself. There is no finite game unless the players freely choose to play it. No one can play who is forced to play. It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play.
“The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes” (Proust).
Artistry can be found anywhere; indeed, it can only be found anywhere. One must be surprised by it. It cannot be looked for. We do not watch artists to see what they do, but watch what persons do and discover the artistry in it.
“Nature has no outline. Imagination has” (Blake).
For the connection of the book to the business world, Simon Sinek has a great talk that is worth watching.
Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a garden’s existence, but only a phase of it. As any gardener knows, the vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest. It simply takes another form. Gardens do not “die” in the winter but quietly prepare for another season.
But what resounds most deeply in the life of Copernicus is the journey that made knowledge possible and not the knowledge that made the journey successful.
A bell resonates, a cannon amplifies. We listen to the bell, we are silenced by the cannon. When a single voice is sufficiently amplified, it becomes a speaking that makes it impossible for any other voices to be heard. We do not listen to a loudspeaker for what is being said, but only because it is all that is being said.
After reading this and Simon's book I do agree that for me, business is an infinite game. It has helped me to understand why I get frustrated by some in my work. In my view a launch, a client deliverable is just a chapter in a larger story. I find it frustrating when others on teams with me have a finite mindset and approach the client, the project, the deliverable as all that there is and once it is delivered they are done. In my mind, I am like, yes we did need to deliver that, but we are not done. We still want to follow up, make sure they get the value, or use the thing we delivered. The mental models explained in this book help me to frame their approach and understand where they are coming from.
