The Infinite Game

by | Feb 18, 2020 | Book Club Series

This post is part of my Book Club Series where I share what I’m reading with you. I’m highlighting the “oh my god, you’ve got to read this!” books. These are the ones that I’ve been recommending to clients, friends, and anyone I’ve spoken to while reading the book. I have even been known to buy extra copies and given them to people. These books are great.

Start with Why

In this video I talk about the compelling reason to invest time in reading this book. There’s just one thing, but it’s a big one.

Hi my name is Amber Rahim and I help companies and people with retention challenges. Retention in your own life and engagement in it but also at work and in your career.

I have a book club series where I share and recommend the books that I’ve been reading, and I really think “Oh my god, you’ve got to read this.” I’ve been recommending them to clients and friends and anybody that I come across that I think you’d really get something out of it.

This video is about this book. It’s Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game.  In this video, I’m not going to tell you what the infinite game is, because if you really want to get a good short description of what the infinite game is, and what it can do for you – go to the source, go to YouTube, put in the search term simon sinek infinite game and he can tell you, because this is his thing, and I’m not going to give you a second rate version of it.

What I do want to share with is – why should you even care about an infinite game. That comes from a quote that is really early on in the book.  There’s a bit of a fact that he shares, that I think is relevant for why you might want to pick up this book, or at least go to the videos that he has published where he talks about the infinite game.

What he said is that a finite leadership model has become a modern standard in a business, and that’s been there for around 40 years.  At the same time as this has happened, the lifespan of companies appears to be getting shorter and shorter.

According to a study by McKinsey, the average lifespan of an SNP500 company has dropped over the 40 years since the 1950’s.  So, where we used to have companies with an average of 61 years, now the average lifespan of a company is only 18 years.

Now, I’ve been developing my own business for the last 8 years, and I’ve worked in large and small corporations. We don’t want to be around for just 18 years, we want to be around for the long term.

Yet there’s a mindset and thinking, and an approach that we’ve taken to business since about 40 years ago, where we’ve started to do things across the board in business that means that our companies don’t stay around for so long.

To mean, that’s a reason. If you’re going to pick up a book, if you’re in business for yourself or as part of a large organization, and you get to do any decision making then I say read this book. It’s going to change the way that you do business.

Tell me what you think, tell me what you think is great about it, tell what you think is rubbish and you wouldn’t do it. I really want to have a conversation about it. This is the reason that I would recommend this book.

If you want to discuss the book, add a comment and connect.

Want to be first in the know?

Sign up here to receive the latest blog posts straight to your inbox