Notes and Takeaways from The Infinite Game
Source: Amazon
When I read it: September 2020
Why I read it: I first discovered Simon Sinek’s concept of The Infinite Game via a video in December 2019. The points made in The Infinite Game help explain many of the challenges I faced as the CEO of my last company. Ironically, prior to discovering this book and concept, my friend Tyler and I started a podcast with a focus on a similar theme: building companies that are meant to last. It’s literally called Startup to Last. This book has provided me with some new words (and justification) to help explain why building a company to last is so important to me. I hope these notes help you explore the possibility of adopting an infinite mindset as well.
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Source: SimonSinek.com
My notes
About Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek is an American author and motivational speaker. He is the author of five books, including Start With Why (2009) and The Infinite Game (2019).
About The Infinite Game
Sinek wrote this book to rally those who are ready to challenge the status quo of shareholder supremacy. He thinks we need a new model that is focused on fulfilling our human needs to feel safe, contribute to something bigger than ourselves, and provide for ourselves and our families.
Victory vs fulfillment
The path to victory is finite. The path to fulfillment is infinite. To live a life for fulfillment is to live as if there is no finish line.
Infinite thinking
Humans have benefited from infinite thinking throughout history. Infinite thinking happens when large groups of people unite under a common cause and choose to collaborate without an end in sight. Examples include space exploration, scientific advancement, and societal development.
Infinite thinking is not easy. We default to a mindset of “finite thinking” and tend to see the world in terms of short-term wins and losses.
Finite thinking is what is wrong with most organizations today.
Finite thinking leads to mass layouts, arbitrary projections, cutthroat work environments, unethical behavior, and shareholder supremacy.
Great leaders think beyond “short term” vs “long term”. They set up their organizations to succeed beyond their tenure and lifetimes, which ends up being better for everyone over time, including shareholders.
Finite and infinite games
There are two kinds of games: finite games and infinite games. See my article on this subject here.
Finite games are played by known players, have fixed rules, and contain an agreed-upon agreed-upon objective that, when reached, ends the game. Basketball is an example of a finite game.
Infinite games are played by unknown players, have no exact or agreed-upon rules, and have an infinite time horizon. There is no finish line. The objective, instead, is to keep playing, stay in the game as long as possible, and perpetuate the game. (Note: there may be conventions or laws that govern players, but the players can break them if they want). Education is an example of an infinite game.
(Note: Read Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse, for more on this subject.)
Infinite games are all around us.
There is no such thing as winning your education, career, or life. Infinite games are journeys, not events.
We often have the wrong mindset
Most of the games we play are infinite, and they require an infinite mindset. But we often approach these games with a finite mindset and try to win. Over time, this finite-mindedness erodes trust, cooperation, and innovation.
We don’t get to choose whether a game is finite or infinite. We do get to choose whether or not we want to join the game. If we play a game, we do get to choose our mindset.
We are more likely to survive and thrive if we play for the game we are in. If we join a finite game, it deserves a finite mindset. If we join an infinite game, it deserves an infinite mindset.
Whatever mindset you choose to play, be honest with yourself and those around you. It affects who you will do business with (investors, employees, customers, etc.).
Business is an infinite game
You cannot win the game of business. The game is never over and a winner is never declared. In the game of business, we may or may not know all the other players. Players can join and leave the game as they desire. Each player determines his or her own strategy. There are no fixed rules to which everyone has agreed (other than the law, which can vary from country to country, and which can be broken if a player is willing to face the consequences).
Sure, companies say they are “winning”, but that is based on their own “made up” definition of, and time frames for, winning.
In business, players drop out of the game when they run out of the will or resources to keep playing.
Will is intangible and hard to measure. It’s the sum of all the human elements (e.g. morale, motivation, inspiration, and commitment) that contribute to the health of an organization. Will comes from the feeling people have when they come to work. Money can’t buy will. Will is intrinsic. Will is generated by an organization’s culture.
Resources are tangible and easily measured. They’re the sum of all the financial elements (e.g. revenue, EBITDA, and cash) that contribute to the health of an organization. Resources come from outside sources including customers and investors.
The goal of business is to keep playing. So, success equates to building an organization that is strong enough and healthy enough to stay in the game forever. That is, ensuring the organization has the will and resources to keep playing infinitely.
The infinite-minded question around culture is “how do I create an environment in which my people can be their best?” The answer is to prioritize will over resources.
Finite vs infinite leadership
Finite leaders have a bias toward prioritizing resources over will. They prioritize the short term over the long term. When resources aren’t available, they do layoffs. When resources are available, they invest them in growth.
A finite-minded leader plays to end the game. They make every plan and every move with winning in mind.
A finite-minded leader makes decisions primarily for the benefit of themselves. They ask “what is best for me?”
A finite-minded player does not like surprises / they fear any kind of disruption ⇒ they do not like things they cannot predict or control as change threatens their chance of winning.
Infinite leaders have a bias toward prioritizing will over resources. They put people before profit as often as possible. Instead of layoffs, they explore other ways to save money and ask the group to share in the suffering. Instead of investing in growth, they save money to create safeguards.
An infinite-minded leader works to ensure their employees, customers, and shareholders remain inspired to continue to contribute to the organization. They want to leave the organization in better shape than they found it
An infinite-minded leader leads to keep leading. They focus on what is best for stakeholders by asking “what is best for them?”
There are many downsides to finite-mindedness in business
First, finite thinking increases the risk you will no longer be able to play the game. When you play to win, you are more likely to run out of both the will and resources required to keep playing.
Second, finite thinking sabotages the organization’s culture over time. When you prioritize winning over culture, it leads to a decrease in trust, cooperation, and innovation that makes it difficult for an entity to survive.
Third, finite thinking leads to finite goals which can result in prioritizing the urgent over the important.
For example, finite leadership often results in the following results:
Reducing investment in R&D
Extreme cost-cutting (e.g. regular layoffs, cheaper ingredients, corner-cutting on quality)
Growth through acquisition
Stock buybacks
Reactive decision-making based on competition
Impact on culture
A desire to win at all costs negatively impacts organizational culture. People start to realize they’re not safe, so they prioritize self-preservation. They might hoard information, hide mistakes, and avoid risk-taking. This creates a vicious cycle where people stop trusting each other, which leads to a decline in cooperation, and eventually innovation.
Examples of finite-mindedness
In the Vietnam War, the U.S. won every battle and still “lost” the war. The U.S. was playing to win. The Vietnamese were playing an infinite game with an infinite mindset. They were playing to protect their way of life and eventually, they exhausted the U.S.’s will and resources to play the game, and the U.S. quit playing.
According to Simon Sinek, Steve Balmer is an example of a finite-minded leader. He defined his success based on the metrics he selected within the time frame of his tenure as CEO of Microsoft.
Finite-minded leadership is the current standard
Over the last three or four decades, finite-minded leadership has become the standard in business. Finite-minded leadership is embraced by Wall Street and taught in business schools.
Most leaders today are building companies that are not made to last. According to a McKinsey Study, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has decreased 40 years from an average of 61 years in the 1950s to less than 18 years in the 2010s.
Milton Friedman
Today’s finite-mindedness can be traced back to the philosophies of Milton Friedman.
In a 1970 article, Friedman laid out the foundation for the theory of “shareholder supremacy” that is at the heart of today’s finite thinking:
“In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.”
“There is one and only one social responsibility of business, to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud”
According to Friedman, the sole purpose of a business is to make money and that money belongs to the shareholders. Sinek argues this is one-dimensional and overly simplified. What about doing “what is right”?
Capitalism before Friedman
Adam Smith, the father of economics, is more infinite-minded. He wrote in The Wealth of Nations:
“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the customer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system, the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce ”
In other words, the company’s interests should always be secondary to the interest of the consumer. Smith recognized that it was human nature for people to act to advance their own self-interests. He called this the “invisible hand” and suggested it benefits consumers, but he did not imagine a world in which shareholder supremacy would take over.
Prior to shareholder supremacy, U.S. companies allowed average Americans to share in investment opportunities and enjoy good returns. As a result, it was common for people to work a lifetime for one company. The company took care of them and vice versa. Trust, pride, and loyalty flowed both ways.)
The Glass-Steagall Act was passed after the 1929 stock market crash that led to the great depression. It was introduced to curb the finite-minded corporate behaviors that lead to unstable markets. There had been no stock market crashes until the 1980s and 90s when the act was basically gutted. Since the gutting, we have had three crashes: Black Monday in 1987, the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, and the financial crisis of 2008.
Capitalism today
The capitalism we practice today is more like “abuse” of capitalism. We’re misusing the term. We aren’t focused on what’s best for the consumer and we aren’t focused on all stakeholders. Companies exist to advance something; to enhance our lives in some way. Capitalism is about progress and prosperity. Not just prosperity.
The rise of CEO pay and share buybacks are examples of capitalism abuse.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1978, the average CEO made roughly 30 times the average worker’s salary. By 2016, this increased to 271 times the average worker’s salary. CEOs are paid 950% more today while workers are only being paid 11% more.
In The Shareholder Value Myth, Doctor Lynn Stout wrote:
“If 80 percent of the CEO’s pay is based on what the share price is going to do next year, he or she is going to do their best to make sure that share price goes up, even if the consequences might be harmful to employees, to customers, to society, to the environment or even to the corporation itself in the long-term.”
Buybacks are often used to temporarily increase demand for the company’s stock and drive the price up.
Today, leaders are incentivized to play with a finite mindset
Finite-mindedness is rewarded while infinite-mindedness often is not.
What’s ironic is that finite-mindedness often destroys long-term value. Short-term thinking in business is like chopping down the tree to get the cherries vs. harvesting them thoughtfully.
Venture capital and private equity firms are flawed. To make money, they have to sell their companies. The pressure investors exert on the company to do things in the name of finite objectives is often devastating to the long-term prospects of the company. VCs and private equity investors often claim they’re different until it’s time to sell.
The drive for billion-dollar valuations is NOT indicative of a healthy company that is built to last ⇒ it is a standard that has evolved thanks to the venture capital industry ⇒ increased revenue leads to increased valuations which is how VCs make money.
Constant growth is not a requirement
There is no rule that says constant or high-speed growth is a requirement to build a company that can last. Growth is an adjustable variable, not an end goal.
When growth becomes the end goal, it results in finite-mindedness which often results in an unhealthy culture of distrust with low levels of cooperation and innovation.
The goals that “growth” companies put forward tend to be arbitrary or overly ambitious, especially in the startup world.
A strong culture and the ability to fund its own existence (profitability) is how a company gets built to last.
Most shareholders don’t act like owners
Today’s shareholders don’t act like owners at all. Consider how we treat a car we own versus a car we rent. Today’s shareholders don’t act like business owners. They act like business renters.
If they were owners, they would follow Adam Smith’s philosophies and help their companies make the best possible product, offer the best possible service, and build the strongest possible company. Instead, they are traders playing a game of cards. They use the stock market as a tool in their finite game.
Stop thinking about shareholders as owners. Instead, think of them as contributors. They contribute money, while employees contribute time and energy. You need both contributions and both parties should be rewarded fairly after ensuring the primary benefits goes to the consumer.
Employees want change
Today, it is the employee who bears the most cost for the money their companies and their leaders make. They are the ones who get laid off; they are the ones who live in fear; they are the ones who feel their employers don’t see them as human beings. People want to be treated fairly and share in the wealth they helped produce.
This is why the populist voice is growing. It has become more socially acceptable to challenge the way we are doing things in America, including Friedman’s capitalism. Current examples of challenges to Friedman’s model include:
The stakeholder model
B-corps
Triple bottom line
Adopting an infinite mindset
In an infinite game, consistency is more important than intensity. You don’t know when you will see results, but you know you will eventually. The habits we adopt are more important than hitting the goal by the arbitrary dates we set.
Maintaining an infinite mindset is hard. We will stray from the path because we are human. Finite games are seductive. They can be fun, exciting, and addictive. Winning is like a shot of dopamine. Sometimes greed, fear, ambition, ignorance, external pressure, competing interests, and ego will get the best of us.
An infinite mindset leads to resilience, not stability. Resilience and stability are not the same.
Stability comes from being structured to remain the same. Stability is about weathering storms and remaining the same afterward. With stability, change is a thread to be weathered.
Resilience comes from being structured to last forever. Resilience is about embracing surprises and change and adapting with them. It is not about weathering storms, it’s about being transformed by them. With resilience, change is an opportunity to be seized.
According to Simon Sinek, if you want to adopt an infinite mindset, follow these five practices:
Advance a Just Cause. A just cause is a vision of a future state that is so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices in order to help advance toward that vision. “Winning” provides a temporary boost to our self-confidence, to get that feeling we need to win again. With a just cause, the need to win goes away because we are motivated by a larger purpose.
Build Trusting Teams. When we work on a trusting team, we feel safe to express vulnerability. We feel safe raising our hands and admitting we’ve made a mistake. We feel safe being honest about shortfalls in performance. We feel safe taking responsibility for our behavior and asking for help. When we are not on a trusting team, we feel the opposite.
Study your Worthy Rivals. A competitive mindset leads to a winning mindset, which leads to a finite mindset. In an infinite game, other players are not competition to be beaten. They are worthy rivals who can help us become better.
Prepare for Existential Flexibility. Infinite-minded players expect surprises and are prepared to be transformed by them. They embrace the freedom of play and are open to all possibilities that keep them in the game and the game going.
Demonstrate the Courage to Lead. The pressure we all face today to maintain a finite mindset is overwhelming. Most people’s careers are tied to how well they perform in a finite game. It takes courage to adopt an infinite mindset.
1. Advance a Just Cause
A just cause must answer the following question: What is the infinite and lasting vision that our goals will help advance? It should constrain us and focuses us by providing the context for all our other goals and finite achievements. The just cause dictates the business model, not the other way around.
The CEO is the keeper of the cause. It’s the CEO's job to ensure that all stakeholders clearly understand the just cause and direct efforts to advance it. Larry Fink, founder of BlackRock wrote the following in his open letter, A Sense of Purpose:
“Without a sense of purpose, no company, either public or private, can achieve its full potential. It will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders. It will succumb to short-term pressures to distribute earnings, and, in the process, sacrifice investments in employee development, innovation, and capital expenditures that are necessary for long-term growth.
A just cause is not the same as a “why”. A why is an origin story from the past while a just cause is a vision of the future we hope to live in and we are committed to helping build. It’s an imaginative future state.
Everyone has a unique “why”, but not everyone needs a unique just cause. A just cause gives our work and lives meaning. It inspires us to stay focused beyond finite rewards and wins; it inspires us to keep playing.
A cause is “just” when we commit to it with the confidence that others will carry on our legacy.
A just cause is a vision of a future state that is so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices in order to help advance toward that vision. “Winning” provides a temporary boost to our self-confidence, to get that feeling we need to win again. With a just cause, the need to win goes away because we are motivated by a larger purpose.
Most mission and vision statements do not qualify as just causes. They often don’t offer us a worthy cause or a specific vision of a future state that does not already exist.
A just cause must be for something, inclusive, service-oriented, resilient, and idealistic.
A just cause is for something if it’s affirmative and optimistic about something we stand for and believe in. It shouldn’t be focused on something we oppose. A just cause is deeply personal to those who hear it and adopt it. The more personal it is the more effective it is. (Being for something is about being inspired while being against something is about vilifying and rejecting. Being for something is infinite while being against something is finite.)
A just cause is inclusive if it is open to all those who would like to contribute. It should inspire others who share a passion for the cause to offer resources to help advance the cause. (Human beings want to feel part of something. We crave belonging.)
A just cause is service-oriented if it is for the primary benefit of others. The primary benefit of the organization’s contributions must always go to people other than the contributors themselves. This does not mean charity, it just means the majority of the benefit must go to the receiver. In other words, the advancement of the just cause must be priority one. “Making money to do good” is not the same as “do good making money”. The order in which you present information often reveals your actual priorities and focus. Words matter; they give direction and meaning to things. (For example, Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a “dream”. He didn’t say he had a “plan”.)
A just cause is resilient if it is able to endure political, technological, and cultural change. It must be bigger than your product or services so that it can endure change. It must have permanence, durability, and timelessness. (For example, don’t be a seller of CDs when you can be a sharer of music. Music is resilient. CDs are not.)
A just cause is idealistic if it is big, bold, and ultimately unachievable. It will never be fully realized. No matter how much you achieve, you will always have further to go.
We fail to create just causes for some common reasons. Sometimes we adopt a false cause by accident because we struggle to find the words to describe what they imagine for the future. Other times we adopt a false cause intentionally because we want people to believe we are cause-driven when we are not. And sometimes we confuse moon shots and BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) for just causes when in reality they are just inspiring finite goals.
Growing and being the best at something are not just causes. Money is the fuel to advance a cause, it is not a cause itself. The reason to grow is so that we have more fuel to advance the cause. Growth is not the end goal.
Examples of just causes:
Nikolai Vavilov devoted his life to the study and improvement of wheat, corn, and other cereal crops that sustain the global population. He had a vision of a world in which humanity will always have a source of food, ensuring that we can survive as long as possible. Thanks to his work, seed banks are a big deal today.
Bill Gates has a just cause “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
Sam Walton had a just cause. “If we work together, we’ll lower the cost of living for everyone… we’ll give the world an opportunity to see what it’s like to save and have a better life.”
The Declaration of Independence is a just cause. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” America’s just cause has yet to be fully realized, and it probably never will be. In 1865, we abolished slavery. In 1920, women received the right to vote. in 1964, we passed the Civil Rights Act. In 2015, we legalized gay marriage.
2. Build Trusting Teams
Trust is a feeling. It cannot be ordered by the team leader. To develop trust, we must feel safe expressing ourselves and being vulnerable. Trust must be continuously and actively cultivated.
The Navy SEALS evaluate candidates on these two axes: performance versus trust. Performance is about technical competence. Trust is about character. Trust is more important than performance. The high performance and low trust person is the most toxic team member. The SEALs would rather have a medium performer of high trust than high performer with low trust.
Source: The Infinite Game
We tend to measure only someone’s performance and not trust. Both low performance and low trust are fixable if the person is coachable. If they are not coachable, it’s often better to move on.
Trust leads to strong relationships, which leads to performance, which leads to increased resources. To foster trust, you need to build a system that fosters trust. This requires you to invest in leadership development. An effective leader is someone who generates the trust and cooperation that increases the likelihood his or her team will succeed more often than it fails. An effective leader puts trust before performance.
A company must provide for the protection of its people by building a culture in which employees feel psychologically safe. To be psychologically safe, team members must be able to express their feelings. You must create a safe space for people to open up. The more psychological safety you have, the better information will flow. Emotional professionalism is still required. We must be adults and act with respect, courtesy, and thoughtfulness. But this does not mean we should turn off our emotions. There is a connection between feelings and trust and there is a connection between trust and performance.
In addition to creating an environment of psychological safety, we must also model and incentivize the behavior we want to see while giving people freedom.
True trusting relationships require both parties to take a risk. But one person needs to take the first step. In an organization, taking the first step is the leader’s responsibility.
Trust is built on the back of risks. We start with small risks and build on them until we can be completely ourselves. True trust takes time to develop (and it can take some people longer than others).
As human beings, we are hardwired to protect ourselves. We avoid danger and seek safety.
When there is danger, we act from a place of fear. Fear is a powerful motivator in the short term, but it does not work in the long term. It’s unsustainable.
The best place to be is around others who we feel safe with and protected by. The most anxiety-inducing place is to be alone, where we have to protect ourselves.
Be careful prioritizing short-term performance over the long-term trust of the people. We are highly attuned social animals. We can tell the difference between genuine and ingenuine actions.
Beware of ethical fading.
Ethical fading is a condition in a culture that allows people to act in unethical ways in order to advance their own interests while falsely believing that they have not compromised their own moral principles.
Ethical fading often starts with small transgressions that, when left unchecked, continue to compound. In effect, we rationalize small moments of bad behavior to ourselves and it grows over time. This is a form of self-deception.
Euphemisms and disclaimers are two common examples. Disclaimers allow us to pass the blame to consumers for the impact of their decisions versus fulfilling our ethical responsibility. Euphemisms allow us to disassociate ourselves from the impact of decisions. For example, “enhanced interrogation” sounds much better than “torture”. The words we use to describe our reality make a difference.
Oftentimes our unethical behavior is not “illegal”, but that doesn’t make it right. Just because it’s an industry standard, it doesn't mean you should do it too.
Ethical fading can happen when a leader places excessive importance on short-term results. Be very careful about what you reward, model, and incentivize. The wrong reward can send the wrong message. And once ethical fading starts, it can snowball. The slightest transgressions can lead to bigger ethical oversights over time.
Situational variables affect our ethics. When pressure is placed (e.g. time pressure) on someone for performance, his or her will do to the right thing can diminish. Be very careful about pressuring performance.
Creating a culture of trust that is resistant to ethical fading requires patience and hard work. You may have ethical lapses, the trick is to identify them and fix them. It’s all about doing the right thing.
Police departments are an example of finite-minded organization. They are notorious for prioritizing performance over trust with tickets and arrests.
Wells Fargo provides another example. From 2011 to 2016, Wells Fargo employees opened up over 3.5 million fake bank accounts.
3. Study your Worthy Rivals
A competitive mindset leads to a winning mindset, which leads to a finite mindset. In an infinite game, other players are not competition to be beaten. They are worthy rivals who can help us become better.
A worthy rival is another player in any game you are playing that is worthy of comparison. The main requirement is that they must do something as well or better than us. We don’t need to admire them, we just need to acknowledge we can learn from them.
Worthy rivals help us see our weaknesses and push us to continuously improve. They can help keep us humble.
Worthy rivals are not competitors. A competitor forces us to take on an attitude of winning whereas a worthy rival inspires us to take on an attitude of improvement.
In an infinite game, being the best is a fool’s errand. The goal is to keep the game going and your competitors can often help you do that. Multiple players can do well at the same time and they can even help each other ensure the game persists.
Worthy rivals can also help advance your just cause. New worthy rivals entering your space can add credibility and realness to what you are doing.
In an infinite game, the goal is not to win in the overall scheme of things. The objective is to keep your will and resources strong while working to frustrate the will and exhaust the resources of the other players.
For example, Microsoft was obsessed with beating Apple, but Apple was obsessed with their just cause. Apple was trying to outdo itself.
4. Prepare for Existential Flexibility
Existential flexibility is the capacity to initiate an extreme disruption to a business model or strategic course in order to more effectively advance a just cause. It could be a shift to new technology, a new business model, or a new path.
An existential flex is always offensive. It is never defensive.
Existential flexes are driven by the just cause and inspire the people in the organization and reignite their passions.
When an existential flex happens, it is clear to all those who believe in the just cause why it has to happen. And while they may not enjoy the challenge and short-term stress such a change may cause, they all agree it is worth it and want to do it.
5. Demonstrate the Courage to Lead
The courage to lead refers to a willingness to adopt and maintain an infinite mindset. It takes courage to avoid the temptation of finite games. Playing the Infinite Game is not a checklist, it’s a mindset.
There are two ways to find the courage to lead. You can either 1) wait for a life-altering experience that challenges the way we see the world or 2) find a just cause that inspires you and commit to playing the infinite game around that just cause.
Human beings are imperfect. There is no such thing as a perfectly infinite-minded leader and there is no such thing as a perfectly infinite-minded organization.
Sometimes sacrificing goals is the right thing to do. Infinite-minded leaders are willing to sacrifice near-term gains, whereas finite-minded leaders often aren’t.
A business’s responsibilities should include three pillars: advancing a purpose, protecting people, and generating a profit. An infinite-minded leader ensures all who contribute to the just cause (e.g. customers, employees, investors, etc.) will benefit across all three pillars.
Random quotes
“When you look at the history of world economics, it was always like this. Always! And in the future, it will always be like this. It will never go only up. It will never go only down. It will go up and down and up and down... We do not think in quarters, we think in generations.” - Carl Elsener
“It can take a long time for very large companies with a finite-minded leader at the helm to exhaust the will and resources accumulated by the infinite leader that preceded them.” - Simon Sinek
“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.” - JFK
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.” - Henry Ford
“Trust is the stacking and layering of small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time. Trust and vulnerability grow together, and to betray one is to destroy both.” - Brené Brown
“The art of good leadership is the ability to look beyond the growth plan and the willingness to act prudently when something is not ready or not right, even if it means slowing things down.” —Simon Sinek