SPEAKER 1: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Talks at Google.
Our guest today describes himself
as an unshakeable optimist who believes
in a bright future and our ability to build it together.
A trained ethnographer and author
of three bestselling books, he has
discovered some remarkable patterns
that help leaders around the globe
make an impact on their organizations.
Thank you for coming, and please welcome Simon Sinek.
[APPLAUSE]
SIMON SINEK: Thanks.
So I thought I'd share with you some new stuff that I'm
working on because it's fun, and then we'll
spend most of the time just doing Q&A
because that's also fun.
So I'm working on a new book, and I've recently
become completely smitten by game theory, specifically
finite and infinite games.
In game theory, there are two types
of games-- finite and infinite games.
A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules,
and an agreed upon objective, like baseball.
We all agree to the rules.
We all agree that whoever has more runs at the end of nine
innings is the winner, and the game ends and we all go home.
Nobody ever says, if we can just play three more innings
and then we can come back from this deficit.
It doesn't happen that way.
An infinite game is defined as known and unknown players.
The rules are changeable, and the objective
is to keep the game in play to perpetuate the game.
When you pit a finite player versus a finite player,
the system is stable.
Baseball is stable.
When you hit an infinite player versus an infinite player,
the system is also stable, like the Cold War was stable
because there cannot be a winner and there cannot be a loser.
So we just try and keep the game in play.
And in infinite games, because there
are no winners and losers, what happens
is players drop out of the game when
they run out of the will or the resources to continue to play.
So technically, the United States didn't win the Cold War.
The Soviets dropped out because they ran out
of the resources or the will to continue to play.
Problems arise, however, when you
pit a finite player versus an infinite player,
because one is playing to win and the other one
is playing to keep playing.
So invariably, what happens is the finite player will always
find themselves in a quagmire.
So this was the United States and Vietnam.
The United States was fighting to win,
and the North Vietnamese were fighting to survive--
very different set of standards.
This was the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The Soviets were fighting to beet the Mujaheddin,
and the Mujaheddin would fight for as long as is necessary.
And invariably, what happens is the finite player
will find themselves in a quagmire
until they drop out of the game and leave the game,
because they run out of the will or the resources
to stay in the game.
So this gets me thinking.
Let's look at business.
The game of business is an infinite game.
It obeys all the rules.
There are known and unknown players.
You don't know all the competitors, necessarily,
in one industry to another.
The rules are changeable.
We haven't all agreed what the rules are,
and there is no winning the game of business.
The game just perpetuates.
In fact, the game of business has
existed longer than every single company on the planet today,
and it will outlast every single company on the planet today.
If you look at the Dow Index, the 30-something-odd companies
that make up the Dow Index, something like 70% or 80%
of those companies are 35 years or younger.
So it gets me thinking, if you listen to the language
that companies use, they don't know what game they're in.
They talk about being number one, talk
about beating their competition, based
on what agreed upon criteria, based
on what agreed upon time frame?
Is it market share?
Is it profits?
Is it revenues?
Square footage?
Number of employees?
Over what?
One month, five months, six months, a year, five years,
10 years, the life of the company?
I haven't agreed to those rules.
And so companies can arbitrarily declare themselves
number one in anything they want if they set the standards
and the time frames.
And the only reason we do these things on annualized basis--
we tend to compare ourselves to other organizations
annually-- is only because we pay taxes annually.
If we pay taxes every 18 months, that
would be sort of the standard.
But again, we still haven't agreed what the metrics
are to be number one.
That means that companies that are playing the infinite game
are playing against most of the others who
are playing the finite game means those finite companies
find themselves in a quagmire.
Almost every single bankruptcy-- not almost every,
every single bankruptcy-- is a company
that's run out of the will or the resources to play.
They drop out of the game.
The game will persist.
Another company will fill their space.
It's not like the business stops or the industry ends.
And the companies that are playing the infinite game
will frustrate those finite players, which I absolutely
adore.
So I spoke at an education summit for Microsoft.
I also spoke in an education summit for Apple.
Now, I would say about 70% to 80% of the executives
at Microsoft spent about 70% to 80%
of their PowerPoints talking about how to beat Apple.
At the Apple summit, 100% of the executives
spent 100% of their presentations talking
about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn.
One was obsessed with their journey, with their vision,
with their cause.
The other one was obsessed with their competition.
Guess who's stuck in quagmire?
Guess who's frustrated by their competition?
So at the end of my talk at Microsoft, they gave me a gift.
They gave me the new Zune, when it was a thing.
And I have to tell you, this was one
of the most remarkable, beautiful pieces of technology
I've ever used.
The UI was gorgeous.
The design of the actual hardware was beautiful.
It was logical in the way I could use it.
It was intuitive.
It was absolutely fantastic.
Now, it didn't work with iTunes, which means I couldn't use it.
That's a different problem altogether,
but this was a magical piece of technology.
So at the end of my talk at Apple,
I'm sharing a cab with one of the senior Apple executives,
sort of an employee number 12 kind of guy,
and I decide to stir the pot.
So I turned to him and I said, you know, I spoke at Microsoft
and they gave me the new Zune and it is so much
better than your iPod Touch.
And he turns to me and he says, I have no doubt.
Conversation over.
Because the infinite player understands
sometimes your product is better and sometimes it's not.
Sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind.
The goal is not to beat your competitor.
The goal is to outlast your competitor.
What you find is that the infinite players don't actually
compete against their competition.
They compete against themselves.
The finite players are the ones who
wake up every day trying to beat somebody else.
The infinite players the ones who
say, how can we be a better version of ourselves,
how can we advance our metrics, how can we
make our product more refined, more beautiful
than they were last week.
It's totally fine to study our competition.
Tactically, there's nothing wrong
with knowing what our competitors are doing.
But the number of companies that study their competition
strategically blows my mind.
They look at what their competition is doing,
and they make sudden, sharp left and right turns
to change the course of their company,
based on the movement of their competition.
That's the point.
That's what wastes resources, the constant changing
of your mind, the constant going in this direction,
that direction, based on the wind of your competition--
assuming that they know what they're doing.
I find that fascinating.
And the number of companies that play finite
is the vast, vast, vast majority.
So it begs the question, how does one
play the infinite game?
How does one build an organization constructed
for the infinite game?
So up here, you have the infinite game.
This is where the why exists.
I talk about the why-- the purpose, cause, or belief--
about the organization.
This is where our values lie.
These are never-changing.
They are permanent.
They will outlast all of us, and they should outlast--
they've been here from the birth of the company,
and they should last the length of the company.
The infinite stuff, the why stuff and the value stuff,
is inherently intangible, and it's inherently difficult
to measure.
Now, down here you have the finite game,
and this is where our interests lie.
This is where what I would call your "whats" lie.
This is where our products lie and things like that.
It is inherently tangible and inherently very easy
to measure.
Now, the goal is to run all decisions through our values,
through our purpose or cause first, and then
through our interests.
So what is a values-based decision?
What does that even look like?
So here's a values-based decision.
When our military goes into battle and we shoot a bad guy,
we will take their injured body.
We will send our medics onto the battlefield
to rescue the injured body of our enemy.
We will put them on our helicopters,
fly them to our hospitals, put them in our hospital beds.
Our doctors will use our medicine
to nurse them back to health.
That is not in our interest.
However, that's kind of who we are.
It's what defines us.
In other words, we're wasting our resources
because our values are more important than saving
those resources, doing something purely in our interests.
It's like torture.
The reason torture was done offshore
and the reason we tried to keep it a secret
is because everybody kind of knew it violated our values.
Because if we were totally fine with it,
everybody would be like, just do it here, it's totally fine.
Why not somewhere in Wyoming?
And that's the point.
So great organizations are making values-based decisions
all the time, and then our interests come into play.
But the problem is when you're playing the finite,
these things get ignored, and every time we
make a decision we decide what we do in a vacuum.
So your competitor comes out with a new product.
How do we react?
Quickly, come out with something similar.
What's going on with the marketplace,
and make some other reaction.
What's going on in this particular country?
And every single decision we make in a vacuum
seems perfectly good.
We're making rational decisions based on our interests.
The problem is when we pull back and look
at all of the decisions, all the people we've
hired, this is what happens when you only hire people based
on their resumes, for example.
Smart guy-- get that person on board.
When you pull back, your culture is a mess,
and nobody knows what you stand for.
The whole idea of making values-based decisions
is we can look at almost all of the decisions.
Every now and then one can go sideways.
But we look at all the decisions--
the people you hire, the things you do,
the things you believe in, the things you stand for, anything
tangible--
and we can say of you or your organization,
I know what you stand for.
I believe what you believe.
I would like to be a part of your organization.
I'd like to buy from your organization.
This is where loyalty lies.
But the only way we can judge each other is down here.
It's like human beings.
We want our friends to act and speak and do the things based
on who they are.
We want our friends to be-- you know that word that's always
thrown about-- authentic, which means saying and doing
the things we actually believe.
That's what we mean.
And the reason is because we want to know who they are.
We want them to be predictable.
I can't see anybody.
Can we turn the lights back on?
Was that better for you?
Oh, sorry.
But now you can fall asleep, because I can't see.
But that's the idea.
That's the idea.
So this is what I'm doing.
I've become fascinated by this game theory stuff,
and I'm running it through all kinds of scenarios.
I'm looking at relationships, I'm looking at business,
I'm looking at politics, I'm looking at war and nation
states and how this plays out in the real world.
Because the game is the game.
We don't get to change the rules.
Of course, there are always finite games
within the infinite.
It's the difference between a goal and a vision.
A goal is 26.2 miles.
Count the metrics, count the mile
markers, and when you reach the goal the game ends.
It's over.
The vision is having a crystal clear sense of what the finish
line looks like far from the distance,
but having no idea how far away it is--
so far away that for all practical purposes
we'll never get there.
Take the United States, the Declaration of Independence.
Here is a nation who declared why we needed our own country.
And it didn't start off by complaining or griping
about the King and Great Britain.
It started off with an ideal.
We believe that all men are created equal, that all of us
are endowed with certain, unalienable rights,
amongst which include life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
We'll never actually get there, but the goal
is that we will die trying.
And within that infinite contest,
there are many finite games that we
hope to advance that infinite contest or even
little infinite games within that, like civil rights.
We've never actually reached the point
where we have perfect civil rights,
but we'll continue to get better and better and better.
That's the point.
It's constant refinement.
It's kaizen.
It's no matter how good we do, we can always do better.
But the goal is we have a North Star.
We have a thing to point us in the direction.
It's not random.
So in the United States, we have civil rights
or women's suffrage or gay rights or education
for everyone or health care for everyone.
What form it takes, it's our way of trying
to get closer and closer and closer to the ideal
upon which the nation was founded.
I wish all organizations-- they don't have to be nation states.
I wish all organizations did the same thing-- operated not
just in their interests, but also
have a sense of code or values and a sense of purpose
and vision.
It matters.
Because we want to stand for something.
We want to work for something.
We want all of our hard work, the products we produce,
everything, we want it to count towards something,
not simply be against something or make something
in the short term.
I see this so often with senior executives,
with people who are making more money than they've ever made.
They have more power and influence
than they've ever had.
And yet later on in their careers,
they don't feel as successful as they
did when they were a junior.
When we're junior, the first promotion we get,
the first raise we get, the first bonus we get,
the first client we win, whatever it is,
it's all very exciting.
We're living down here and everything's very exciting.
But after you've had a bunch of bonuses
and you've won a bunch of clients
and you've had a bunch of product releases
and a bunch of promotions, it's exciting for a little bit.
Go out for a nice dinner with your family.
That's about it, and then it wears off.
And so what starts to happen is our work no longer
feels like it has any sense of purpose,
and so we default back to when we were young.
We thought, well, when I won the client, win more clients.
And when I reach $1 million dollars,
get more millions of dollars.
That gave me the feeling the first time.
You'll get with the feeling again.
It doesn't.
That's like winning one marathon,
thinking it's amazing.
You keep running marathons for the rest of your life,
and at some point you're like, why am
I running all these marathons?
They have to contribute to something.
So I'm fascinated by the companies that
play the infinite game, because inherently they
frustrate their competition.
For years, Apple frustrated Microsoft, especially when
it was run by Steve Ballmer.
He was a guy who ran the company based on interests alone
versus competing against an organization that
was doing something bigger--
Costco versus Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines
versus everybody, organizations that seem to not care about
what Wall Street thinks about the quarter of the year.
And when you listen to the language of people
like Jim Senegal, who's the founder of Costco, he says,
I don't care about Wall Street.
Wall Street's worried about how my company does in a month
or in a year.
I care about what my company does for the next 50 years.
That's the company I'm building.
You listen to the language--
ones who are focused on teaching kids how to learn
and helping teachers how to teach,
versus how to beat our competition.
It makes for a much more fulfilling life,
and it makes for a much more realistic existence.
When your competition is slightly ahead,
you think that's OK.
I can't stay ahead forever based on some arbitrary
metrics, anyway.
So that's what I'm working on.
I think it's fun.
I think it's interesting.
We made some changes even in the way
we do business based on this.
We become more infinitely organized,
which means we are much more interested in trends
than we are in absolutes.
Because absolutes exist down here, but ongoing
exists up here.
So for example, let's say you will
get a bonus if you hit a certain target by a certain date.
That target is arbitrary.
That date is arbitrary.
Somebody made it up.
That's how most of our bonus structures are built--
on arbitrary numbers on arbitrary dates.
And let's say that that person is doing good work
and building good systems, but they miss the target.
They miss the number.
But if you were to pull back and look at how they've been doing,
and you see this beautiful steady line,
we can see that they're doing good work, that they're
building good systems.
There's huge stability there.
They just miss the arbitrary number on the arbitrary date.
Give that person a bonus, because we
want that person to continue building those systems.
And the odds are they're probably
at the number two or three months later, which
is totally fine because then it's going to grow, grow,
and grow, versus the person who stabs people in the back,
plays politics.
Their performance looks like this.
There's no stability.
It's all over the place.
They happen to meet the number on an arbitrary date.
Give that person a bonus?
Why?
They're breaking the company along the way.
The point is the finite player only looks
at these discrete moments in time,
and the infinite player is much more preoccupied
with the trend of things.
So in our business, we become absolutely
preoccupied with the trend.
There are some projects that we've
wanted to implement that I wish took a year
and they took years.
And it doesn't matter how much I say,
I want it done at the end of--
we missed it.
But you know what?
We were building good systems along the way.
We just missed a prediction.
And the result is we have much better systems, much better
product, and much more motivated by it
because nobody was penalized for missing arbitrary numbers
on arbitrary dates.
So I'm learning how to build and run
a business for the infinite.
When somebody asked me recently in an interview
about my competition, like how do I
compete against the people in my space, the answer is, what--
competing against what?
What am I competing for?
Like, am I going to compare how many views on TED
or how many book sales or how much my personal income is
or how much my corporate income is?
What's the arbitrary standard?
Because I can be ahead on some metrics and behind on others.
I can drive myself crazy or it can be really proud of myself.
Worse, I'm choosing who my competitive set is.
But the competitor set is way larger than I can imagine.
I love it when the networks declare
that they're number one.
You do realize they're only comparing themselves
to the few other networks that they
want to compare themselves.
NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox compare themselves to each other.
They ignore Netflix, Hulu, HBO, YouTube, and the rest of them.
But that's the point.
If you can make your own competitive set,
you will be number one.
Everybody will have their day in the sun.
I get a kick out of that.
So especially for an organization like YouTube,
the question is, who's your competition?
The competition is yourself.
Wish everybody the best of luck.
Let them make their own metrics.
Let them declare themselves number one.
Who cares?
They'll fall out of the game before you.
That's the goal.
Should we do some questions?
AUDIENCE: I think everything you just
said is really interesting, and it
hits on something I've been wondering
about for a long time.
Here at Google, we have a phenomenal set of benefits,
and I think it's no argument that we're
looked to as a leader in kind of creating the utopian
workplace for the smart, creative,
or whatever terms you want to apply to it.
And it seems congruent in a lot of ways--
the original founders' message with this infinite game
and everything you're describing.
But I wonder, is this a luxury that we
happen to have because we're such a phenomenally
profitable company that we can provide
all these luxurious benefits and all these things?
And you look at some of these other companies that maybe
don't have the luxury of those of these thick profit margins,
and they can't afford to play the infinite game.
And they're focused on being tactical.
SIMON SINEK: No, no, they can't afford
to play a strong finite game.
They can absolutely play the infinite game.
So if it was based on your logic,
every single company that's under-resourced
would never make it, which is just not the case.
And people aren't loyal to free lunch.
I mean, some people are.
And you see this in the tech space
so much, which is people claim, oh, I
want to work for a place with purpose and make a difference.
They claim they're looking for this,
but the reality is they really like free lunch.
And the other company didn't have free lunch,
so I'm going to take this one because they have free lunch.
In other words, they went for the rich company,
which may last if the company's also an infinite player.
But if they're just a finite player,
it's going to run out at some point.
Because when the company starts to struggle,
guess what things they'll start cutting?
And like you have, we have friends in tech companies
who don't work here who get free lunch--
and beautiful offices, flat screen TVs in every hallway,
gorgeous.
And yet they were like--
you know?
AUDIENCE: I mean, I think you're kind
of cherry-picking a few different very simple
of those benefits.
I think a lot of the things that people herald
are, for instance, long maternity benefits
or anything associated with childcare and things like that.
Maybe if you run a construction company
and you have to have people show up and lift a heavy thing,
and it's potentially dangerous and you can't give people
flexible work arrangements where they can work from home
and take their kids to daycare because you have to have
the guy driving the crane--
I begin to wonder, is it easy for us--
you, me, all of us in here that sit here and say,
oh, we want to focus on these ideals
because the industry we happen to work in
makes it easy to provide for those ideals?
SIMON SINEK: Let us not confuse feeling
like we belong and cushy.
I'm not cherry-picking.
There are many people who enjoy the benefits.
We all enjoy the benefits.
Why wouldn't we?
But does that mean that if the benefits weren't there
we would immediately quit?
AUDIENCE: I don't know.
I mean, I just--
SIMON SINEK: And so take a company like WD-40.
AUDIENCE: Sure.
SIMON SINEK: Much smaller than Google, does very well.
Their offices are kind of a dump.
The benefits they offer, they're nice to their people,
and where they can, they offer all kinds of stuff
in education, maternity stuff, and all of that stuff.
But it's not as cushy as large, huge tech companies that have
huge amounts of extra cash.
And the people who work there love working there
and will come in everyday full of gusto,
because it's the people we work with, not the stuff we get.
The stuff we get, the very point to the stuff we get, is it
runs out.
It's finite.
You have to keep injecting it.
The people we work with, that's the relationships
and the infinite component of the company.
So if you love working here, I would say that if you're loyal
and you really love it--
not like it, but love it--
I would argue that you love the people with whom you work.
And if some of the benefits were taken away for whatever reason
that you would still come to work loyally and still
love it because of the people you work with.
And if there were only people who chased benefits from
benefits to benefits-- and there are people;
that's like chasing salaries--
then there's never loyalty and there's never love.
AUDIENCE: Well, I certainly do agree with everything
you just said, but when you're talking about,
for instance, these trend lines and being
able to miss the arbitrary number--
if you're a smaller, scrappier company,
maybe you can't afford to miss these numbers, whereas we have
the luxury of this big war chest of money
that if the goal is missed by a quarter or two quarters,
or in your case these projects that took additional years,
I mean, isn't that sort of you are
able to provide for that kind of flexible timeline
because you have the tail-end of success?
SIMON SINEK: There are always finite games
within the infinite.
Of course.
AUDIENCE: That's what I was wondering about.
AUDIENCE: So my wife and I are both military vets,
and we work here at Google.
SIMON SINEK: Which force?
AUDIENCE: Army.
Army officers.
And I wanted to talk to you upon your example
about the military.
In one of your other talks, you talk about Medal
of Honor recipients.
And basically, they do these heroic things,
and they say, why did you do it?
You say in your talk, because they would have done it for me.
So that mentality is my question.
You also mentioned in military we're
willing to sacrifice ourselves for the gain of others,
but in business we're willing to sacrifice
others for our own gain.
How do you build that military mindset
in companies like here or other companies?
SIMON SINEK: Leadership.
I mean, leadership creates an environment.
And I mean, this is what I learned.
The whole concept of leaders in those lessons
that I learned from spending time with folks in uniform--
it was born out of my own experience.
I was going through a point in my career,
as my career was growing--
all of a sudden you have new friends
that I didn't have before.
And that's wonderful, and then I learned the hard way
that they weren't my friends.
They were playing me.
They wanted access or a deal or something.
And I learned it the hard way.
And so I retreated.
I was like, I want to be friends with nobody else
but the people I knew way back when, which is also
not a good way to live.
And yet simultaneously, I'm spending time
with tons of folks in the military.
In business, we have colleagues and coworkers.
In the military, you have brothers and sisters,
and that's a different kind of relationship.
And as you know, I have hugged more people in uniform
than I've ever hugged in suits.
I've cried with more people in uniform
than I've ever cried with in suits.
I've stood in the audience and listened to officers
give talks, and I've sat in the audience and cried.
I've never cried with any CEO that gave a speech ever.
So there's a different nature of relationship.
And my original conclusion was they're better people,
that the reason you get a disproportionate amount
of these kinds of behaviors is because they're better people
and better people are drawn to a life of service
in the military, which is why we find a disproportionately
high number of them there.
And the more I started to learn, the more
I realized I was completely wrong.
It's the environment.
And when the leader creates an environment in which people
feel that someone has my back, they
will do extraordinary things.
And what I learned is that courage is not
this deep down internal fortitude.
It comes externally.
It's like a trapeze artist would never
try a brand new, death-defying act unless they had a net.
The courage didn't come from the trapeze artist;
the courage came from the net.
And it's the same in the military, especially when
you're in life and death situations,
when you're in theater.
People you don't like, you still rely on to save your life,
and the reason it works is because you don't have
to look behind your shoulder.
And that mentality-- and you know better
than anybody, which is when you are deployed
into dangerous places, nobody loves deployment
but people have warm feelings towards deployment,
which is really strange.
And suicides rarely happen in combat situations.
They usually happen back home.
And it's the intensity of the relationships that
create that warmth and the sort of weird enjoyment of really
bad, uncomfortable, and dangerous circumstances.
It's because we're human beings and human beings,
as social animals, feel our safest
when we trust each other.
And good leaders are capable of producing that.
So great businesses look very much
like well-run military organizations.
There's poorly run military organizations as well.
But great businesses look exactly the same, where
the leaders give the glory.
They distribute authority.
They push it down the ranks, let people make decisions.
If they screw up, there's no risk of getting fired.
If the company misses its arbitrary projections
on its arbitrary date, we do not use the people
to balance the books.
We figure out other ways, or we even
invite the people to help solve the problems.
These are the things that produce that circle of safety
that produces the exact same outcome, where people will
love each other, cry for each other,
sacrifice for each other.
You see it in business plenty, but it always
boils down to leadership.
I mean, I can't help but talk about it.
Let's look at United Airlines, what just happened, shortly.
It's going to come up.
Usually, when things like that happen,
that is a red flag that they have a leadership problem.
It's very rare that you have something like that
just show up out of nowhere.
What that probably is is an environment
in which people are operating in a fear-based culture, where
if you don't follow the rules exactly as we've told you
you're going to get in trouble.
And the rule book says, offer them an incentive.
And then it says, if that didn't work, it says,
randomly pick people.
And then it says, if that doesn't work, call security.
I'm just following the rules.
There's no discretion, where everybody knows that's stupid.
Like when the CEO announced that we're no longer going
to forcibly remove--
like, why was that ever a policy?
That's like food companies saying, now with no chemicals.
It's like, wait, wait, wait, why were there ever chemicals?
But that's the point, which nobody has discretion.
So I was boarding a flight--
I've told this story.
I was boarding a flight, and the scene
played out in front of me, where one of the passengers
attempted to board the plane before their group number was
called.
And the gate agent literally berated him.
Sir, step aside.
I haven't called your group.
Please step aside and wait until I call your group.
So I spoke up and said, why do you
have to talk to us that way?
Why can't you talk to us like we're human beings?
And she looked me in the eye and said,
if I don't follow the rules, I could get in trouble
or lose my job.
All she revealed to me is that she doesn't feel safe
in her own company, and her leaders
do not trust her to do the job for which she
has been trained to do.
And guess who suffers?
Us and the company.
The reason we love flying Southwest Airlines
is because the company trusts them
to do the job they have been trained to do,
and they use discretion.
We don't trust people to follow the rules.
We trust people to know when to break them.
And the problem is, in a fear-based society,
people fear for their own jobs more than common sense.
That was a perfect scenario of what
happens when somebody in the company
is too afraid to break the rule, break the policy,
use discretion to find another way--
so almost predictable that something will happen,
something will break at some point.
Thanks.
How you doing?
AUDIENCE: So for some industries that we're in,
I feel like we're doing a really good job
of playing the infinite game.
We have a set of values that I feel
like we're very much trying to follow
as we come up with new products and new features.
My question is, after that's played out
for five, 10 years in some of these industries,
it's clear we're reaching some sort of maximum,
where following those values is only
going to get us so much of the market.
And even though we might not be reactively looking
to competitors to see what they're up to,
we can't help but notice that they have most of the pie--
and even though we've stuck to our guns for as far
as we can get without doing something different.
So it's of course very tempting at that point
to change and start emulating what
other people are doing to get that bigger piece of the pie.
So how much flexibility do you see
when you're playing the infinity game to change course?
SIMON SINEK: Depends on the reason
you want to increase the slice of pie.
Just because, or because you have a message
and you know that if you can get more of the pie
that message will reach and help more people?
Is it nobly pursued, or is it selfishly pursued?
And who says the time frame has to be now?
The women's suffrage movement--
pretty important.
Get the women the vote--
pretty good idea.
You know that almost all the founders of the suffrage
movement died before the first woman ever voted?
Because that's how long it took.
Took more than a lifetime for them to get it.
But the point was the pursuit, the pursuit, the pursuit.
Would they like to have had it happen in their lifetime?
Of course, of course.
Were they more preoccupied that it happened?
Absolutely.
And that's the point.
You build legacy, you build people who take that torch
and carry it without you.
So the problem is that I think vision--
here's a thing that's always boggled my mind.
Why is it unbalance, unbalance-- not always, but unbalance?
Why is it that small companies tend
to be more innovative than big companies?
Small companies that are under-resourced
can't necessarily get the best and brightest.
They're going to go out of business any day,
and yet they come up with brilliant ideas.
And big companies full of resources,
full of amazing people buy the little companies that
come up with the good ideas.
That's usually how big companies innovate.
They buy the smaller ones.
Why is that?
Why is it that the most-resourced companies
tend not to?
And I think it's a question of reality,
and what I mean by that is small companies,
their vision is more distant than their grasp.
They have delusions of grandeur.
We're going to change the world, change industries, reinvent
this, reinvent that.
We have no money and no people, but so what?
My point is the grasp is shorter than the vision.
And I think what happens is, as companies get bigger and bigger
and bigger, with more and more resources, what they start
to do is one of two things.
Either their visions become well within their grasp
and they don't readjust the vision,
or they actually bring the vision back
to put within their grasps.
Make things very achievable-- difficult, but achievable.
For a vision to truly be a vision,
it should feel unachievable.
When a small business gets together and says, here's
our vision, everybody goes like this.
How are we going to do that?
In big business, see, here's a vision.
Everybody goes, all right, no, yeah, got it.
We'll do a back plan.
We got that.
And I firmly believe that innovation
is born out of the struggle.
Innovation is born out of the resourcefulness
that you are forced to figure out
because, literally, the vision is way beyond your grasp.
Regardless of how many resources you have,
it should always feel overwhelming and impossible.
Take a group of people with tons of resources
to give the vision, they're going to go, OK.
So I think that's part of it.
I think that's part of it.
So you've been at it for five years, you've achieved a lot.
Congratulations.
So the question is, well, was the vision not big enough,
or you want more piece of the pie?
Or why not just stay in the game?
We have an obsession in America with growth, not stability--
size.
We want size and growth.
We have lists of fastest growing companies.
We have Fortune lists of biggest companies.
We don't have lists of most stable companies--
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Lehman Brothers, big companies--
Arthur Andersen, Circuit City.
Remember that one?
Right Poof, not like whoo--
like pfft.
Big, not stable.
Fast growth-- we love fast growth.
We put people's pictures on covers of magazines
and say, look, it's Groupon.
Remember that one?
Does anyone really care about Groupon anymore?
It was like copy Groupon.
They're the future-- for now.
And that's the point.
For some reason, we're obsessed with growth.
And again, it goes back to this.
Growth to what end?
Here's how I understand growth.
So you see your neighbor packing up his car
across the street from me, and you say, hey,
where are you going?
And he says, vacation.
Cool, where are you going?
He says, vacation.
You go, awesome; where are you going?
He says, vacation.
So you go, well, how you going to get there?
He says, I'm going to take Route 95,
and my goal is to drive 150 miles an hour.
That's the same as growth.
Why does your company exist?
Growth.
Awesome-- to what end?
Well, we're a business to grow.
Love it.
How are you going to do it?
Growth.
Good.
What route are you going to take?
Our goal is to increase top line revenues by 20% every year,
duh.
To what end?
And so you get on vacation.
Everybody is so proud of themselves
and smacking each other on the back
because we drove 150 miles.
We drove 180 miles.
We're above goal.
In what direction?
And we see opportunities that actually aren't good.
Somebody offers you a ride in their private jet.
You're like, ooh, quicker than a car.
Yes, except they're flying in that direction, as opposed
to somebody who knows their vision.
I want to get to California.
How you going to get there?
Route 95.
What's your goal?
150 miles a day.
And what happens if you drive 30 miles a day towards California?
That's OK.
We're going to find out how we can take better routes.
Well, what if the highway is blocked?
So you're forced to go slower, but it's OK
because you know the direction you're going in,
as opposed to firing off in all other directions.
And when somebody says, hey, I, got a private jet,
you want to fly, you go, where are you going?
Calgary.
Not interested, thank you very much.
You get my point.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, thank you.
That's very helpful.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I just wondered about Apple.
You talked about how Apple beat Microsoft at the time.
What's your observation of Apple now
they're under the leader Tim Cook after Steve Jobs?
What value do you observe, or do you still believe
that they have--
SIMON SINEK: I figure that if I let
you keep talking I don't have to answer, which is good.
So I tend not to comment on companies--
wait for it-- where the founder leaders are still there.
Because people ask me about these companies,
and the answer is, we don't really know the kind of culture
they've built until the founder leaders have left.
Because the founder leaders tend to be the personifications
of the cause, of the values.
And you can really test the quality
of the culture of a company and its stick-with-itness
and whether they truly have imbued into the company
the values first after the founder goes.
So Wal-Mart is a great example.
Wal-Mart used to be an amazing company that
was all about this, and then Sam Walton died.
And the first CEO took over.
Grew up with Sam, so he kind of got it.
And then all of a sudden it started to go sideways
because they became preoccupied with this
and they completely forgot about that.
You see their tagline?
Their tagline is save money, better life.
That's actually in the wrong order.
It should be better life, save money.
That would be a values-based decision--
one of the pieces.
So we see this all the time.
Bill Gates left, and so Microsoft went a little bit
sideways.
Then to Ballmer, but Ballmer was obsessed with this over this.
So this happens also very often when CEOs leave and replace
themselves with their CFO or COO,
because we have a flawed hierarchy in business.
We think CFO or COO is the number two job,
and many CFOs or COOs see themselves
as in line for the big job.
The problem is, it's not one and two;
it's one and A. They're completely separate skill sets.
And it's the combination-- the mom
and the dad, the visionary and the operator,
the person who sees far and the person who
knows how to get there, the person who
sees the forest, who lives above the trees,
and the person who's down in the trenches
trying to figure out their way through the trees-- it's
that magical combination that makes the business grow.
But too often, we take a visionary
and we replace them with an operator.
It happens all the time.
Mike Dell left Dell.
Mike Dell had to come back.
Howard Schultz left Starbucks, replaced himself by a COO.
Howard Schultz had to come back.
Bill Gates left.
And there was sort of talk of Bill coming back after Ballmer.
Satya was a little more like Bill.
So Tim Cook was the COO.
So the problem is we judge COOs based on what
they've done in the past.
We judge CEOs, a good visionary, based on how far they
can see in the future.
And if you look at the titles that we give people--
CMO, CIO, CTO, CEO, CFO--
in their title it says what their responsibility is.
Finance, operations, marketing.
What the hell is an executive?
Chief executive officer.
It's the only job that literally doesn't have job specs,
and it doesn't get away.
It should be CVO, chief visionary officer.
Because like I said, we judge somebody like that
by how far in the future they can see,
and we want them to work with somebody who
knows how to get them there.
These things work together, not separately.
So I have concerns about Apple, because it
is run by an operator-- good guy, smart guy who
believes in the vision.
But the problem is he sees problems
more than he sees future.
These people are huge risk takers.
These people are calculated risk takers.
And so I think we're starting to see cracks.
Does it mean the end of Apple?
No.
But we're starting to see some of the cracks.
They don't seem to be leading markets anymore.
They don't seem to be defining product categories anymore.
In fact, a few times they've been the followers.
So I make this little joke, like, your phone doesn't work.
You're like, eh, ever since Steve died.
You know?
There's politics playing out in the company.
It's weirdness.
Is the end of Apple?
I don't think so.
Of course not, but definitely it makes me interested.
AUDIENCE: I'm a weird 21st century case of somebody
for whom Google is my first and only full-time employer.
And we often-- I work in marketing--
sort of copy and paste the company's value statements
into briefs that we write in a way that
feels very mechanical and not really like,
to your earlier point, I came here
and I signed up to work for this value.
Can you speak to, at the value setting stage,
what are the kinds of questions that you
ask when you're sitting down to think
what do we really stand for?
How do I put a few words to these larger ideas?
SIMON SINEK: I'll wax philosophical.
There's no sort of answer.
So we're obsessed in our business with the movement.
We obsess about the movement.
We never ask ourselves-- literally it never comes up--
is that good for the company?
It just doesn't come up.
It does secondarily, but we want to know
if a decision we're about to make,
a product we're about to develop, something
we're about to sell--
whatever it is, we always say, is it good for the movement?
So what it does is it forces everybody
to put first the movement, this vision that we all
share in our organization.
We believe, we imagine a world in which
the vast majority of people wake up
every single morning inspired to go to work, feel safe
when they're there, and return home fulfilled
at the end of the day.
Our goal is to get closer to that,
stand as a beacon that points towards that,
and offers the tools we can and inspire others to help us build
tools to get to that world.
That's what we mean by the movement,
and we're obsessed with it.
Even when we talk about our P&L, we
don't actually have a line on our P&L that says profit.
It says freedom.
Because none of us are motivated by the abstract thing
called profit.
We absolutely are motivated by freedom.
Because the more money we make, it
allows us to stay in the game--
fuel for the drive.
It allows us to get our message out
to a bigger, broader audience.
It allows us to say yes to things
that don't pay and say no to things that do pay,
but we don't like the people who are calling us up.
It gives us discretion to give money away to people we like,
and it gives us opportunities that
give benefits to the question before and give freedom.
So you're damn right I want to have more freedom this month
than I had last month.
Right So I think it comes from an obsession from leadership--
and not just me, at all levels.
And sometimes that leadership comes
from bottom up, where we catch each other
and we remind each other.
Because it is tempting to put all this first,
because we can demonstrate and measure
how we can improve or draw on some metric?
And the question I ask is, to what end?
And I don't mean rationalizing.
I mean, explain to me in hard words how this advances that,
not some back-pedalling, which is very often what happens--
and so clearly that everybody else in the room
is going, mhm, not whatever, if you say that.
That's the funny thing about these things.
We all know what the right thing to do is,
but we like to rationalize sometimes.
So I think there has to be an obsession with the cause
to advance the cause.
And it doesn't have to be the top person.
It can be somebody who signed up for it.
Guys, guys, guys, remember why we all signed up for this?
It's like the military example.
Everybody has the same flag on their shoulder.
And if you're in the Marines, Army, Air Force, or Navy,
when you're in a combat situation
the uniform disappears.
The only thing that matters is this and each other.
We all signed up for the same thing.
Do you believe in it, or do you not believe in it?
Do you want to advance this cause or not?
Do you care about changing the way the world works
and making it into something better, or do you not?
What can we do in our sphere of influence-- marketing, product,
whatever?
What can we do in our sphere of influence?
What little bit can we do?
What piece of the jigsaw puzzle do we
have to put down to help build the picture that's on the box?
But somebody has to be pointing to the picture on the box,
and that's the job of the leader, whether they have rank
or not.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: So I manage a team here.
I enjoyed your talk.
SIMON SINEK: Lead a team.
Nobody wants to be managed.
People want to be led.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
Very helpful.
I've got a group of finite players
from a personal situation and definitely infinite players.
So they don't need more money.
They're here for the purpose.
It's wonderful.
How do I get a team dynamic, and how do I
get the infinite players aligned on the vision?
They view part of their role here as to set that mission?
SIMON SINEK: So there is vision at the Google or Alphabet
level.
And all of the companies within Alphabet
should be working in cones to advance the bigger vision.
And within that, there should be nested-wise,
we would call it, that advance, whatever-- it all goes up.
So ideally, your question is, what did they sign up for?
Do they believe in the big vision?
And can they help advance it?
And I love that they're big thinkers,
and you want to combine big thinkers with big doers--
good teams.
I love that.
What if, going, ooh, I could do that--
somebody else goes, I can do that.
But if they see themselves as the one who
has to come up with the vision, the question
is, but at what point do we start building?
This happens very often with entrepreneurs--
and entrepreneurs are in big businesses and not;
it has nothing to do with owning a small business--
where it's shiny object syndrome.
Every shiny object is something they want to pursue.
And at some point you're going to have to pick one.
This is one of the things I actually
admire in the Marine Corps.
If you go to OCS at the Marine Corps in Quantico
where they select their officers,
they have something called the--
I forgot the term they call it-- but it's basically a leadership
reaction course, the LRC.
Basically it's a mini, little obstacle courses,
like 20 of them, 10 wet, 10 dry--
things like take these three planks of different sizes
and lay them on the telephone poles sticking out of the water
and get all of your people and this ammunition
across the water.
Figure it out.
And they give them a time constraint.
And they have to run it twice, when they assign the leader
and when they don't.
So one of the things that I'm fascinated by in the LRC, which
is they are looking for the leader
to take input from everybody and then make
a decision on the strategy of how we're going to get across.
But they're also looking to the followers,
because what they find is the best followers
take advice and then make a decision.
And the best followers will give advice,
but once the decision is made want
to see their leaders successful--
and never, never work to sabotage or stand
on the sidelines because they didn't get their way
or enjoy the failure because they
say I told you so, but work tirelessly
to see whatever direction was set is highly successful.
So I hope that's happening here, too.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
SIMON SINEK: You're welcome.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
SIMON SINEK: OK.
It's very egalitarian.
AUDIENCE: Hello, Simon.
Thanks for the talk.
My question is, so what's the worst
thing happening in your life?
I'm very interested in your life story.
SIMON SINEK: With regards to what-- my career?
My family?
AUDIENCE: Your career or your life in general.
SIMON SINEK: I mean, I stubbed my toe.
That was pretty bad.
So my whole journey, this whole why thing,
was born out of pain.
I owned a small marketing business
and I had lost my love for my work,
and people gave me stupid advice, like, do what you love,
follow your passion.
What am I supposed to do with that?
I'm doing the same thing.
I don't love it anymore.
And it was a very, very dark place for me,
where I spent all of my energy pretending
that I was happier, more successful, and more in control
than I felt.
I was lying, hiding, and faking every day of my life.
And it's debilitating, quite frankly.
And it wasn't until a friend came to me and said,
I'm worried about you, that gave me this courage, the strength
to admit that I was struggling and then
to look to find a solution.
And that journey pointed me to the concept called "why."
I knew what I did and I knew how I did it,
but I didn't know why.
And it's the biology of human decision making,
and I realized there's a major piece missing.
And so the pain of that, which I never
want to go back to but I'm glad it happened,
profoundly changed the course of my life and career.
And it's why I'm here now, is because of the pain
that I went through back then.
AUDIENCE: Quick question.
You opened up this framework with very notable examples
from politics--
Cold War, Afghanistan, Vietnam.
And then we transition to business.
And it makes sense that you don't
have to focus on the competition,
but politics, sometimes you don't have that luxury,
especially if it's a zero sum game
kind of geopolitical warfare.
So if you are facing opposition that leads with why,
has an infinity outlook, and is intrinsically
motivated on that process, how do you combat them?
Is it as simple as you last longer, more infinity,
if there is such a thing?
Or is it a certain point where to engage or not to engage
is a more important question?
SIMON SINEK: It's such a good question,
and the answer makes me really uncomfortable.
Because I'm looking at what the criteria are,
actually going through the necessities of what
elements are required to play an infinite game.
That's what I'm working on right now.
And I'm uncomfortable with the fact,
but I think the fact is you have to have opposition.
And one of the reasons is having opposition,
having an adversary actually allows for a game to exist,
because you can't play a game by yourself.
Even if you're playing like Solitaire,
you're still playing against the cards.
There's an opposition.
And so as uncomfortable as I am, even in the old Apple days,
they still wanted to take down IBM,
and then they want to take down Microsoft.
But having an opposition on the infinite level
makes it easier for us to know what we stand for, because we
can see what we're against.
So even if, in the United States,
we struggle to put our vision into terms,
we could look at the Soviet Union and say, not that.
But you still have to have the "for."
It's still going to be there, because when players
drop out and are replaced, you still stand for the same thing.
Because if you're only against whatever anybody else is,
then you're not going anywhere.
So you still have to have the for.
So the Romans debated on the floor of the Senate
for 50 years whether they should just
flatten Carthage, which was their not-that,
their Soviet Union.
And they finally decided to do it,
and they flattened Carthage.
And then the Roman Empire quickly went into decline.
That's interesting to me.
So I think you need opposition.
I think Apple needed Microsoft.
George Lucas talks about this.
He says, what do you do when you become
the thing that you hate--
the hated?
And I think an adversary at this level,
another infinite adversary, is important.
Now, it's not like more infinity.
You have to keep the game in play,
because we never know when it's going to end.
Nobody could predict that the Cold
War would end when it ended.
In fact, it caught most people by surprise
when the Berlin Wall came down.
It sort of happened very quickly.
The point is you have to maintain a good business so you
can maintain resources, so that you can stay in the game.
You have to run efficiently, but you
want to keep people ideologically invested.
You want to find allies.
You want to be an ideological export.
You want to preach your cause, preach you cause,
preach your cause, preach your vision, preach your vision,
so that others will go, me, too.
And you get allies, other companies or partners,
or vendors, or employees who go, I'm in, I believe, I'm loyal.
I'm never going to abandon you.
I'm in.
So the adversary makes all that very easy.
The reason we stand for something
is when one adversary drops out.
While we're waiting for a new adversary, which will show up,
we have to know what we stand for.
And if you really want to get into geopolitics,
that was the single biggest mistake
that the United States made after the Cold War--
we're really going here--
which is we declared ourselves the winner.
But that's not what happened.
The other guy dropped out.
And then we imposed our will on the world for about 11 years.
Turns out the rest of the world didn't like it,
and new adversaries started to show up.
Soviet-style communism-- we were both ideological exporters--
was replaced by Islamic extremism.
The nuclear power of the Soviet Union
was replaced by North Korea, Pakistan, maybe Iran.
The economic tension with the Soviets Union
is replaced by China.
The problem is now it's diffuse, now it's separated,
but the Cold War is alive and well--
Cold War 2.0.
And we're still battling life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
It's more complicated now, but we foolishly gave up
what we stood for for a while.
So I think you need both.
And I'm uncomfortable by the fact,
but I think you need adversaries.
You need to have a not-that.
We're clear what we stand for because we know
we don't ever want to be that.
Thanks very much for your time, everyone.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]