When Winning Isn’t Enough: How infinite thinking unlocks creative potential
I’ve been working with a number of organisations where the executive teams are divided, with tensions and factions more obvious than ever.
These organisations are under significant financial pressure or undergoing change to reposition in a shifting market.
The pace of change and increasing uncertainty is creating a pressure cooker situation in their teams.
Rather than pulling together, fractures are starting to show. People are moving apart, protecting territory, hoarding resources and focusing on controlling what they can.
I’ve been reflecting on the ways of thinking that are driving this.
Understanding Finite vs. Infinite Games
Dr. James P. Carse, a Professor Emeritus at New York University, introduced the concept of finite and infinite games to explain different approaches to life and leadership.
In a finite game, the objective is to win. It’s about competing for resources, rank, or market position. Focused on short-term outcomes, success is measured by beating others to the finish line.
An infinite game, by contrast, has no end point. The goal isn’t to win but to keep playing - to build, grow, and sustain, to create organisations that will outlast us. Leaders who play infinite games recognise their organisation is part of something larger and that the real challenge is creating lasting value.
Neither mindset is inherently wrong. The problem is in playing the wrong game with the wrong mindset, in the wrong context.
The Pressure Cooker Effect: Why Finite Thinking Fails
Under pressure it’s easy to default to a finite mindset. The instinct is to protect territory, focus on winning, prioritise quick successes. This isn't a problem, unless we're trying to adapt to shifting contexts, or complex strategic or organisational challenges.
In these situations we need collaboration, openness and flexibility across teams and stakeholders to navigate uncertainty.
If we adopt a finite mindset - instead of working together we can end up divided, with trust eroded and outcomes no one wants.
Simon Sinek, who built on Carse’s work in his book The Infinite Game, outlines five key principles to embrace infinite thinking:
Just Cause – A long-term vision that motivates people to endure short-term setbacks for future gains.
Courageous Leadership – taking risks and making decisions that may not be popular, that prioritise longer term benefits.
Trusting Teams – Creating environments where people feel safe to take risks and work collaboratively.
Worthy Rivals – Recognising competitors not as enemies to be defeated but as those who encourage our growth and push us to improve.
Flexible Playbook – Maintaining the agility to adapt and evolve in response to changing circumstances
Winning the Battle, Losing the War: Lessons from Vietnam
A clear example of the dangers of finite thinking comes from the Vietnam War. In the introduction to the The Infinite Game, Sinek describes how the United States, despite winning almost every battle, ultimately lost the war. This strategic disconnect is powerfully explored in the documentary the Fog of War, featuring Robert S McNamara, US Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam War.
The US was focused on finite objectives: tactical victories and territorial gains; while the North Vietnamese were fighting for their independence, survival and unity, a cause that transcended any single battle or even the war itself.
McNamara reflects on the crucial mistakes and that the leadership misread the nature of the conflict from the start: “We didn’t know them well enough to empathise, and there was total misunderstanding as a result.”
Adaptive Leadership requires an Infinite Mindset
We need to first understand and make sense of the nature of the challenge we're facing.
In a complex environment, where there are no clear solutions, constant change and high uncertainty an infinite mindset helps us to navigate challenges with empathy and connection to the broader context. Infinite mindsets bring new perspectives, flexibility, creativity and learning.
Playing an infinite game also requires us to tolerate the real or perceived losses of not delivering immediate short-term wins – losses we face ourselves, in our teams, organisations and broader stakeholders, eg shareholders.
McNamara recognise this, one of the 11 lessons he articulated was:
"Corporate executives must recognize there is no contradiction between a soft heart and a hard head. Of course, they have responsibilities to stockholders; but they also have responsibilities to their employees, their customers, and the society as a whole.
The leadership work is concerned with finding a way to tolerate a real or perceived hit to next quarter's results as we find new and creative ways to meet long term complex challenges in a way that enables our teams, organisations and society to thrive, in a world that’s in flux.
The Leadership Choice: Finite or Infinite?
Ultimately, leadership is seen in moment-to-moment decisions - in every situation, we can choose how we play.
Being aware of our ways of thinking and matching the mindset for the context is one of the most powerful shifts we can make in our leadership.
Work with me to build your collective capacity to play an infinite game:
Keynote: When Winning Isn't Enough
Masterclasses and Workshops: that bring the finite and infinite mindsets to life through experiential learning, helping teams, organisations and systems to learn together what it takes to collectively play an infinite game so we’re able to creatively respond to complex challenges
Executive Coaching: to navigate complex challenges and contexts where competitive dynamics are prevailing
Please get in touch if you’d like to learn more about this!
Subscribe to receive Unbounded Insights direct to your inbox
