The Finite and Infinite Games of Leadership | Simon Sinek | Talks at Google

Speaker 0:00 [on hold music]

Speaker 0:06 Hello, everybody, and welcome to Talks at Google. Our guest today describes himself as an unshakable optimist who believes in the bright future and our ability to build it together. A trained ethnographer and author of three best-selling 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.

Simon Sinek 0:33 [clapping] Thanks. Um, so I thought I'd share with you some new stuff that I'm working on, 'cause it's fun, and then we'll spend most of the time just doing Q&A, 'cause that's also fun. So I'm working on a new book, and I've recently become completely, uh, smitten by game theory. Um, specifically finite and infinite games. Uh, 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 I know 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 pit 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, right? So technically, the United States didn't win the Cold War, the Soviets dropped out 'cause 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, right? So invariably what happens is the finite player will always find themselves in 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

Simon Sinek 2:42 was the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. The Soviets were fighting to beat the Mujahideen, and the Mujahideen would fight for as long as is necessary. And invariably what happens is the finite player will find themself in 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, right? So this gets me thinking. Let's look at business. The game of business is an infinite game, right? It obeys all the rules. Um, there are known and unknown players. You don't know all the competitors necessarily in, 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, right? 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 comin- uh, company on the planet today. If you look at the Dow index, or 30 something odd companies that make up the Dow index, something like 70 or 80% of those companies are 35 years or younger, right? 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. They talk about beating their competition. Based on what agreed-upon criteria? Based on what agreed-upon timeframe? 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 timeframes. And the only reason we do these things on an annualized basis, we tend u- we tend to compare ourselves to other organizations annually, is only because we pay taxes annually. If we paid 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 the 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 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, it's not like the business stops or the industry ends. And, uh, the companies that are playing the infinite game will frustrate those finite players, which I absolutely

Simon Sinek 5:13 adore. So I spoke at an education summit for Microsoft. I also spoke at 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. [laughs] 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, the actual hardware was beautiful. It was, uh, logical in the way I, 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 a, sort of an employee number 12 kinda guy, and I decide to stir the pot. So I turn to him and I say, "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." [laughs] 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 are the ones who say, "How can we be a better version of ourselves? How can we advance our metrics? How can we make our products 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 rate, wa- wastes

Simon Sinek 7:45 resources, the constant changing of your mind, the constant going in this direction and 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, for the infinite game? So up here, you have the infinite game. Um, 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, uh, they've been here from the birth of the company, and they should last the length of the company, right? Uh, the infinite stuff, the why stuff and the value stuff, is inherently intangible, and it's inherently difficult to measure, right? Now, down here, you have the finite game, and this is where our interests lie. This is where what I would call your what's lie. Right? 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, uh, 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 kinda who we are, right? It's what have... 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, right? The reason torture was done offshore, and the reason, uh, we try to keep it a secret is because it kind of... everybody kinda knew it violated our values. 'Cause if we were totally fine with it, everybody would be like, "Just do it here. It's totally fine. Why s- just somewhere in Wyoming," right? Um, 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 a finite, these things get ignored, and every time we make a decision, we decide what to... what we do in, in a vacuum. So your competitor comes out with a new product. How do we react? Quickly. Come out with something similar. Um, uh, what's going on with the marketplace? You 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, right? The problem is, was when we pull back and

Simon Sinek 10:48 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, right? When you pull back, your culture's 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. Eh, every now and then one can go sideways, but we look at all of the decisions, the people you hire, the things you do, the things you believe in, the things you stand for, everything 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, right? But the only way we can judge each other is down here. It's like human beings, right? 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, is because we wanna know who they are. We wanna know what... We want them to be predictable, right? I can't see anybody now. [laughs] Can we turn the lights back on? So much better. Yeah. Oh. Oh, is that better for you? Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry. Oh. Oh, okay. But now you can fall asleep.

Speaker 12:05 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 12:06 'Cause I can't see. Um, 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. There are, of course, there are always finite games within the infinite. It's the difference between a goal and a vision, right? A goal is 26.2 miles. Count the metrics, count the mile markers, and when you reach the goal, you... The, the, the game ends. It's over. A vision is having a crystal clear sense of what the finish line looks like far off in the distance, but in, but having no idea how far away it is. So far away that for all re- for all practical purposes, we'll never get there. Take the United States, the Declaration of Independence. Here's 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're continuing 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, right? But the goal is we have a North Star, we have a thing to point us in a direction. It's not random. So in the United States when we have civil rights, so women's suffrage or gay rights or education for everyone or healthcare for everyone, however 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

Simon Sinek 14:07 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 wanna stand for something. We wanna work for something. We want all of our hard work, the products we produce, everything, we want it to count towards something. Not some- 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 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, right? We're living down here and everything's very exciting. But after you've had a bunch of bonuses and you won a bunch of clients and you've had a l- bunch of product releases and a bunch of promotions, it's exciting for a little bit, like go out for a nice dinner with your family. That's about it, and then it wears off, right? 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. Well, when I reached a million dollars, get more millions of dollars. That gave me the feeling the first time, it'll get me the feeling again." It doesn't. That's like winning one marathon, thinking it's amazing, and 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. They have to contribute to something. So I'm fascinated by the companies that play the fi- the infinite game because they frustrate, inherently, they frustrate their competition. For years, Apple frustrated Microsoft, especially when it was run by Steve Ballmer. He was a guy who run, who ran the company based on interest alone versus f- competing against an organization that was doing something bigger. You know, Costco versus Walmart, Southwest Airlines versus everybody, right? 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 Sinegal, who's the founder of Costco, he says, "I don't care about Wall Street. Wall Street's worried about, well, how my company does in, 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 teaching... 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's slightly ahead and you think, "That's okay." You know? Can't stay ahead forever based on some arbitrary perspective, uh, arbitrary metrics anyway. Anyway,

Simon Sinek 16:39 so that's what I'm working on. I think it's fun. I think it's interesting. We've made some changes even in the way we do business, uh, based on this. We've become more infinitely organized, which means we are much more interested in trends than we are in absolutes, right? 'Cause 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, right? Somebody made it up. That's, that's how most of our bonus structures are, 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, right? 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'll probably hit the number two or three months later, which is totally fine because then it's gonna 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 where the infinite player is much more preoccupied with the trend of things. So in our, in our business, we've become absolutely preoccupied with the trend. There are some projects that we've wanted to implement that I wished took a year, and they took years. And I can... It doesn't matter how much I say, "I want it done at the end of the..." We missed it. But you know what? We were building good systems along the way. We just missed the prediction. And the result is, we have much better systems, much better product, and we're much more motivated by it, because nobody was penalized for missing arbitrary numbers and arbitrary dates. And we're sort of learning how to- I'm learning how to build and run a business for the infinite. I mean, somebody

Simon Sinek 18:40 asked me recently in an interview about my competition, like how do I compete against the people in my space, and the answer is, "What? Compete against what?" Like, what am I competing for? Like, am I gonna 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? Like, what's the arbitrary standard? 'Cause I can be ahead on some metrics and behind on others. I can drive myself crazy, or I can be really proud of myself. Worse, I'm choosing who my competitive set is. But the competitive set is way larger than I can imagine. It's like 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-

Speaker 19:29 YouTube.

Simon Sinek 19:30 YouTube.

Speaker 19:30 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 19:32 And the rest of them. But that's the point. If you'd make your own competitive set, you- you'll be number one. Everybody will have their day in the sun. I g- I, I get a kick out of that. 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. That's the goal. All right. Should we do some questions?

Speaker 20:02 Uh, I think everything you just said is really interesting, and it hits on something I've been wondering about for a long time. Uh, 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-

Simon Sinek 20:17 Mm-hmm

Speaker 20:17 ... terms you want to apply to it.

Simon Sinek 20:19 [laughs]

Speaker 20:19 Uh, and it seems congruent in a lot of ways, you know, the original founder's message with this infinite game and everything you're describing.

Simon Sinek 20:24 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 20:25 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-

Simon Sinek 20:34 Mm

Speaker 20:34 ... and all these things, and you look at some of these other companies that maybe don't have the luxury of those, the, these, you know, thick profit margins-

Simon Sinek 20:41 Mm

Speaker 20:41 ... and they can't afford to play the infinite game, and they're focused on being tactical.

Simon Sinek 20:46 Ah, no, no. They can afford to play a strong finite game. They can absolutely play the infinite game. So because based on your logic, every small company that's under resources, that under resourced would never make it.

Speaker 20:57 Mm.

Simon Sinek 20:57 Which is just not the case, right?

Speaker 20:59 Sure.

Simon Sinek 21:00 So, what holds... And people aren't loyal to free lunch. I mean, some people are, but-

Speaker 21:04 Right.

Speaker 21:04 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 21:05 Right? And, 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," right?

Speaker 21:14 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 21:14 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 gonna take this one 'cause they have free lunch, right? In other words, they went for the, the rich company, which may, which may last if the company's also an infinite player. But if they're just a finite player, it's gonna run out at some point, because when the company starts to struggle, guess what things they'll start cutting. And the... And I've... And y- like you have, we have friends in tech companies who don't work here.

Speaker 21:42 Right.

Simon Sinek 21:42 Right? Who get free lunch and beautiful offices. Flat screen TVs in every hallway. Gorgeous, right? And yet they were like-

Speaker 21:52 But I think it-

Simon Sinek 21:52 You know?

Speaker 21:53 I mean, I think you're kind of cherry picking a few different, uh, like, very simple of those benefits. I think a lot of the things that people kind of herald are, uh, for instance, uh, long maternity benefits or, you know, y- anything associated with, you know, childcare and things like that.

Simon Sinek 22:06 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 22:06 Maybe if you run a construction company and you have to have-

Simon Sinek 22:08 Mm

Speaker 22:08 ... 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, you know, take their kids to daycare because, you know, you have to have the guy driving the crane-

Simon Sinek 22:19 Mm-hmm

Speaker 22:20 ... uh, you know, I begin to wonder, like, you know, th- th- are we, is it easy for us, you know, you, me, all of us in here, to sit here and say, "Oh, you know, we wanna focus on these ideals," because the industry we happen to work in is relatively, uh... It makes it easy to provide for those ideals.

Simon Sinek 22:36 Let us not confuse feeling like we belong and cushy. I'm not cherry picking, right? Um, 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?

Speaker 22:56 I don't know. I mean, I-

Speaker 22:57 [laughs]

Speaker 22:58 [laughs] I just think that-

Simon Sinek 22:59 And, and, and what you find... So, so take a company like WD-40.

Speaker 23:02 Sure.

Simon Sinek 23:03 Okay? Um, much smaller than Google. Does very well. Their offices are kind of a dump. Like, the benefits they offer, they're, they're nice to their people, and they... When, when, where they can, they offer all kinds of stuff, and education and maternity stuff, and all of that stuff. But it's not as cushy as, as large, huge tech companies that have, you know, huge amounts of extra cash. And the people who work there love working there, and will come in every day full of gusto because it's the people we work with, not the stuff we get. The stuff we get, the very point of the stuff we get is it runs out. Like, it's finite. You have to keep injecting it, right? Where the people we work with, that's the relationships are the infinite component of the r- of the company. So if you love working here, right? I would, I would say that if you're loyal and you really love it-

Speaker 23:48 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 23:48 ... not like it, but love it, I would argue that you like, 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.

Speaker 24:06 Sure.

Simon Sinek 24:07 Then there's never loyalty and there's never love.

Speaker 24:09 Well, and I certainly do agree with everything you just said. But 'cause when you were talking about, for instance, like, these trend lines and, uh, you know, being able to miss the arbitrary number, you know, 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 know, you c- you are able to provide for that kind of flexible timeline because you have the six- the ta- you know, the tailwind of success?

Simon Sinek 24:40 There are always finite games within the infinite, of course. Of course.

Speaker 24:42 So, I don't know. That was just stuff I was wondering about.

Speaker 24:48 Hey, Simon.

Simon Sinek 24:49 How are you?

Speaker 24:49 So my wife and I are both military vets, and we work here at Google, and I wanted to, uh-

Simon Sinek 24:53 Which force? Which force?

Speaker 24:54 Army. Army officers. And I wanted to talk, touch upon your example about the military. In one of your other talks, you, you talk about Medal of Honor recipients.

Simon Sinek 25:02 Yeah.

Speaker 25:03 And basically, they do these heroic things, and they say, "Why did you do it?" And you, you say in your talk, because they would have done it for me.

Simon Sinek 25:09 Right.

Speaker 25:10 So that mentality is my question. You also mentioned in military we're willing to sacrifice ourselves for the gain of others.

Simon Sinek 25:16 Right.

Speaker 25:16 But in business, we're willing to sacrifice others for our own gain.

Simon Sinek 25:19 Yes.

Speaker 25:20 How do you build that military mindset in companies like here or other companies?

Simon Sinek 25:24 Leadership. I mean, it's, it's, uh, leadership creates an environment. And it's, I mean, this is what I learned. The, the, the, the whole concept of Leaders Eat Last and those lessons that I learned from spending time with folks in uniform, um, it was born out of my own experience where I, 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, 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, right? And I, and I, I learned it the hard way. And so I retreated. I was like, I wanted 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 who, you know, 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 giving, give, gave a speech ever, right?

Speaker 26:26 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 26:27 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. 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, right? It comes externally. It's like a, 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, which is especially when you're in life and death situations, when you're, when you're, when you're in theater. Y- people who you don't like, you still rely on to save your life, and the reason it works is 'cause you don't have to look behind your shoulder. And that mentality, and you know better than anybody, which is when you, when you are deployed into dangerous places, nobody sort of loves deployment. But people have warm feelings towards deployment, which is really strange. And suicides rarely happen in, 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 there's, 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, and you know 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, it always boils down to leadership. I, I mean, we can't help but talk about it. Let's look at United Airlines, what just happened-

Speaker 28:59 Yeah

Simon Sinek 28:59 ... shortly. It's gonna come up. [laughs]

Speaker 29:03 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 29:04 That is, that, usually when things like that happen, that is a red flag that they have a leadership problem, right? 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 gonna 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. And I'm just following the rules. I'm just following ... There's no discretion, where everybody knows that's stupid.

Speaker 29:42 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 29:43 Right? Like the c- like when, when the CEO announced that we're no longer going to forcibly remove pa- like, why was that ever a policy?

Speaker 29:52 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 29:53 That's like food companies saying, "Now with no chemicals." It's like, wait, wait, wait. Why were there ever chemicals, right? But that's the point, which nobody has discretion. So I, uh, was boarding a, a flight. I've told this story. I was boarding a flight, and a scene played out in front of me where one of the passengers attempted to board the plane before their group number was called. Um, and the gate agent, uh, literally berated him. "Sir, step aside. I haven't called your group. Please step aside and wait till 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's 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 w- they've 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 perfectly, a perfect scenario of what happens when somebody in the company is too afraid to break the rule, break the policy, use discretion, find another way, you know? So almost predictable that something will happen, something will break at some point.

Speaker 31:18 Appreciate it.

Simon Sinek 31:19 Thanks. How you doing?

Speaker 31:20 Hey. Um, so for some industries that we're in, I feel like we're doing a really good job of playing the infinite game.

Simon Sinek 31:25 Yeah.

Speaker 31:25 Like, 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. Um, my question is, when... After that's played out for 5, 10 years in some of these industries, it's clear we're reaching some sort of maximum, where-

Simon Sinek 31:40 Yeah

Speaker 31:40 ... following those values is only gonna get us so much of the market.

Simon Sinek 31:42 Yeah.

Speaker 31:42 And even though we might not be, like, reactively looking to competitors to see what they're up to-

Simon Sinek 31:47 Yeah

Speaker 31:47 ... we can't help but notice that they have most of the pie, and even though we've stuck to our guns, we're as far as we can get without doing something different.

Simon Sinek 31:53 Yeah.

Speaker 31:53 So it's, of course, very tempting at that point to change-

Simon Sinek 31:56 Yes

Speaker 31:57 ... and start emulating what other people are doing to get that bigger piece of the pie.

Simon Sinek 32:00 Yes.

Speaker 32:00 So how much flexibility do you see when you're playing the infinite game to change course?

Simon Sinek 32:05 Depends the reason you wanna increase the slice of pie.

Speaker 32:07 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 32:08 Just 'cause? 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. Like, is it, is it nobly pursued or is it selfishly pursued, you know?

Speaker 32:21 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 32:21 Uh, and who says the timeframe has to be now? You know, the women's suffrage movement, pretty important. Get the women the vote, pretty good idea. Do you know that it... Almost all the founders of the suffrage movement died before the first woman ever voted because that's how long it took. It took more than a lifetime for them to get it. But the point was the pursuit, the pursuit, the pursuit. Would they liked to have it happened in their lifetime? Of course, of course, of course. Were they more preoccupied that it happened?

Speaker 32:52 Mm.

Simon Sinek 32:52 Absolutely. And that's the point. You build legacy. You build people who take that torch and carry it without you. So the, the problem is, is that I think vision... Here, here's the, here's a thing that's always boggled my mind, right? Why is it, on balance, on balance, not always, but on balance, why is it that small companies tend to be more innovative than big companies? Right? Small companies that are under-resourced, can't necessarily get the best and brightest, they're gonna go out of business any day, and yet they're s- 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, right?

Speaker 33:32 Mm.

Simon Sinek 33:33 Um, why is that? Why is it that the, the most resourced companies tend not... And I think it's a question of reality, and what I mean by that is small companies, their vision is, is more distant than their grasp, right? They have delusions of grandeur. We're gonna change the world, change industries, reinvent this, reinvent that. We have no money and no people, but so what? My point is, is the grasp is shorter than the vision.

Speaker 34:01 Mm.

Simon Sinek 34:01 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 gr- their vision's become well within their grasp and they don't readjust the vision, or they actually bring the vision back to put within their grasps, right? Make things very achievable. Difficult, but achievable.

Speaker 34:21 Mm.

Simon Sinek 34:22 For vision to truly be vision, it should feel unachievable. When a small business gets together and says, "Here's our vision," everybody goes like this, "I, ugh. [laughs] How are we gonna do that?"

Speaker 34:33 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 34:33 In big businesses, we, "So here's our vision," everybody goes, "All right. Yeah, no, got it. We'll do a back plan. We got that."

Speaker 34:38 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 34:40 And I, I firmly believe that innovation is born out of the struggle. Innovation is born out of the, 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.

Speaker 34:59 Mm.

Simon Sinek 34:59 Take a group of people with tons of resources, to give them a vision, they're gonna go, "I, uh."

Speaker 35:03 [laughs] Okay.

Simon Sinek 35:06 So I think that's part of it.

Speaker 35:08 Yeah, yeah.

Simon Sinek 35:08 I think that's part of it. So, so you've been at it for five years. You've achieved a lot. Congratulations.

Speaker 35:13 Mm.

Simon Sinek 35:14 So the question is, well, was the vision not big enough? Or you want more piece of the p- or why not just stay in the game? Like, we have an obsession in America with growth.

Speaker 35:24 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 35:24 Not stability. Size. We love 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.

Speaker 35:33 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 35:34 Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Lehman Brothers, big companies. Arthur Andersen, Circuit City, remember that one?

Speaker 35:42 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 35:43 Right? Poof. Not like ooh. It's like pfft, right?

Speaker 35:48 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 35:48 Like, big, not stable. Fast growth. We love fast growth. We put people's pictures on covers of magazines and say, "Look at Groupon."

Speaker 35:58 [laughs] Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 36:00 Remember that one?

Speaker 36:01 Mm.

Simon Sinek 36:02 Does anyone really care about Groupon anymore?

Speaker 36:04 Mm-mm.

Simon Sinek 36:04 It was like, uh, copy Groupon. They're the future, for now, right? And that's the point. We, we, 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.

Speaker 36:17 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 36:19 So, um, you, you, you see your neighbor packing up his car across the street from you, and you say, "Hey, where are you going?" And he says, "Vacation." You go, "Cool. Where are you going?" He says, "Vacation." You go, "Awesome. Where are you going?" He says, "Vacation." So you go, "Well, how are you gonna get there?" He says, "I'm gonna take Route 95, and my goal is to drive 150 miles a day." That's the same as growth. Like, why does your company exist?

Speaker 36:46 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 36:47 Growth. Awesome. To what end? Well, we're a business, to grow. Love it. How are you gonna do it? Growth. Like, well, good, what route are you gonna take? Our goal is to increase top-line revenues by 20% every year. Duh.

Speaker 37:00 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 37:01 To what end? And so you get on vacation, everybody's so proud of themselves, of themselves, and smacking each other on the back 'cause we drove 150 miles. We drove 180 miles. We're above goal. In what direction?

Speaker 37:11 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 37:12 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.

Speaker 37:24 Mm.

Simon Sinek 37:25 How are you gonna get there? Route 95. What's your goal? 150 miles a day. And what happens if you drive 30 miles a day towards California? It's okay. We're gonna find out how we can take better routes. Or what if the highway's blocked, so you're forced to go slower? But it's okay, 'cause you know the direction you're going in.

Speaker 37:40 Mm.

Simon Sinek 37:41 As opposed to firing off in all other directions. And when somebody says, "Hey, I got a private jet. You wanna fly on it?" You go, "Where are you going?"

Speaker 37:46 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 37:47 Calgary. Not interested. Thank you very much.

Speaker 37:50 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 37:51 You get my point.

Speaker 37:52 Yeah. Thank you. That's very helpful.

Simon Sinek 37:53 So, yeah.

Speaker 37:54 Uh, I just wonder, uh, about, uh, Apple. You talk about Apple, how Apple beat Microsoft at the time. How do you see, uh, or what's your observation of Apple now under the leader Tim Cook after Steve Jobs? Do, do they still... What value do you observe or, uh, do you still believe that they have, uh, how does it-

Simon Sinek 38:14 I figure that if I let you keep talking, I don't have to answer.

Speaker 38:16 No.

Speaker 38:16 [laughs]

Speaker 38:17 Go ahead.

Simon Sinek 38:17 Which is good. So, um, 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-it-ness, and whether they truly have imbued into the company the values first after the founder goes. So Walmart is a great example. Walmart used to be an amazing company. It was all about this. And then Sam Walton died, and the first CEO took over for him, grew up with Sam, and 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."

Speaker 39:21 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 39:23 That's actually in the wrong order. It should be, "Better life. Save money." That would be a values-based decision, right? It's one of the pieces. So we see this all the time. You know, Bill Gates left, and then sort of Microsoft went a little bit sideways under Ballmer. 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, and the operator, the, the, the, the, 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 a 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 CEO. Howard Schultz had to come back. Bill Gates left, you know? And there was sort of talk of Bill coming back after Ballmer. They have Satya now, who's a little more in Bill's, you know, a little more like Bill, right? 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 what they c- how far they can see in the future. And if you look at the titles that we give people, CMO, CIO, CTO, COO, 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 give 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, right? So I have concerns about Apple because it is run by an operator, good guy, smart guy, believes in the vision, but the problem is he sees problems more than he sees future, you know? These people are huge risk takers. These people are calculated risk takers, you know? And so I think we're starting to see cracks. Are they... Does it mean the end of Apple? No. But we're starting to see some of the cracks. Like, they don't seem to be leading markets anymore. Uh, they don't seem to be defining product categories anymore. In fact, a few times they've been the followers, you know? So, you know, I... You make this little joke, like your phone doesn't work, and you'd be like, "Oh, ever since Steve died," you know? There's more... There's like politics playing out in the company, and it's weirdness. Is it the end of Apple? I don't think so. Of course not. But, but definitely it, it makes me interested.

Speaker 42:28 Uh, I'm a weird 21st century case of somebody who, for whom Google is my first and only full-time employer. And we often, I work in marketing, uh, sort of copy and paste the company's value statements into briefs that we write, um, in a way that feels very mechanical and not really, like, to your p- earlier point, I came here and I signed up to work for this value. Uh, 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, you know, what do we really stand for? How do I put a few words to these larger ideas?

Simon Sinek 43:05 Uh, I- I'll wax philosophical. It's a, it's not a, there's no sort of answer. Um, so we're obsessed in our business with the movement. We obsess about the movement. We never, 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 wanna 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 safer 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- 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're abs- we absolutely are motivated by freedom, because the more money we make, it allows us to stay in the game. It's fuel, fuel for the drive, right? It allows us to get our message out to a bigger and 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 that, who are, who are calling us up. It gives us discretion to give money away to people we like. It, it gives us opportunities to give benefits, to the, 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 advance some metric, and the question I ask is, "To what end?" And not, I don't mean rationalizing. I mean explain to me in hard words how this advances that, not some backpedaling, right? Which is very often what happens, you know? Um, and, and so clearly that everybody else in the room is going, "Mm-hmm," not, "Whatever," if you say that, you know? Like, we're all... Like, that's the funny thing about these things. Like, we all know what the right thing to do is, but we like to rationalize sometimes. Um, so I think, 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, guys, guys, remember why we all signed up for this," right? It's like the military example. Like, everybody has the same flag on their shoulder, and if you're in Marines, Army, Air Force or, or Navy, when you're in a combat situation, the uniform disappears. The only thing that matters is this and each other, right? We all signed up for the same thing. Do you believe in it or do you not believe in it? Do you wanna advance this cause or not? Do you care about changing the way the world works into s- 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.

Speaker 46:25 Cool. Thank you.

Speaker 46:27 So I manage a team here. Uh, I, I enjoyed the talk.

Simon Sinek 46:31 Lead a team.

Speaker 46:31 I lead a team.

Simon Sinek 46:32 Nobody wants to be managed.

Speaker 46:33 [laughs] Thank you.

Simon Sinek 46:33 People wanna be led.

Speaker 46:34 Very helpful. I, I've got a group of finite players from a personal situation-

Simon Sinek 46:38 Yeah

Speaker 46:39 ... and definitely infinite players.

Simon Sinek 46:40 Yeah.

Speaker 46:41 So they don't need more money. They, they're here for the purpose. It's the... 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 is to set that vision.

Simon Sinek 46:55 Well, that's not w- uh, so there is vision at the Google or Alphabet level-

Speaker 47:02 Yeah

Simon Sinek 47:02 ... and all of the companies within Alphabet should be working in cones to advance the bigger vision, and within that there should be, you know, nested why, as we would call it, that advance whatever. You know, it all goes up. So ideally, the question is, is w- what did they sign up for if they, do they believe in the big vision and can they help advance it? And I love that they're big thinkers, and you wanna combine big thinkers with big doers, right? Good teams, right? I love that. Um, what if going, "Ooh, I can do that," somebody else goes, "I can do that." Um, but if they see themselves as the one who has to come up with the vision, the question is, but w- at what point do we start building? Like, this is, this happens very often with entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs are in big businesses and not. It has nothing to do with owning a small business. Um, where it's shiny object syndrome, right? Every shiny object is something they wanna pursue.

Speaker 48:00 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 48:01 And at some point you're gonna 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, um, they have something called the, um, uh, it's a, I f- I've forgotten what the term, the, the term they call it, but it's basically, um, Leadership Reaction Course, the LRC. Uh, basically it's mini little, uh, obstacle courses, like 20 of them. 10 wet, 10 dry. Things like, things like carry the, 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, they give them a time constraint. And they have to run it twice. One they assign the leader and one they don't, right? So one of the things that I'm fascinated, fascinated by in the LRC, which is they're looking, uh, for the leader to take input from everybody and then make a decision on the strategy of how we're gonna get across, right? But they're also looking to the followers. 'Cause what they find is the best followers take a c- advice and then make a decision, and the best followers will give advice, but once the decision is made, want to see their leader successful. And never, never, uh, work to, uh, sabotage or stand on the sidelines 'cause they didn't get their way, or enjoy the failure 'cause 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.

Speaker 49:31 Thanks.

Simon Sinek 49:31 You're welcome. Hey. Okay, it's very egalitarian.

Speaker 49:35 Hello, Simon.

Simon Sinek 49:36 Hi.

Speaker 49:36 Um, thanks for the talk.

Simon Sinek 49:38 You're welcome.

Speaker 49:38 Uh, my question is, so what's the, like, worst thing happen in your life? Um, I'm very interested in your life story.

Simon Sinek 49:48 With regards to what? My career?

Speaker 49:50 Uh, your career or-

Simon Sinek 49:51 My family?

Speaker 49:51 ... your life in general.

Simon Sinek 49:52 [laughs] What do you, what do you wanna know? [laughs] I mean, like [laughs]

Speaker 50:01 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 50:01 I stubbed my toe. That was really bad.

Speaker 50:02 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 50:03 Um, so my, my, my whole journey, this whole why thing was born out of pain. Um, I owned a small marketing business and, uh, I'd lost my love for my work, and people gave me stupid advice like, "Do what you love. Follow your passion." Like, what am I supposed to do with that? Like, 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, right? And it's debilitating, quite frankly. And it wasn't until a friend came to me and said, "I'm worried about you," did it give 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, this concept called the why. Uh, I, 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 w- I never wanna go back to, but I'm glad it happened, profoundly changed the course of my life and career. I mean, it's, it's why I'm here now is because of the pain that I went through back then.

Speaker 51:08 Quick question. You opened up this framework with very notable examples from politics.

Simon Sinek 51:12 Yeah.

Speaker 51:13 Cold War-

Simon Sinek 51:13 Yeah

Speaker 51:14 ... Afghanistan, Vietnam.

Simon Sinek 51:15 Yeah.

Speaker 51:15 And then we transitioned to business.

Simon Sinek 51:17 Yeah.

Speaker 51:17 And it makes sense that you don't have to focus on the competition.

Simon Sinek 51:20 Yeah.

Speaker 51:21 But politics, sometimes you don't have that luxury-

Simon Sinek 51:23 Yeah

Speaker 51:23 ... especially if it's a zero-sum game-

Simon Sinek 51:25 Yeah

Speaker 51:25 ... and some kind of geopolitical warfare.

Simon Sinek 51:27 Yeah.

Speaker 51:27 So if you are facing opposition that leads with why-

Simon Sinek 51:31 Yeah

Speaker 51:31 ... has an infinity outlook-

Simon Sinek 51:32 Yeah

Speaker 51:32 ... and is intrinsically motivated on-

Simon Sinek 51:34 Yeah

Speaker 51:34 ... the process-

Simon Sinek 51:35 Yeah

Speaker 51:35 ... how do you combat them?

Simon Sinek 51:36 Yeah.

Speaker 51:37 Is it as simple as you last longer?

Simon Sinek 51:39 Yeah.

Speaker 51:39 More infinity? Or do you, at a certain point, do you ...

Simon Sinek 51:42 [laughs]

Speaker 51:43 If there's such a thing. Or is it a certain point where to engage or not to engage is a more important question than being infinite?

Simon Sinek 51:48 It's such a good question, and, and the answer makes me really uncomfortable. 'Cause I'm looking at what the criteria are, actually going through the necessities of what it, what elements are required to play an infinite game, right? It's what I'm working on right now. And I'm uncomfortable with the fact, but I think the fact is, is you have to have opposition. And one of the reasons is having opposition, having an adversary, actually allows for a game to exist, 'cause you can't play a game by yourself, right? Um, even if you're playing, like, solitaire, you're still playing against the cards, you know? There's, there's an opposition. Um, and, uh, so as uncomfortable as I am, even in the old Apple days, they still wanted to take down IBM, and then they wanted to take down Microsoft. But having an opposition at, in the infinite level is, 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," right? But you still have to have the for. It's still gotta be there, because when players drop out and are replaced, you st- you still stand for the same thing. 'Cause if you're only against whatever anybody else is, then you're not going anywhere. So you still have to have the for, but, uh, you know. So, uh, the Romans debated on the floor of the Senate for 50 years whether they should f- just flatten Carthage, which was their not that, their Soviet Union, right? And they finally decided to do it, and they flattened Carsh- Carthage, and then the Roman Empire quickly went into decline, right? That's interesting to me. Um, so I think you need opposition. I think Apple needed Microsoft. George Lucas talks about this, and he says, "What do you do when you become the thing that you hate?" Or you hated, you know? Um, I, and I think, uh, uh, an, a, a adversary at this level, another infinite adversary, is important. Now, it's not like more infinity. You have to keep the game in play, 'cause we never know when it's gonna end. Nobody could predict that the Cold War would end when it ended. We ... In fact, it caught most people by surprise when the Berlin Wall came down. It sort of happened very quickly, right? The point is, 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 wanna keep people in, uh, um, uh, uh, ideologically invested. You wanna find allies, right? You wanna be an ideological exporter. You wanna preach your cause, preach your 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. Never gonna abandon you. I'm in." So the adversary makes all of 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 wanna 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. Isla, uh, uh, um, uh, uh, Soviet-style communism, you know, we're both ideological exporters, was replaced by Islamic extremism. The nuclear power of the Soviet Union was replaced by North Korea, Pakistan, uh, maybe Iran, right? Um, uh, the economic t- tension with the Soviet Union was replaced by China. The problem is, is now it's diffused. Now it's, it's, it's separated. But the Cold War is alive and well. It's Cold War 2.0, right? And they're, we're still battling life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Um, so it's more complicated now, but we, we, we, 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, a not that. We're clear what we stand for 'cause we know we don't want ever, we don't ever wanna be that. Thanks very much for your time, everyone. Appreciate it. [audience applauds] Thank you.