How I Built Resilience: Live with Simon Sinek

Each week, Guy is hosting online conversations with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating these turbulent times. Today's conversation is with Simon Sinek, whose books about business — including "Start with Why," and "The Infinite Game" — offer guidance to founders that is especially timely right now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Hey, everyone. So as some of you know, we've started this new series of video conversations where each week I talk with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're building resilience into their businesses right now. And in case you miss these conversations when they happen, we are posting an excerpt right here every Thursday in your podcast feed. So today, I'm bringing you my conversation with Simon Sinek. Simon is the author of Start With Why and The Infinite Game, and he writes about leading with purpose and cultivating smart and sane business practices, skills that have become especially critical at this very moment. So here you go. Here's the conversation I had with Simon just a few days ago. First, can you just kind of outline what this idea of the infinite game is?

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely. A philosopher by the name of James Carst articulated these two types of games in the mid-1980s, finite games and infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules, and an agreed-upon objective. There's always a beginning, middle, and end. And if there's a winner, there has to be a loser. Then you have infinite games. Infinite games are defined as known and unknown players, which means any player can join at any time. The rules are changeable, which means you can play however you want. And the objective is to perpetuate the game, to stay in the game as long as possible. When I learned this idea, I saw it as profound because we are players in infinite games every day of our lives. There's no such thing as being number one in your marriage, for example. You can't win in your marriage. The

• 1:25Speaker 01

  goal is to make it last as long as possible. That's the goal. There's no such thing as winning global politics. There's no such thing as winning education. There's no such thing as winning healthcare. There's no such thing as winning your career. And there's definitely no such thing as winning business. But if we listen to the language of so many of our leaders, they talk about being number one, being the best, or beating their competition. Based on what? And so if we have to be players in the infinite game, we have to play with an infinite mindset.

• 1:51Guy Raz?

  So there are five principles that you outline in the book, particularly for business leaders who want to try and adopt an infinite mindset. So let's quickly go through them. The first one is to advance a just cause. So talk about that for a moment.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  So you know, the concept of having a vision in business is not a new one. The problem is it lacks a standardized definition. And if you listen to too many leaders and they say, our vision is to be the best X, or our vision is to increase top line revenues by Y. You know, these aren't visions. They're just goals. They're arbitrary goals set to arbitrary dates. And so I changed the terminology of vision so that we can be crystal clear of what we mean. Instead of showing up to simply hit a goal, we want that goal to be in service to something even grander, a just cause, a cause so just, we would willingly sacrifice to get closer to that idealized state in the future. So what does it mean to sacrifice? It could mean working late hours or frequent business trips.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  And though we may not like these things, we feel that they're worth it because we feel like our work is contributing to something bigger than ourselves.

• 2:54Guy Raz?

  I want to get back to that later on because I just did an interview for How I Built This with somebody, Pat Brown of Impossible Foods, whose business is exactly that. I mean, his idea isn't to make a lot of money making a meat product. It's basically to cut back on global climate emissions, but we'll get back to that. The second principle, building trusting teams.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  So right. So as human beings, we're social animals and we're no good by ourselves, but we are remarkable in groups. Great organizations that are able to survive for many generations beyond whoever the leadership is now, have strong cultures and strong cultures are made up of trusting teams. We all know what it feels like to be on a trusting team. It means you can raise your hand and say, I made a mistake. Or I don't understand the job you've asked me to do. Or I need help or I'm scared. Without any fear of humiliation or retribution, in fact, we say these things with total confidence that others on our team will rush to our support. We also know what it feels like not to be on a trusting team, where we don't want to admit mistakes. And we don't admit that we don't know how to do the job we've been asked to do

• 3:57Speaker 01

  for fear that it'll either put us on a shortlist at the end of the year or hurt our chances of advancement or promotion.

• 4:04Guy Raz?

  All right. The next principle for trying to create and adopt an infinite mindset, study a worthy rival.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  This is one of my favorite ones. So in a finite game, you have a competitor and you want to beat the competitor. You want. Your score to be higher than theirs at the end of the game. But there's no such thing. There's no, there's no finish line in the game of business. So trying to beat our competitors actually hurts trust, hurts cooperation and hurts innovation. Because we become so obsessed with a small number of arbitrary metrics over arbitrary deadlines that we can actually do so much damage to our organization. Great organizations, infinite minded organizations. They view the other players in their industry as rivals rather than competitors. And some of those rivals are worthy of comparison, which means there are other players in the game who do what you do better than you.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Whether it's their marketing or their culture or their hiring practices or just the quality of their product. They do things better than you. And what we want from our worthy rivals is their strengths reveal to us our weaknesses. Because the only true competitor in an infinite game is ourselves. It's ultimately a game of constant self-improvement.

• 5:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  And so by having our weaknesses revealed to us, we can work on them.

• 5:13Guy Raz?

  This is probably the most appropriate one, number four, for the moment we're living in. Prepare for existential flexibility. Wow.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, it's so funny, when I wrote about it, I talk about how it'll happen once, maybe twice in an entire career and some leaders will go through an entire career and never have to do an existential flex. Now, here we are, my company is going through it right now ourselves. The majority of companies actually have to go through it. Existential flexibility is the ability to make a hundred and eighty degree turn in your company to either take advantage of a new technology or deal with a completely changed environment. When the internet showed up, companies had to make an existential flex or they would go out of business.

• 5:55Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  And some are still playing defense.

• 5:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So we're going to dig more into that in a bit, I'm sure as well, because we're in this moment now where we really need to think about existential flexibility, how to shift an entire business model. The last and fifth principle is demonstrate the courage to lead. What does courage to lead actually mean?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  So, so many of the standard business practices that exist today are not actually infinite minded. They're very finite minded. And many of the standard business practices that exist today that we consider quote unquote "normal" are not normal. The idea- Idea of shareholder supremacy, where we put the wants, needs and desires of a disinterested external constituency over customers and our employees was a philosophy that was promoted in the late 1970s and popularized in the 80s and 90s. The use of mass layoffs on an annualized basis to meet arbitrary projections did not exist in the United States prior to the 1980s. Yeah. And you see a whole bunch of these philosophies that were propagated in the 80s and 90s that are standard today that are very, very, very finite minded. So the courage to lead is the strength of character to say, even though that's what

• 6:58Speaker 01

  everybody else is doing, I think that is wrong for the health of my business and I'm going to do it differently. And that is difficult.

• 7:05Guy Raz?

  Simon, we have so many questions coming in. This is Simon Troutman. He asks, what are your thoughts about connecting and motivating team members with their why? This is in reference to a book that Simon wrote, Start with Why. How do you connect and motivate team members with their why in the absence of being physically present, of being together?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Well, the good news is, is that every single human being has a why. The question is whether we are able to put it into words, whether we're able to articulate it. It's the sum total of how we were raised. It's who we are. And the rest of our lives present us opportunities to live in balance with our why or not. The decisions we make, the friends we keep, the jobs we take, the things we do will reveal to the rest of the world who we are. Yeah. And so the good news is finding one's why is a relatively simple exercise, believe it or not. There are many, many ways to do it, but I can tell you an exercise that people can try and you can just do it for free at home. And it's called the friends test. Think of the friends who you love and they love you. Don't do this with a spouse. Don't do this with a sibling or a parent. Those relationships are too close.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Do it with a friend who you know that if you called them at three o'clock in the morning, they would take your call and vice versa. And ask them this question. Why are we friends? And they're gonna look at you like you're crazy. Uh huh. What we're asking them to do is put into words a feeling they have towards you with a part of the brain that doesn't control language. So they're gonna look at you and be like, why are you asking me this? Weirdly enough, you actually stop asking the question why, because the question why evokes emotional answers, but we want rational answers. So now we actually start asking the question what? Come on, what is it about me? What specifically is it about me that I know that you would be there for me no matter what? And they'll struggle because they're attempting to put their feelings into words and they're gonna start just describing random things like, I don't know, you're funny, you're loyal, I trust you.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  And you have to play devil's advocate. You cannot help them. You cannot let anybody else help them. And you say, great, that's the definition of a friend. What specifically is it about me that I know you would be there for me no matter what? And you're gonna go through this exercise and it's gonna torture them. And eventually they'll give up. Eventually they'll say, look, I don't know. And they'll start describing themselves. I don't know. This is what my friends told me. I don't know, Simon. All I know is that I could sit in a room with you and I don't even have to talk to you and I feel inspired. And I got goosebumps. In fact, I'm getting them right now. In other words, your friends will say something to you that captures your value in their lives, which is your value in the world, which is your why. It's the thing you feel for them. And if you do it with multiple friends, you'll either get similar, if not the exact same answer.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  And every time they say something and you get that emotional reaction, you get goosebumps or you're well up, you're in the ballpark of your why.

• 9:44Guy Raz?

  Love it. This is a question from Vivek Senha. I'm a physician. Every day I walk in and I see the staff facing their own fears and crying behind the mask while they care for others. I'm at a loss on how to motivate these already highly motivated people. I am humbled by them and draw strength from them, but how do I motivate the already motivated? How do I lead the leaders?

• 10:06Speaker 01

  So he doesn't have to motivate them. As you said, they're already motivated. They're showing up every day. What he has to do is take care of them. I've been reaching out to combat medics and ask them, how do you deal with extreme stress and the crazy pace that where it's nonstop and it's it's hard every day? And in the military, they teach them to be open with their emotions, to ask for help, to accept help, to cry and create safe spaces for others to do the same. In other words, to address those emotions. They teach that this is trauma and everybody will have to deal with trauma at some point. And so to bottle it up and keep it somewhere, it's gonna come out later on. The point is, is we wanna, we, all of this tough guy stuff, that you have to be strong. No, you don't.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  The best thing we can do is that if you see someone crying, uh, go up to the, I'm gonna cry myself, you know, go up to them and, and put your hand on their back and just stand with them and let them cry with you. Just don't let people cry alone. That's the best thing we can do for each other.

• 11:05Guy Raz?

  I wish I could give you a hug right now, but I can't because we're physically, we have to physically distance, Simon, so next time.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  I'll take a rain check.

• 11:11Guy Raz?

  You're in the Bay Area, you, I will give you a hug, um, for sure. Um, you know, I'm wondering, we're living at a such an unprecedented moment, right? I mean, that, that word unprecedented is now overused, but in some ways, this is the moment to think about the infinite game, right? And, and if you are a business owner and you are looking at your revenue, you know, dramatically decline or stop, how would you begin to apply the principles of the infinite game, A, to keeping your, your business going, or B, to, you know what I mean?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, first of all, let's attack one thing, which is, these are not unprecedented times. The business world is well familiar with changing technologies or cultural conditions that completely challenged existing business models. The emergence of the internet completely challenged entire industries. There's no such thing as a video rental store anymore. They don't exist. And entire industries were flattened and some are still playing defense. And so these are not unprecedented times. This is more sudden, this is more jarring, um, but, but having a business model challenged because of some sort of cultural or technological change in the world is not unprecedented. And so it's the ones who define themselves by where they're going, by their just cause, who know why they do it. That will have better ability to adapt than those who define themselves by their product.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  So I'll give you a great example. There's a pizzeria in Chicago that makes 70% of its income from selling slices. Well, that just dried up. The great thing is, he took a step back and he said, I have resources here that I can do other things with. And so he has this pizza oven and he found that he can take medical grade plastics and because his pizza oven can get hot enough, he can melt them and bend them. So he's now making face masks to sell to hospitals to protect the frontline medical community. In other words, he's pivoted based on the resources he has and his desire to stay in business. So we have no choice, which is we have to look at the resources we have and the talent we have inside our companies. And that's how we figure out how to pivot. I use a technique in our company because we had to pivot.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  I make, we make most of our revenue from live events. Well, that doesn't exist anymore.

• 13:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  And so I used a technique that my friend Jen Waldman told me. I asked every single employee I have, I gave them 48 hours to bring 15 ideas each about what we could do. And they freaked out that I asked for 15. And the reason you want that many is because if I ask them for three or four, they're all going to give me the same three or four ideas. And by the way, those are the same three or four ideas that I had.

• 13:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  15, when you start getting 11, 12, 13, and the thinking starts, now you've got something.

• 13:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah. This is from Scott Lerner. He asks, what guidance do you have to influence a senior leadership team that puts shareholders first? Right? Like, how can, how can you change their view that shareholders supremacy is a flawed model?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  So the answer is you can't. We cannot change people's minds. And especially if there are multiple levels up above us, no number of anonymously sent books will change their mind. The way to do it is to be the leaders we wish we had, that we have to adopt the infinite mindset and we have to lead the way we wish we were led. And what ends up happening is we have really high trust, really high performing teams around us. Because we've now taken upon ourselves to make sure that everybody comes to work, feels inspired, feels safe, and returns home fulfilled by the work that they do.

• 14:30Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  And what you start to, what starts to happen is these little groups, sometimes they're divisions, tend to be higher performing inside the company, which means one of two things happens. Senior management leaves you alone because you're doing well, or if they're curious, they come and say, what are you doing? And either way, some of the people in that group will get moved or promoted into other groups and they'll take what they've learned and then you'll start to see little pockets of great leadership in other places. And before you know it, that person at the top who still has an old fashioned view of business, they're dead or retired and before you know it, the tails wag the dog. If we take an infinite mindset, we have to appreciate that it may not happen as quickly as we would like, but we can outlast them.

• 15:10Guy Raz?

  Here's a question from Nick Glubbers. I know you get a lot of college students at your events, Simon. He's a college student, I'm assuming. What advice do you have for somebody graduating college in this environment, looking for a job or starting a business or who might, with good reason, feel demoralized about the current situation?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  So there are good reasons to be down and depressed and think about all the bad things and all the disadvantages. And we should do that. Like, we should have our moments to go through that. But at the end of the day, like, there's also good that's coming out of this. And what I would like him to do is sit down and make a list of the 20 unexpected good things that are coming out of this. You know, I mean, I can tell you a few for me and for others have experienced. I'm texting a lot less. What I'm doing is calling people a lot more. And hearing that tone of voice, oh, it's just a magical thing. I think we're recognizing that we've, as a society, we've over indexed on defining success in terms of productivity. And in reality, our health and our happiness, it's not directly proportionate to how productive we are. We're living a life like the 1950s

• 16:09Speaker 01

  right now, which is kind of nice. Like, we stop working, we turn off the computer, we go have dinner with the family every single night. You know?

• 16:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  There are 20 really great things that we should write down, and that's where the opportunity lies.

• 16:23Guy Raz?

  I'm gonna go to one more question from our audience. This is from Camelia. She asks, Simon, what are the most important positive things or thing that you want people to kind of take away from this experience, from, you know, this health and economic crisis?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Service.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Taking care of each other. Service, the definition of service is the willingness to sacrifice for others, the willingness to sacrifice for a cause. And I think that our nation has forgotten how to sacrifice. If you go back to World War II, there are plenty, plenty, plenty stories of young men who committed suicide because they didn't get drafted, that the call to service was so powerful that people who couldn't go to war would buy war bonds so that they can contribute to the war effort. And people who couldn't afford war bonds would plant war gardens. So there was this overwhelming sense of we're in this together and service requires sacrifice. And shared sacrifice, the magical thing of shared sacrifice is it actually brings a group of people together.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  When there is shared hardship, we come together. And I think we have to recognize, and it's kind of amazing now, for the first time in my lifetime, and the first time in probably all of our lifetimes, we are connected to every human being on the entire planet. We can relate to somebody who doesn't look like us, sound like us, and have an entirely different point of view on the world, simply because we've gone through something similar and we have a shared experience, shared hardship. You know, and so the question is, is what can we sacrifice for each other? That's the definition of service. And this is a real opportunity to relearn service, I think.

• 17:56Guy Raz?

  Simon, thank you so much. I wish I could be there with you. We could be hanging out. Hope to see you soon, and thank you.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Be safe. Take care of yourself. Take care of others.

• 18:07Guy Raz?

  That's an excerpt from my conversation with Simon Sinek, the author of several books, including Start with Why and The Infinite Game. To see our full interview, just go to facebook.com/HowIBuiltThis. We're going to be putting these episodes in your feed every Thursday and hosting the conversations in real time twice a week. You can find those on YouTube, on Twitter, and at Facebook Live by visiting facebook.com/HowIBuiltThis. Next week, we're going to talk to Tim Brown and Joey Swillinger, the founders of Allbirds, and also to Stuart Butterfield, the founder of Slack. So join us live on Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern, 9 Pacific at facebook.com/HowIBuiltThis. Bring your questions, and if you don't have a Facebook account, no problem, you can still watch.

• 18:52Guy Raz?

  If you want to find out more about these conversations or other virtual NPR events, go to nprpresents.org. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, and we will see you next week. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Your next great read is out there waiting for you, and NPR can help you find it. Visit npr.org/bookswe love to browse hundreds of books we loved, published this year, plus thousands in our archive. And, you know, books make great gifts for everyone on your holiday shopping list.