The Infinite Game

Sinek begins Chapter 2 by recounting Russian families taking extreme survival measures during the Nazi occupation of Leningrad. He also describes how Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist, worked all his career to ensure “hundreds of thousands of seeds and tons of potatoes, rice, nuts and cereal” remained in storage in Leningrad (29). However, Vavilov was a victim of Stalin’s purges and died at 55. After his death, Vavilov’s team of scientists continued his work. They even refused to eat from the bounty of food in the face of starvation. Sinek believes the “scientists who carried on Vavilov’s work during the siege felt like they were a part of something bigger than themselves” (32), that this “just cause” was an infinite game, not the finite game of enduring a single siege.

The infinite game is not played to win, but to keep playing. Leaders who wish to keep playing the infinite game must have a clear just cause: “A Just Cause is a specific vision of a future state that does not yet exist; a future state so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices in order to help advance toward that vision” (32-33). A just cause makes the tiresome, sometimes sacrificial activities of a job or career fulfilling.