take accountability for your actions you can take all the credit in the world for the things that you do right as long as you also take responsibility for the things you do wrong it must be a balanced equation in the 18th century there was something that spread across Europe and eventually made its way to a miracle fever also known as the Black Death of childbed basically what was happening is women were giving birth and they would die within 48 hours after giving birth this black death of childbirth was the ravage of Europe and it got
worse and worse and worse over the course of over a century in some hospitals it was as high as 70 percent of women who gave birth who would die as a result of giving birth but this was the Renaissance this was the time of empirical data and Science and we had thrown away things like tradition and mysticism these were men of science these were doctors and these doctors and Men of science wanted to study and try and find the reason for this black death of childbed and so they got to work studying and they would
study the corpses of the women who had died and in the morning they would conduct autopsies and then in the afternoon they would go and deliver babies and finish their rounds and it wasn't until somewhere in the mid-1800s that Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes realized that all of these doctors who are conducting autopsies in the morning weren't washing their hands before they delivered babies in the afternoon and he pointed it out and said guys you're the problem and they ignored him and called him crazy for 30 years until
finally somebody realized that if they simply washed their hands it would go away and that's exactly what happened when they started sterilizing their instruments and washing their hands the black death of child bed disappeared my point is the lesson here is sometimes you're the problem take accountability for your actions you can take all the credit in the world for the things that you do right as long as you also take responsibility for the things you do wrong it must be a balanced equation you don't get it one way and not the other you get to
take credit when you also take accountability Nelson Mandela is a particularly special case study in the leadership world because he is universally regarded as a great leader he was actually the son of a tribal Chief and he was asked one day how did you learn to be a great leader and he responded that he would go with his father to tribal meetings and he remembers two things when his father would meet with other Elders one they would always sit in a circle and two his father was always the last to speak you will be told
your whole life that you need to learn to listen I would say that you need to learn to be the last to speak I see it in boardrooms every day of the week even people who consider themselves good leaders who may actually be decent leaders will walk into a room and say here's the problem here's what I think but I'm interested in your opinion let's go around the room it's too late the skill to hold your opinions to yourself until everyone has spoken does two things one it gives everybody else the feeling that they have
been heard gives everyone else the ability to feel that they have contributed and two you get the benefit of hearing what everybody else has to think before you render your opinion the skill is really to keep your opinions to yourself if you agree with somebody don't nod yes if you disagree with somebody don't not know simply sit there take it all in and the only thing you're allowed to do is ask questions so that you can understand what they mean and why they have the opinion that they have you must understand from where they are
speaking why they have the opinion they have not just what they are saying and at the end you will get your turn it sounds easy it's not so a friend of mine and I we went for a run in Central Park the road runners organization uh on the weekends they host races and it's very common at the end of the race they'll have a sponsor who will give away something apples or bagels or something and on this particular day when we got to the end of the run there were some free bagels and they had
picnic tables set up and on one side was a group of volunteers on the table were boxes of bagels and on the other side was a long line of Runners waiting to get their free bagel so I said to my friend let's let's get a bagel and he looked at me and said ah the line's too long and I said free bagel and he said I don't want to wait in line and I was like free bagel and he says nah it's too long and that's when I realized that there's two ways to see the
world some people see the thing that they want and some people see the thing that prevents them from getting the thing that they want I could only see the bagels he could only see the line all the great leaders everybody from Martin Luther King to Steve Jobs every single one of them those with the capacity to inspire they will think act and communicate the exact same way and it's the complete opposite to the rest of us where the rest of us start with what we do these great leaders those with the capacity to inspire and
Lead great change all of them always start with why they do what they do every single organization on the planet even our own careers always function on three levels what we do how we do it and why we do it what we do with the products we make the services we offer the things we sell How We Do It are those whether you call it your unique selling proposition or your proprietary process or whatever you want to call it's the things that you think make you different or special or stand out from the crowd but
it's this concept of why we do what we do this purpose cause or belief that drives every one of us why the company exists in the first place we don't need another one of whatever you're selling you know there's plenty but why do we need you and it's not because of how you do it differently or what you do there's something deeper there it was the very reason why the company was formed when organizations start with why the response they will get from people who believe what they believe will be visceral it will be deeply
personal and in the emotional part of the brain it will be hard for people to explain why they are so drawn to Southwest Airlines or Harley Davidson or apple they'll talk about oh it's the design it's the quality it's the service but in the reality it's deeper than that it's in the part of the brain that controls Behavior but not language the best they can sum up is I don't know I just love it but the reality is it actually is one of the things that helps them Define who they are Apple is able to
inspire loyalty amongst customers and employees and shareholders for that matter because the way they view themselves is different than the way most other computer companies view themselves most other computer companies Define themselves by what they do they make compute Shooters and everything they try to do is in an effort to improve upon that thing add more RAM add more speed make it blue Apple defines themselves by why they exist to challenge the status quo you know power to the individual think different and everything they say and everything they do is to advance that idea so
in the mid-1980s a theologian named James Carsey wrote this little book called finite and infinite games in which he defines these two kinds of games finite games which have known players fixed rules and agreed upon objectives there's always a beginning a middle and an end the objective is to win the game and then there's infinite games infinite games are defined as known and unknown players you don't necessarily know who all the other players are the rules are changeable you can play however you want and the objective is to perpetuate the game to stay in the
game as long as possible we are players in multiple infinite games every day of Our Lives there's no such thing as being the winner in your marriage there's no such thing as winning global politics and there's definitely no such thing as winning business finite mindset that is everything is about this transaction this listing an infinite mindset is I may win or lose this game I may win or lose this transaction and there'll be another one and another one and another one and another one and the goal is not to win this one the goal is
to be better and better and better and better let me give you a real life example that sheds some light on what I'm talking about I spoke at an education Summit AT Microsoft I also spoke at an education Summit AT Apple at the Microsoft Summit the vast majority of the executives spent the vast majority of their presentations talking about how to beat Apple at the Apple Summit a hundred percent of the executives spent a hundred percent of their presentations talking about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn one was obsessed with
where they were going the other one was obsessed with their competition at the end of my talk at Microsoft they gave me a gift they gave me the new Zune when it was a thing this was Microsoft's response to the iPod and this little piece of technology was absolutely incredible it was beautifully designed the user interface was intuitive and very simple to use it was really brilliant I have to say so at the end of my Apple talk I was sharing a taxi with a very senior Apple executive and I decided to stir the pot
I couldn't help myself I told him I said you know Microsoft gave me their new Zune and it is so much better than your iPod Touch to which he said I have no doubt and the conversation was over because the infinite player understands sometimes your competitor has the better product and sometimes you have the better product and sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind but there's no such thing as best or first or beating your competition there's only a head and behind and the reality of an infinite game is you're actually only competing against yourself
that the objective every single day is how do we become a better version of our own institution this year than we were last year how do we improve the quality of our culture how do we improve the quality of the way we provide the service that we claim to be providing how do we improve ourselves that is the main point of being an infinite game because at the end of the day we don't have the same metrics as everybody else and we're not even necessarily playing to the same ends we've all had the experience where
one of our colleagues got a promotion and we got upset we got angry we got angry at somebody else's success think about that for a second why couldn't we share in the joy right what is it about them that's being revealed in us that's the problem comparison is the deadliest thing we can do to ourselves because we will always come up short all it does is exaggerate all of our insecurities it's fun and and exciting to try and beat our competitors but to to have to face our own weaknesses every day that's exhausting it's much
easier to direct all of that discomfort and anxiety we have about competitions and our weaknesses at others but the problem is if we become so obsessed at winning sometimes we do things that are quite unethical it's like being a runner in a race when we're obsessed with winning in a race we may trip the other the other Runner we may trip the other competitor and yes we will win the race but we're still a slow Runner and the problem is in this infinite game there's another race in another race and another race and it never
ends when we have competitors in business we adopt this mindset of needing to win or needing to beat them the problem is this is not a finite game there's no such thing as winning a worthy rival is another player in the game that is worthy of comparison that in some way shape or form reveals to you weaknesses that you have that are opportunities for you to work to improve yourself you get to pick your own worthy Rivals you can have many of them they can be entire companies they can be individuals they don't even have
to be in your industry but there are people that you respect you don't have to like them but you respect that they are better at things than you are and it shows you where your opportunities to improve are and remember in the infinite game the only true competitors yourself and if the game of an infinite mindset of playing with an infinite mindset is a game of constant Improvement what better way to discover your weaknesses than from those who are better than us at so many things organized for the infinite game it takes courage because we're
going to be swimming Upstream in a world that is very finite driven and it is incredibly difficult to have the courage to stand up to all of the pressures in our lives that are telling us to stay finite to advance ourselves Beyond others to make as much money this year as possible to be the best to be number one in all these artificial rankings with arbitrary ratings and arbitrary time frames you know the pressures on us are overwhelming from Wall Street or our own egos or from internal incentive structures or our bosses whatever it is
the pressures are overwhelming for us to play the finite game and so how do you stand up to massive external pressure courage and courage is something that comes from relationships you know it's external the absolute confidence that someone will be there for you in a time of need is what gives us courage to be there for other people when they need it there are days we're going to doubt ourselves there are days we're going to get knocked in our ass there are days that storms are going to rise and we have to have people who
say I got you back you need to do this we need you the world needs this keep going which all raises the very interesting question what does it mean to live an infinite life clearly our lives are finite but life is infinite and we are simply the players in this infinite game and in every other infinite game though we don't get to choose the rules of the game we do get to choose if we want to play and we do get to choose how we want to play it in The Game of Life however we
don't get to choose if we want to play once you're born you're a player the only choice we get is how we want to play we can choose to live our lives with a finite mindset to advance our own careers at the expense of others to try and outdo all of our friends make more money than any everybody else we know and accumulate as much power as possible and when we die we leave it all behind or we can choose to live with an infant mindset which is to commit ourselves to see that those around
us rise to see that those around us have experiences that they cannot get anywhere else and isn't that sort of the point of an infinite life to leave this world in better shape than we found it to leave the companies that we work for in better shape than when we started to leave our families stronger and better capable than than they can do without us you know isn't isn't that what it means to live an infinite life that we can literally live on beyond our own lives
