Can Simon Sinek's infinite game theory really reshape the way we think about business and leadership? Join me, Travis Maus, as I cast a critical lens on the skepticism that some have expressed regarding Sinek's ideas. We'll dissect the critique, weighing the authority and substance behind the naysayers' positions, as we consider whether these concepts have the heft to drive real transformation or if they're just castles built on sand.
Can Simon Sinek's infinite game theory really reshape the way we think about business and leadership? Join me, Travis Maus, as I cast a critical lens on the skepticism that some have expressed regarding Sinek's ideas. We'll dissect the critique, weighing the authority and substance behind the naysayers' positions, as we consider whether these concepts have the heft to drive real transformation or if they're just castles built on sand.
📖 To access Travis' complete book list, visit his storehere
Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and we are on the third episode of arguments against Simon Sinek. We're doing a little shake down on the infinite game. We went on the internet. We found a bunch of arguments against his work and we wanted to address this. We want to take each one of those Well, not each one of those, because there's a lot of them, but we wanted to take the first couple that we found and get into them a little bit because, as we talked about in the intro to the season, be careful who you take advice from and be careful. We talked about this in the first episode of this little shake down that we're doing. Be careful that people aren't taking a complex thing like life and work and business and oversimplifying it based on their own personal lens for their own gain their own personal gain or trying to tear somebody else down to make themselves look good. So I've gone out and online is a popular magazine. We're not going to say who the magazine is, their author is, because it doesn't matter, but this is their text. I read through the entire article. We're going to talk about that today and it is author Simon Sinek is full of hot air.
Speaker 1:
And the first quote. While some might say the actual content of his idea is flimsy at best, I write who are some and how many are some? What experience do some have in our some, the people that I would actually look up for or look up to? They always do this. You ever notice it's? Oh, we have an insider who says this. There's a report about this. We have a source that says this yeah, who I want to know who says his ideas are flimsy at best? Because I want to know if they have any credibility, or if they even read the damn book in the first place, or if they have tried to implement or apply any of his ideas, or if they're even successful. I want to know who. And when you say some, that implies that there's more than one. So are we talking three or are we talking 3 million? So how do you know that there's some and what is some? You have a group of friends that you hang out with and all of your friends think the same way. Well, that's called group think. That could be some, but you're limited, based on your environment and what you're allowing into your head. Are any of these people anybody? I would even look up to Stop saying what some people are doing and start saying what you're doing.
Speaker 1:
If you found that these don't work his ideas don't work explain that, calling them flimsy at best. What does that even mean? How's an idea flimsy at best? All I'm doing with an idea? Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself. Simon's ideas are just that they are ideas. Any book I've ever read or listened to just gives me ideas. All I need is a catalyst, and someone else's flimsy idea might just create the next Amazon. Who knows?
Speaker 1:
Maybe one of the problems that we have in this world today is that we have experts who proclaim that other people's ideas are not worthy of us to even hear or to consider, and they don't give good justification to give very simplified versions out of context. And they say that other smart people have more better things to say. If we just listen to this professor over here, that person over there, okay, but back to. What have they done? And should I be looking up to them? If we changed our perspective from that type of thinking to what can I learn from this? Or, although he states the obvious, am I really living the message or is there more I could do when he says we should be doing more for others, that that will bring us more fulfillment, you go, yeah, no shit, dummy. Okay, but what did you do today to help others? Are you really living that? And if you're not, you should listen to the message every freaking day and when you're when, when you are doing it, you should still listen to it every day, because there's gonna be days where you need a pat on the back to tell you did a good job and help. You keep going. Not really flimsy to be helping others. Not really flimsy to take yourself out of the center of the world. Make a list of $10 word scientific terms and obscure nibblets of jargon and find ways to use them. Your reputation and authority will soar.
Speaker 1:
They're talking about Simon making statements in a way that sound really good because he's using scientific terms or whatever, but they don't really mean anything. But he says it with conviction and authority. So therefore, he becomes famous because of it. Right? He sounds like somebody that you should listen to. You gotta have conviction and you gotta have courage when you have an idea and then you got to share it with people and you gotta be willing to put it out there, and you gotta be willing. I mean, simon doesn't need me to defend him. His work stands on its own, his success stands on its own, but you gotta be willing for all the people with their heads up their asses that we talked about a couple episodes ago to sit their point finger at you and say that you're hurting them. This is a harmful space because you're challenging them too fucking bad. If you don't want to hear the message, don't listen, don't read it, but don't tear it down so somebody else doesn't have the opportunity. Kind of sounds like the last quote. Let me word salad someone else to steal their credibility by accusing them to do something. That is exactly what I'm doing. I'm basically making a word salad to say that they're stupid. I'm smarter than them. Therefore, you should listen to me over them.
Speaker 1:
This is where ideas go to die, with people who say that person isn't worth listening to. Ideas that go against the grain have to be sold. This is where the courage and conviction comes in. And yes, I do think Simon's ideas go against the grain and you might say, well, that's kind of dumb. Obviously we hear all the time we're supposed to be nice to each other and we're supposed to think about how we might help each other and think about the long term and all that kind of stuff. And you know, of course, that's not against the grain. Well, it is against the grain.
Speaker 1:
And the reason why it is against the grain is because the majority of companies out there are being run for the primary benefit as someone, for the executives or the shareholders. Ask yourself are the majority of the companies that you know about being run for somebody other than shareholders or the executives? And think long and hard, think all day. If you want, think all week. Send me a message, let me know If you live in a world where the majority of the businesses are being run for the benefit of other people, not the shareholders and not the executives. Certainly, the shareholders want to make money, but where is the balance? Where is the actual focus? The focus on the bottom line or is the focus on the impact? Do we use word salads to make it look like we're making an impact so we can prevent the bottom line? Where is the actual, real focus of the business?
Speaker 1:
The next question is if you're thinking business is running for the benefit of so-and-so, how do you know? What are their actual actions? What did they actually do to prove that. When was the last time they did something to prove that? Is it deep? Is it a part of who they are? Is it back to values and virtues? Remember values is what we say. Virtues is what we do. Are we actually living it? Are we just saying it?
Speaker 1:
How many of your bosses and your coworkers when you go to work, or your employees, if you're in charge, how many are coming to work every day and trying really hard to make sure somebody else's life actually improves? When you're sitting there at work and you're looking around and you're thinking about, wow, look at this wonderful group of people I work with, how many of them do you look at and say I can't believe what they did yesterday for somebody else? How many of them are coming to work every day and really going the extra mile to help somebody other than themselves? Help somebody else? Is it all of them? Is it most of them? Is it half of them? Are some of them? Are you the only one? Is there only one other person doing it? Or is I got to get what's for me? It's business, business is business.
Speaker 1:
Here's a good exercise, and we just did this with our new hires, our most recent new hire group at Seed Planning Group. Get a group of people together. It can be your coworkers, it can be your employees, it can be your family members over Christmas dinner and you're going to ask something like what is one thing that you would like to see happen for someone else? And you could say what is one thing that you'd like to see happen for clients? What is one thing you'd like to see happen for coworkers? What is one thing you'd like to see happen for your community? What is one thing you'd like to see happen for your sibling? It doesn't matter, but it's somebody other than the person you're asking the question to. What is one thing that you would like to see happen for somebody else and what is one thing that you could do for somebody else? And you go around the room and you ask each person and nobody's allowed to repeat what the other person says. You can end up with this kind of list of things that, as a group, you'd like to see happen for other people and that, as a group, you could do for other people. And when you're all done, you're gonna read out loud. You're gonna say something like what would life be like if and you read the list. We wish for our colleagues that and you read a list. What if everybody thought like that? And what if that turned into action? Wouldn't that be an amazing place to work?
Speaker 1:
People don't want to come back to work today and in the whole business world, right, you had after COVID people, or during COVID, people went and worked from home, they worked remotely. They don't want to go back into the office. Why don't they want to go back into the office? Because what's the point? The point is the people that you work with, the collaboration, the community, the camaraderie.
Speaker 1:
You spend half your life working just about the purpose, the inspiration. Your presence may get somebody through a hard day. People witnessing how hard you work may inspire them to be better. It is not about us. It's about the people around us. For all those so-called business guru, experts, whatever you want to call them, people out there trying to tell everybody else how they ought to run their businesses. If you want to attract people, if you want to customers, employees to come, you know you want to People coming to you wanting to work at your company, wanting to work for your company, wanting to work with your company, whatever, even your family think about it like this with your family or your church or your community, whatever your community group Make where you are an amazing place to be because of how everyone is so committed to helping each other to be there for each other. If everybody is there for each other, you don't have to worry about you. 2, 4.