“any leader who wishes to lead in the Infinite Game must have a crystal clear Just Cause... the goal is not to win, but to keep playing... A Just Cause is bout the future. It defines where we are going. It describes the world we hope to live in”

from Infinite Game

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“George Washington forbade anti-Catholic organizing in his armies and regularly attended Catholic services to model the behavior he expected of his men.”

from Infinite Game

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“The true value of an organization is measured by the desire others have to contribute to that organization's ability to keep succeeding, not just during the time they are there, but well beyond their own tenure.”

from Infinite Game

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“For the past 40+ years, we have been building companies with a definition of business that is actually bad for business and undermines the very system of capitalism it proclaims to embrace.”

from Infinite Game

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“It is not technology that explains failure; it is less about technology, per se, and more about the leaders' failure to envision the future of their business as the world changes around them.”

from Infinite Game

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“after Friedman's 1970 article executives and directors... became excessively focused on shorter-and-shorter-term gains to the benefit of fewer and fewer people.... in large part due to Friedman's ideas... in 1978, the average CEO made approximately 30 times the average worker's salary and by 2016, the average had increased over 800% to 271 times the average worker's pay... at a rate 70% faster than the stock market!”

from Infinite Game

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“leaders are not responsible for the results, leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results-- for creating a safe, a trusted and trusting, supportive environment”

from Infinite Game

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“It is an infinite-minded player's appreciation for the unpredictable that allows them to make these kinds of changes. Where a finite-minded player fears things that are new or disruptive, the infinite-minded player revels in them.”

from Infinite Game

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“In an organization, it is often the founders and early contributors who have the clearest vision of the unknown future, of what, to everyone else, remains unseen.”

from Infinite Game

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“Without a Just Cause, an organization starts to function like a ship without a compass.”

from Infinite Game

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“Very often, finite-minded leaders believe the source of will is externally motivated—pay packages, bonuses, perks or internal competition. If only that's all it took to inspire a human being! Money can buy a lot of things but it can't buy true will... the difference between an organization filled with mercenaries versus one filled with zealots. [ cf. Russian mercenaries and draftees vs the inspired Ukrainians defending their home. ]”

from Infinite Game

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“Because leaders fail to envision the future as the world rapidly changes around them, in the '60's, the average life of a company was 60 years; now it's only 20 years.”

from Infinite Game

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“Existential flexibility is the capacity to initiate an extreme disruption to a business model or strategic course in order to more effectively advance a Just Cause.”

from Infinite Game

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“What got us here won't get us there.”

from Infinite Game

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“When a group shares in the suffering, it actually brings a team together.”

from Infinite Game

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“Money is an abstraction of tangible resources or human effort... an abstraction, it has no 'real' value to our primitive brains.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“It is not the demands of the job that cause the most stress, but the degree of control workers feel they have throughout their day… less control, more stress… Leaders have overall lower stress levels than those who work for them.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Just as a parent can't buy the love of their children with gifts, a company can't buy the loyalty of their employees with salaries and bonuses... We will judge a boss who spends time after hours to help us as more valuable than a boss who simply gives us a bonus”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“In a decade marked by an unpopular war and the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon seemed to offer a foreboding look at the generation he served. His own selfish ambitions drove decisions that were at best unethical and at worst illegal.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Children are better off having a parent who works into the night in a job they love than a parent who works shorter hours but comes home unhappy.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Our jobs are literally killing us… seven times more people die each year from heart disease and cancer than all the people murdered in a decade.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“What makes a good leader is that they eschew the spotlight… if they really cared, they wouldn’t need to publicize every time they did something.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“work-life balance… has nothing to do with the hours we work or the stress we suffer. It has to do with where we feel safe.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“our need for hierarchies is linked to food and protection… the ones who were lucky enough to be built like linebackers would get to eat first… So to solve the problem, we evolved into hierarchical animals.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“As much as we like the idea of being equal the fat is we are not and never will be… and for good reason.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Almost everything about us is purpose-built to help increase our opportunities for survival and success and our need for leaders is no exception.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“A good vision statement, explains, in specific terms, what the world would look like if everything we did was wildly successful.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“There is no biological incentive to do nothing… it feels good to put in a lot of effort to accomplish something.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Short or long term, the clearer we can see what we are setting out to achieve, the more likely we are to achieve it.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“the best visions offer us something that, for all practical purposes, we will never actually reach, but for which we would gladly die trying.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“treating people well in any economy is more cost effective than not… The best companies almost always make it through hard times because the people rally to make sure they do.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Trust is not simply a matter of shared opinions. Trust is a biological reaction to the belief that someone has our well-being at heart… they only become leaders when they accept the responsibility to protect those in their care.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“the rulebook, no matter how comprehensive, cannot consider every eventuality... This is the reason we find bureaucrats infuriating. They simply default to the rules with no consideration for the people those rules were designed to help.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“In weak organizations, without oversight, too many people will break the rules for personal gain. That's what makes the organizations weak. In strong organization, people will break the rules because it is the right thing to do for others.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“We don't trust rules, we trust people.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“The more we try to make ourselves feel better, the worse we seem to feel.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“It's not how smart the people in the organization are; it's how well they work together that is the true indicator of future success or the ability to manage through struggle.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“the more financial analysts who cover a company, the less innovative the company.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“the more we have, the bigger our fences, the more sophisticated our security to keep people away and the less we want to share.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“because it abstracts the value of things... we don't do well with abundance... By its very nature, scale creates distance... the more we have, the less we seen to value what we've got,”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“The big Boomer generation has, by accident, created a world quite out of balance. And imbalance, as history has proven over and over, will self-correct suddenly and aggressively unless we are smart enough to correct it ourselves slowly and methodically.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“the more things we do that amplify the abstraction, the harder it becomes to see each other as human... We no longer see each other as people; we are now customers, shareholders, employees, avatars, online profiles, screen names, email addresses and expenses to be tracked.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“When the Boomers were young, it was they who forced civil rights on an older generation bent on maintaining an unhealthy and unjust status quo... As the disproportionately large generation of Boomers started aging, they changed course. And that's when our modern-era problems started to arise.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“too many leaders of companies... justify their actions as within the law while ignoring the intention of the laws they aim to uphold.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“We have an absolute need to form bonds of trust. Our survival depends on it.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“When a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that that leader's vision come to life”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“people go to work for Walmart because they want a job, people go to work at Costo because they want a future and a sense of belonging to a team.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“It is the leaders of companies that see profit as fuel for their culture that will outlast their dopamine-addicted, cortisol-soaked competitors.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“as much as 50% of ready-to-harvest food will never be eaten... the average American family is throwing out nearly $600 per year... Simply learning to preserve or freeze more food could save families nearly $43 billion peer year.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“It is the struggle it takes to make it work that helps give that thing its value... we have warmer feelings for the projects we worked on where everything seemed to go wrong.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“many suffer from an addiction to their phone and social media... most of us could do with some sort of digital addiction treatment”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“I honestly believe it would do less long-term damage to a kid to put them up for adoption that to hand them a device every single time we don't want to deal with them... don't end up doing serious damage to them as adults.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“the parents of the Millennial Generation may have erred on the side of over-coddling their kids and accidentally tipped the delicate balance... when it comes to protecting our kids, sometimes less is more.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“And for those who couldn't afford war bonds, they contributed by planting victory gardens, growing fruit and vegetables to help reduce the burden of rationing. This is one of the reasons we call this generation the Greatest Generation. It was defined not by excess and consumerism, but by hardship and service.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.”

from Start With Why

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“The goal of business should not be to simply sell to anyone who wants what you have—the majority—but rather to find people who believe what you believe... people don't buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it”

from Start With Why

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“He was not perfect. He had his complexities. He was not the only one who suffered in a pre-civil rights America, and there were plenty of other charismatic speakers. But Martin Luther King Jr. had a gift. He knew how to inspire people.”

from Start With Why

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“This dance between gut and rational decision-making covers how we conduct business and even live our lives... it is what we can't see that makes long-term success more predictable”

from Start With Why

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“It's all about balance... the visionary and the operator inside a company, Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the Soviets and Uncle Sam in geopolitics, even Mom and Dan at home... one point of view or a single, uncontested power is rarely a good thing.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“For a good many Millennials excessive positive affirmation was now piled on top of excessive protection from failure and criticism... What they are better at is being distracted [but] They are a remarkably accepting generation... more inclusive and more accepting of people who are different from them.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“The more energy is transferred from the top of the organization to those who are actually doing the job, those who know more about what's going on on a daily basis, the more powerful the organization and the more powerful the leader.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Integrity is when our words and deeds are consistent with our intentions... it is also about being honest when we disagree or, when we make mistakes or missteps.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Both generations X and Y grew up to believe they could get whatever they want... An overlooked and forgotten generation, Gen Xers didn't really rebel against anything or stand for much in their youth.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“GenZ—very activist, lonely, conflict avoidant... many young kids would rather quit than have a difficult conversation, ghost someone rather than break up with them... they just missed a basic skill-set, how to have a difficult conversation”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“over 90% of all new businesses fail in the first 3 years... The foolishness of thinking that you're a part of the small minority of those who actually will make it past 3 years and defy the odds is part of what makes entrepreneurs who they are, driven by passion and completely irrational.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Leaders never start with what needs to be done. Leaders start with WHY we need to do things. Leaders inspire action.”

from Start With Why

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“All leaders must have two things: they must have a vision of the world that does not exist and they must have the ability to communicate it.”

from Start With Why

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“Steve Jobs came of age in this time... saw the power of government and corporations as the enemy, not because they were big, per se, but because they squashed the spirit of the individual... Thus was born Apple Computer, a company with a purpose—to give the individual the power to stand up to established power, to empower the dreamers and the idealists to challenge the status quo and succeed.”

from Start With Why

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“A finite-minded leader uses the company's performance to demonstrate the value of their own career. An infinite-minded leader uses their career to enhance the long-term value of the company”

from Infinite Game

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“WHY-types are the visionaries, the ones with the overactive imaginations. They tend to be the optimist who believe that all the things they imagine can actually be accomplished. HOW-types live more in the her and now. They are the realists and have a clear sense of all things practical.”

from Start With Why

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“Whereas the Greatest Generation was defined by the need to serve others, the Boomer Generation started on a path of taking for themselves.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“By its very nature, scale creates distance, and at distance, human concepts start losing their meaning... The more we have, the less we seem to value what we've got.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that's obedience Responsibility is doing what is right.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“The only difference between you and a caveman is the car you drive.”

from Start With Why

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“We've succeeded as a species because of our ability to form cultures—groups of people who come together around a common set of values and beliefs.”

from Start With Why

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“There is a reason we're not friends with everyone we meet. We're friends with people who see the world the way we see it, who share our view and our belif set.”

from Start With Why

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“The goal of a leader is to give no orders... Responsibility is not doing what we are told, that's obedience. Responsibility is doing what is right.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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“mistakes are not something to be feared... When our leaders reveal their gaps in knowledge and missteps, not only are we more willing to help, but we too are more willing to share when we make mistakes [before] they become too big to contain.”

from Leaders Eat Last

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