Do you care about the score?

Let’s say that you’re invited to play soccer on a team. You’ve loved playing soccer your entire life. Naturally, you’re excited to play and win. Without wasting a breath, you say yes to the invite.

Now, imagine for some reason, you discover that the game is rigged and you can never know the score. You don’t know who is winning or losing at any point in the game. And the game never ever stops.

Would you still want to play?

Well it depends. If you believe in just playing to play the game, then definitely. But if you believe in competing to win, then my guess is that you’ll pass.

Your decision to play or not to play boils down to this: Do you care about the score?

If you care about the score, then you’re playing a finite game. It has a determined endpoint and your objective is succeed within that time. If you’re leading a team, you’ll want to get them aligned and moving towards the goal. That’s the traditional model of leadership by objectives. And it’s how most of the world works.

But if you don’t care about the score, then you’re playing an infinite game. You can play for hours and hours and never be truly satisfied. Leadership in this kind of arena means that you are constantly seeking to expand the pie. There is no end goal. You are simply striving to be better than yourself.

As always you have a choice. You can lead with a finite mindset or an infinite mindset. Your corresponding actions will change depending on the mindset that you pick. But you’ll be become your best self if you adopt an infinite mindset.

So.. do you care about the score?