Sinek's talk, promoting his new book The Infinite Game, highlighted how successful movements require leaders and teams to be playing an "infinite game," one with "no finish line." Educators from across the country listened intently and dutifully took notes seemingly unaware that independent school education is the quintessential finite game.
Too often in independent schools, success for teachers resembles covering content and getting students to understand it, and success for students is getting good grades. In my career, I've watched independent schools lean in to those definitions of finite success, by increasing content delivery, creating honors and regular tracks, pushing our students to take more APs, and publishing inflated grades in open gradebooks. These trends can be seen as strategic plays in the ultimate finite game, getting students into selective colleges.
And what happens when our students hit the finish line of our finite game (HS graduation and college admission)? Sinek uses Andre Agassi and Michael Phelps as examples of what happens after one achieves one's finite game goals: depression.
How many administrators taking notes during Sinek's talk are spending their days playing finite games? The goals of an average administrator sound like a list of finite games. For example: create a competitive curriculum, recruit more applicants, improve the college matriculation list, raise money for another building, and improve your school reputation (and ranking). These finite games are often being imposed, top-down, on multiple constituencies--from the board, to parents, to students, to faculty.
Sinek talked about how finite goals can be gamed; he said if you want to be a best selling author on Amazon, you can get all of your friends to buy the book in the same hour and voila! How many administrators are trying to game the algorithm of school ranking by focusing on increasing applications, increasing donations/endowment, and improving the college matriculation list? Is that a "just cause" that requires "the courage to lead?"
And what happens when administrators hit the finish line of this finite game (new school year and new rankings)? Does the process just repeat? As Sinek said, "there is no such thing as winning education." He said that leaders should define success by momentum towards a just cause in an infinite game. In his words, will others carry the torch when you leave?
How do we transcend the finite games we're currently playing in education?
Well, a lesser known speaker who spoke that day at NAIS (hint: it me!), showed the slide below saying that the secret sauce of independent schools is a focus on "graduat[ing] lifelong learners with solid character." Independent schools should use their budget and flexible curriculum to empower lifelong learners and build programming around global citizenship and ethical and moral decision-making. These schools use their small class sizes and low teacher-to student ratio to build strong relationships that transcend semester and school year and inform learning and character development.
1) A Just Cause - Those who believe their schools do play an infinite game would argue that their "cause" is one of graduating curious and insightful lifelong learners with engrained values and quality judgement that are ready for life after school. That is a just cause; let's build momentum around that!
That will require us to tweak the finite nature of things. First, we'd have to stop obsessing over our college list. Then, we'd have to rethink our rigid adherence to teaching the five core courses for four years. We'd also have to redesign some of the old independent school sacred cows that are both finite and game-able like calling our students well-rounded (look! sports) and claiming a robust character education curriculum (look! guest speakers). Education is about a lot more than these finite games. Leaders have to define the infinite game they want to play and show it with meaningful changes to the traditional systems (e.g curriculum and schedule) and resources (e.g HR and budget).
After all, a just cause brings an isolated student who's intently focused on grades out to an extracurricular event, and it brings a content-heavy teacher whose door is always closed out into the common spaces to impart life lessons that transcend curriculum.
2) Trusting Teammates - In Sinek's words, “We don’t teach curriculum, we teach people. The job of leaders is to take care of the people who take care of the people.” A focus on relationships and character helps build camaraderie and culture. When students and faculty feel like they have agency and support, finite games turn into infinite games. Rather than being confined by schedules, traditions, and rules, they are empowered by superiors and a just cause (in this case, character education, and lifelong learning).
3) Worthy Rival - There are schools that are playing an infinite game. We need to listen to, learn from, emulate, and collaborate with those schools. (If I'm describing your school, @ me!). Take it from Sinek, who told his story about becoming friends and colleagues with someone he formerly viewed as a rival.
4) Existential Flexibility - As I mentioned above, any school that is playing an infinite game must be willing to make "meaningful changes" to the way it currently does things. With bigger budgets, smaller class sizes, and no standardized testing, independent schools are uniquely poised to do this. If part of our just cause is character education, we need to use our resources to put our students in positions outside of school walls to live our core values--to engage in the community, to help others, and to combat injustice. If the other part of our cause is lifelong learning, we need to rethink our curriculum and give our students a chance to follow passions and investigate the professional landscape around those passions so they can make an impact when they graduate.
5) The Courage to Lead and continually evolve/improve - Sinek explained, "too many leaders do not know what game they are in." If more leaders can articulate and pursue a just cause, infinite games will spread in education. Fortunately, there have been some courageous moves in independent schools that we can build off of, from schools eliminating APs, to schools joining the Mastery Transcript Consortium to free us from the tyranny of grades.
So what are we waiting for? NAIS is over; let's design our infinite games and start playing. After all, "the only true competitor in an infinite game is yourself."
To help you take the first step, here's Sinek one last time, "What idealized vision of the future has your school committed to? You must have a vision even though you may never reach the goal."
