Playing the infinite game

I never read the classic Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse up until now. I finished reading it for the first time, I will read it again though. It has only 101 points. It covers multiple facets as described poignantly by the blurb from an another author who featured earlier, Robert M Pirsig.

“Normally we add new facts to existing knowledge. But once in a while a book like this comes along and does just the opposite - it adds new pattern of knowledge to existing facts.”

The book is just that, a new lens with which we view the same old things I write about here. I am referring to business and markets.

The core frame is simple :

There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing to play.

Running or starting a business is a function of playing the infinite game in the market. Let me be more specific and zoom into the market of logistics and businesses operating in it.

Logistics business have counterparts, i.e two or more heterogenous parties transacting with one another. For example, a shipper like a grocery company is looking for a trucking company to move its stock from its warehouse to stores. The grocer is looking to hire a trucker to provide the service of moving commodities, what we commonly call as shipment.

For the better part of last 6 months, I inhabited the role of a growth person at my day job. What does that mean? Perform tasks that would contribute to growing the revenue of the underlying business. And, not a sales person with a quota.

The message I was trying to communicate was to play an infinite game rather than playing many finite games with one’s counterparts.

Going back to our previous example, a grocer would require shipments being moved on a regular cadence which would entail repeated transactions with the trucking company. When they do it without a pre-agreed price, it is termed to be spot transaction.

At the time of transaction, the dominant narrative and prescribed strategy is to play the finite game by either of the counterparts. Shippers are looking to extract the lowest price whereas the trucker is looking to secure the highest price. In order to achieve their intended goals, shippers engage with multiple trucking companies and try to negotiate from their quoted prices. While trucking companies quote higher than what they are comfortable to maximise their margins.

Let us go back to book and learn more about finite and infinite games.

If a finite game is to be won by someone it must come to a definitive end. Only the other players who are playing need to come to agreement, not the referees or the spectators.

In the example that I outlined, would you think either shipper or trucking company would concede to their counterpart winning?

Yet, products and marketers in logistics space produce artefacts treating transactions between counterparts as a finite game, winners and losers.

My plea to operators when I am pitching to them has been to communicate that they are playing an infinite game and being combative about price would not achieve the intended goal of doing business with their counterpart. In the end a transaction is an input to the outcome of moving goods, how well one transacted comes secondary to have the goods moved in a satisfactory manner.

Instead when operating in the market they could interact with counterparts with their own strategy in play. The rules of engagement are on other attributes but price of transaction, which is a function of timing, competition and economical conditions of the market. The goal is to transact with counterparts that are willingly agreeing to your terms and benefiting from the transaction.

Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care. They do not care for the reason than their game is not bounded by time. Indeed, the only purpose of the game is prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play.

You as a player want the other counterpart players to benefit from transacting with you as you want to continue the game and flourish as a business. The goal is to grow, not win a finite game and lose a counterpart (folding as a business) as a consequence.

So going back to our example of the grocer shipper and trucking company transacting for a shipment in the spot market.

They communicate all their requirements to their counterparts through price. If the price works, they will transact.

One last comment before we wrap up, platforms should be developed to facilitate transactions where all counterparts can play their infinite game. But like I said previously, often I hear the rhetoric of winners and losers by product people and marketers.

Round up

Two factions in secondary market of freight in North America

Optimising for price without focusing on close carriers pools will always be chaotic and fraud prone.If you booked a carrier because they came at the target price even though you never interacted with them before, things need some rejigging. …

I wrote this piece sometime back on LinkedIn. This is specifically catering to the secondary market, i.e a broker finding capacity from a small fleet owner, to move a shipment. The counterparts of fleet owners are aplenty to number of brokers.

The finite game is to fix the price and find any fleet owner moving the freight. Brokers continue to do this and think why freight market is cyclical in nature ( eventually the number of fleet owners relatively reduce as they loose playing the finite game). And my spiel to anyone and everyone who might listen, play the infinite game.

As James says in the end of the book, “There is but one infinite game”.

Links that resonated

This week are two links connected to one another. You can ask help from anyone in the world by showcasing them you are a serious person and worth helping. The odds of getting help are higher when you do both.

How to ask for help

One heuristic to remember is that help is about people before it is about projects. When you ask for help from someone, their helping your project is predicated on them wanting to help you. So, you should make it clear that you are someone worth helping. One of the strongest ways to show that you’re worth helping is to demonstrate that you are a serious person

Are you Serious?

It just seemed so obvious to me that a serious life is a life well-lived, and it’s always been weird to me how uncommon this perspective really is

Sign off

I have written how one should approach product building as a beat reporter. Collecting field reports till you build a theory, in the domain or market where product lives.

Go to market messaging is a lot like standup comedy. You start with open mics as a preparation for your set, the audience laugh determines whether it landed well. You keep working on it till you get the perfect delivery and the loudest laugh.

The last 6 months of my life was trying to perform the same set (message) to prospects, customers and audiences of events. This issue is the written version of the message.

I hope you found this finite and infinite framing useful for your business decisions going forward.

Signing off till next time,

Vivek , performing in many open mics