Worthy Rivals & Just Causes


by Emily Nichols


I kicked off the new year in San Francisco, CA attending PCMA Convening Leaders 2020 - four days of education and entertainment for convention managers. The conference’s education began Monday morning with featured speaker Simon Sinek, who spoke about his new book The Infinite Game.


According to Simon, there are finite games (football or chess) and infinite games (business, politics and life). He argues that when you play infinite games with a finite mindset (what most of us do), you will have far less success than if you learn to embrace an infinite mindset. Thankfully, there are not infinite tenets to the infinite mindset. If you want to learn about the five basic concepts, you can watch Simon’s TED Talk and read his book.


Here, I want to focus on the third concept, which struck me as the most subversive and challenging in our current sociopolitical climate. Rather than identifying a person or organization as “competition you must beat,” consider them instead to be a “worthy rival” from whom you have much to learn.


According to Simon, you should identify those people or organizations that do things better than you and learn from them. Stop trying to “beat” your competitors and instead focus on beating yourself - by being better today than you were yesterday.


As I sat in the Moscone Center listening to Simon, I immediately thought back to when I was a sophomore in high school, of a red headed boy named Robert, and about a math award. Long story short, I would have never won that award had I not been determined to be the best I could be, with Robert being there as my “worthy rival” along the way.


So, if Robert was my teenaged worthy rival, who are my worthy rivals of today? The answer came to me two weeks later in Philadelphia as I sat in the Independence Visitor Center for the first meeting of year for the Premier Venus of Philadelphia (PVP) - an informal collection of event managers, caterers and sales professionals who represent “impressive and unique event spaces of educational, historical, and cultural significance.”


5­ 2 March­z April­2020


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