Our Workers’ Comp Community: The Infinite Game

Thought Leadership

Jul 9

BY JOHN MOLINAR

Early in my career, I kept score.

Not officially, of course. There was no spreadsheet hidden in my office recording victories and defeats. But mentally? Absolutely.

Every favorable decision. Every successful hearing. Every appeal won. Like many young lawyers, I viewed the practice of law as a series of contests with clear outcomes. There were winners and losers, and I intended to be on the winning side as often as possible.

At the time, it felt entirely reasonable.

Law school rewards competition. Litigation reinforces it. Courtrooms themselves seem designed around finite outcomes. One side prevails. One side doesn’t. The scoreboard lights up, if only in our own minds.

And in those early years, scorekeeping can be useful. It sharpens preparation, fuels long hours, and pushes us to master our craft. But if you stay in this profession long enough, something curious begins to happen.

The scoreboard starts to matter less.

Not because winning ceases to matter. It does. Our clients deserve our best advocacy and judgment.

But over time, you begin to realize that while individual hearings may be finite games, a career in workers’ compensation is not.

It is something entirely different.

Finite Games. Infinite Careers.

Years ago, philosopher James Carse introduced the distinction between finite and infinite games, a concept later popularized by Simon Sinek. Finite games have known players, established rules, and clear endings. Football games. Chess matches. Trials. Someone wins. Someone loses.

Infinite games are different. New players enter. Others leave. The rules evolve. The goal is not to win because there is no final victory. The goal is to continue playing.

Marriage is an infinite game. Parenthood is an infinite game. Leadership is an infinite game. And increasingly, I have come to believe that workers’ compensation is as well.

Claims continue. Medical science evolves. Laws change. Technology reshapes how we work. New professionals enter the system while seasoned ones step away. The game outlasts us all.

Somewhere along the way, though I could not tell you precisely when, my own scorekeeping quietly began to fade.

The Questions That Change With Time

Perhaps it was time.

Because there comes a point in life when the scoreboard begins to lose its grip on you. A parent dies. A mentor retires. A friend receives news that changes everything. Your children become adults, and you realize with equal parts pride and humility that time itself may be the most finite thing we possess.

Experience has a way of changing the questions we ask.

You stop asking, "How am I doing?" And begin asking, "What am I leaving behind?"

Not legacy in the grand sense of monuments or titles. Something smaller. More human.

Did I make people's lives better? Did I treat others with dignity? Did I leave this profession stronger than I found it?

Those are not finite questions. They are infinite ones. There are moments in this profession that quietly reorder your priorities.

The Claim I'll Never Forget

One of those moments came during a death claim many years ago.

I sat across from a young man, only twenty-six years old, who had recently lost his wife in a work-related accident. My role that day was to explain the benefits available to him and help him understand what would happen next. I did so as carefully and compassionately as I could.

But as I looked across the table, I was struck by a realization that has never left me. Nothing I was explaining would change the fact that when he returned home that evening, his wife would not be there.

The benefits mattered. They were necessary. Our system was doing precisely what it had been designed to do. And yet, in that moment, it was impossible to ignore its limits.

No check restores a future. No statute repairs a broken heart. No legal outcome, no matter how fair or well-intentioned, can fully account for the value and dignity of a human life.

I do not remember every detail of that claim all these years later. But I remember him. And I remember leaving that meeting with the quiet understanding that some things in life simply do not fit on a scoreboard.

Perhaps that is why, over time, the work begins to look different.

Today's opponent becomes tomorrow's colleague. The lawyer across the hearing room may one day serve beside you on a committee. The adjuster involved in a difficult claim becomes a trusted professional contact. The game keeps going. The players change.

And eventually, you realize that reputation travels farther than victories.

You can win a hearing and still damage a relationship. You can prevail in litigation and lose credibility. You can achieve a short-term victory that ultimately makes the system less effective for everyone involved.

And if that happens often enough, did anyone truly win?

A Community, Not a Contest

The longer I have practiced, the more I have found myself asking different questions.

Not: "Did I win?" But: "Did we reach a fair outcome?"

"Did we preserve trust?" "Did we improve the process?" "Did we leave the system a little better than we found it?"

Because workers’ compensation has never been merely a collection of statutes, forms, and hearings.

At its best, it is a community. A community of adjusters, employers, injured workers, physicians, regulators, attorneys, and administrators all trying, often imperfectly, to navigate difficult circumstances with fairness and humanity.

And like every community, it depends on relationships.

There is a phrase often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Success is to leave the world a bit better." Whether Emerson actually said it almost feels beside the point.

The idea endures. Because eventually our cases end. Our titles pass to others. New professionals arrive carrying ideas we never imagined and technologies we could scarcely foresee. The game goes on. As it should.

Because in the end, professions endure not because of statutes or systems alone, but because people choose, day after day, to invest in one another. To teach. To listen. To disagree respectfully. To leave the door open for the next generation to walk through.

That may be the real infinite game we are playing. Not simply preserving a system but strengthening a community.

One conversation at a time. One claim at a time. One relationship at a time.

The scoreboard eventually fades. The relationships remain.

And if that is true, then maybe our task is not merely to play the game well, but to invite others into it, to share what we have learned, and to leave a chair open for those who will one day take our place.

Pull up a chair.

Let's get to work.

AUTHOR

John Molinar is a Board Certified Workers’ Compensation attorney and industry leader, offering practical insight shaped by decades of experience across the Texas system.

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