Learn Problem Solving With Chess

As you climb the corporate ladder, the one thing many people are not prepared for is the amount of complex puzzles they are faced with every minute of every day.  Those who can navigate their way through these puzzles are destine for great things, including a spot in the C-Suite.  But, those who are not able to, typically find them self lost in middle management limbo for the rest of their career, or till they can figure out how to navigate these puzzles better.

So how do you learn to navigate these puzzles better?

CHESS!

I was six years old the first time I can remember sitting down at a chess board.  It was so intimidating with all the different pieces and movement rules.  But, after the initial intimidation wore off, I began to become obsessed with the endless patterns you could create to change the game in your favor.

When I was taught to play the game I was told to break down the board into smaller patterns that then have specific responses.  It was the first time I began to learn how to break down massive complex issues, into small well defined patterns that have very specific outcomes and responses needed.  This skill has stuck with me, and it is how I approach any major project or business puzzle that is put in front of me.

Here is a good example of a common issue many executives face:

It is the end of a quarter and the sales figures came in 19% under forecast.  The senior team sees this and tells you that you need to figure out specifically why this happened, and propose options to make sure it does not happen again.

There are an infinite amount of ways to approach this huge task, so how do you do it.  If you apply the principles of chess you will know that you need to first break down the problem "board" into smaller, more manageable pieces:

1. Marketing
2. Advertising
3. Sales
4. Operations
5. Accounting

Now that the board is broken down, you then begin to place the results "pieces" for each of these departments "patterns" into their specific buckets.  Once this is broken down, you now have 5 very specific patterns taking shape.

From here we can compare these patterns against historical patterns to find what changed and what the outcomes where.  Once we know this we now can see what patterns we used in response with a positive outcome to fix it.  At that point you apply the next pattern "take your move" and repeat till all the patterns have had the correcting pattern applied and you have achieved check-mate!

At the end of the day, chess is simply a massive puzzle made up of  an almost infinite amount of outcomes, based on specific patterns and outcomes.  Learning chess and being a life long student not only will allow you to get better at the game, but also begin to break down complex puzzles in life into smaller, more manageable puzzles you can learn patterns to implement to be successful with.  It is a skill that every business needs to have, and should be ever sharpening with the game of chess.

"The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions."
-Franklin, Benjamin (1779) "The Morals of Chess" [online] Historical Chess

To Your Success & Prosperity!!!