Highlights From medium.com

Strategy in chess is all about the why of movement i.e. why you should move here over there. This was different from all the business strategy books that I had read. They tend to focus on the goal or the why of purpose as the all important factor in business. But the purpose of winning the game was not the same as the strategic choices I made durin... See more

Categorising situational awareness

My company had a “why of purpose” which was to be the best “creative solutions group in the world”. It sucked. We were an online photo service, a consultancy, a European CRM, an Identity web service, a fulfilment engine and an assortment of special projects around 3D printing and the use of mobiles phones as cameras. I had no real way of determinin... See more

I rapidly discovered that despite all of our talking, daily status meetings and our weekly Town hall that beyond the very senior management, no-one really understood our strategy. I also doubted whether the senior management did. I certainly was unsure of it. I turned inward, the problem was me!

Remember, you have no idea that the board exists and you can only see what is on the left hand side i.e. the characters you press and the sequence. You will almost certainly be shocked by the speed at which you have lost the game. You’ll probably scribble down their sequence as some sort of magic sequence for you to re-use. However, every time you ... See more

The first, and most obvious thing, is that they are visual. If I was going to move a piece on a map then I could point to where it was and where it needed to go. Navigation was visual but that was normal. Except, I realised it wasn’t. When people stopped me in their cars to find their way to the nearest petrol station — this was 2004 and GPS was st... See more

Climate describes the forces that act upon the environment. It is the patterns of the seasons and the rules of the game. These impact the landscape and you don’t get to choose them but you can discover them. It includes your competitors actions.

If you are like I once was, lost at sea than this might just help you find your path. For me this journey begins two decades ago when a senior executive handed me a short document and asked “Does this strategy makes sense?”

[In chess], how did I learn, how did I get better at the game? I would see the board, I would move a piece and I would learn that sometimes a particular move was more beneficial than another. I would refine my craft based upon my gameplay on the board.