“Go or Check, Mate?”
Chess and Go are two games that require a real time combination of strategic, tactical and analytical skills to master. They have military emphasis, with conquest as an objective, but are worlds apart in terms of what how success is measured, and consequently, how the game is played. To masters of the games, my discussion may be an oversimplification.
Chess origins are still under debate, but many sources trace it to India around the 6th century AD. It moved on to Persia and the name Chess comes from Shah, Persian for King. The objective of the game is to kill the opposing king, Checkmate, a derivation of Shāh māt, Persian for kill the king. The chess pieces have evolved over time and the ones we know today bear a very European characterization. (The most notable, and most powerful character, is the change from the Vizier, or Wizard, to the Queen, the character closest to the King). It is a game that has interesting features that have implications for play far beyond the board. It is one where pieces have specific roles and rank, both defining what they can do and not do. Pieces can move only in restricted directions, determined. This is not any different than engineers can only do engineering; accountants can only do accounting and so on and on. In chess, it is strictly forbidden to change how individual roles can behave. The game typically follows a path of mutual destruction and high consumption of resources. Winning requires the destruction of the competitor. Degrees of freedom are lost through consumption and positioning.
Go is a game originating in China around 2500 BC that has spread and evolved across the Far East. All pieces are identical and there is no differentiation in roles or functions. The objective of Go is to capture the maximum amount of territory and competitor pieces on the board. The game also includes strategy and tactics, but more so around the placement of pieces. Go is also a game of war, but very different in philosophy. Given that the objective to capture as much territory and opponents, it also includes the goal of doing so with the minimum number of pieces placed in the least amount of time. In Go, consumption has a cost, and efficiency has rewards. The objective is not to destroy and remove from the board, but to capture.
These games provoke questions about the influence of how the way we perceive the games we play in business drive our strategies. Do we have consumption paradigms that require incremental spend for incremental progress? How far ahead do we think through what our decisions will be and to what extent do “degrees of freedom” play in our choices? Does an objective of capturing a competitor drive different thought processes than destroying the competition? What level of externalities does capture versus destruction deliver to society?
There are countless books about the parallels between military strategies and business strategies. For me, there appear to be three complementary and symbiotic strategies:
- Conquest (Project)
- Occupation (Process)
- Abandonment (Exit and waste removal)
Any one of the three requires the other two as part of the decision. We pay a high price when we decide and execute with only one in mind.
Shall we play?
