William Wu Personal Blog

I don’t play chess, but I am a chess fan.  I learn to appreciate the complexity and compeitive dynamics that exist in the chess world over the years.  Chess principles make excellent advice in the business world.  Seize the initiative.  Play with a plan.  Look at your opponent’s moves.  Don’t waste material.  Seek small advantages.  Everyone who wants to succeed at business or chess must follow these precepts.

In his book Every Move Must Have a Purpose, 

Bruce Pandofini, the famous chess coach featured in the Searching for Bobby Fischer book and film, shares many of these chess strategies for life and business.  Â

One of the key principles is: Always Play with a Plan. 

Always play with a plan.  As Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Roman Philosopher, once said, “Our plans miscarry if they have no aim. When a man does not know which harbor he’s making for, no wind is the right one. Like Alice wandering through Wonderland:

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where .
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.

As with Alice, search for the road to a success ending is pointless when we don’t know our destination.

Practically, any plan is better than no plan.  “You don’t need to plan if you can afford to fail.”, as Bruce wrote in the book.  He continues, “…Play without a plan, and many things could happen.  Most of them are bad.  We can’t just move pieces and hope for the best, not if we want to win.”

How do you plan? Bruce advised us that great Grand Masters know to make their plans small and adaptable.  The best plan is memorabel in its simplicity, compelling in its logic, versatile in its application.  This “orderly flexibity” concept is key (see my previous blog - On Competition) as flexibility counts.  It is especially true if you are an entreprenuer trying to grow your business. Since the very nature of business and compeition is intrinsically unpredictable.  , we can at best hope to determine possibilities and probabilities.  Because we can’t eliminate the inherent uncertainty, we must reply on simple and flexible plan.  Small and direct plans assure players their ability to adjust quickly, without losing sight of the big picture.  Great chess players try to do a few things over the span of no more than several moves, they hope to link these schematic blocks into a grand strategy leading to checkmate. 

Of course we must plan.  As commonly said, by failing to plan, you plan to fail. Planning is bringing future into the present so that you can do something about it now.  Dwight D. Eisenhower said it best, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensible. ”

The great success of our time are not just extraordinary people on whom fate smiled.  They get where they are by following a strategic plan.  They learn what it takes to get ahead. Like building a house, it takes a plan, a blueprint, but we sometimes forget that to build a success life and business, it also takes a blueprint.  So let’s remind ourselves, winners are made, not born. Remember the saying, “Today’s planning determines tomorrow’s success.”

“The general who wins a battle makes many calculations… here the battle is fought.  The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand.  Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few to defat.”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The entreprenuer or player who plans carefully before entering the competition understands how to leverage his own stregnths and his resources.  With careful plans, one can predict which alternatives for action offer greater opportunities.  With superior execution, one can turn these greater opportunities into ultimate victory.