The ChEx Bookshelf
Each issue in this column, Chief Executive Andrew Farthing introduces a noteworthy book of interest to the average player
THE BUSINESS OF CHESS What is the secret of success? How can I emulate the performance of those at the top? What are those magic shortcuts to improvement?
Chess publishing exists because there are enough of us asking these questions and – more importantly – willing to feed our hunger for answers by buying books. Deep down, I know that my standard of chess is very unlikely to improve significantly, yet I continue to buy chess books in considerable quantities. In this, I am clearly not alone.
Is this a folly unique to chess? Reassuringly, the answer is a resounding“ No!” The world of business and management is also full of punters desperate to uncover the secrets of success and the bookshops are full of offerings to meet that need. No matter how many sceptics question their value, the books fly off the shelves in order to sit – often unread – on the desk of business people the world over.
Occasionally, there is crossover between the fields of business and chess. In 2008, the American chess publisher Bob Long produced The Chess Assassin’ s Business Manual( Thinkers’ Press), an account of his life in the“ business” of chess. Anecdotal in style, this is essentially autobiographical in nature with a few chess games thrown in for good measure. I rather enjoyed it, but then as a reader of both chess and business books I may well be the book’ s ideal reader. The educational value for business people is, I suspect, marginal at best, but chess players may find it interesting provided that they don’ t expect it to improve their game.
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Better known is How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov and Mig Greengard( William Heinemann; 2007). In this book, according to the front-cover blurb,“ The most successful chess player of all time shares his insights into life as a game of strategy.” Sadly, the book falls between two stools. As a business textbook( or life manual), it fails to convince, and the promised“ insights” come across as rather bland generalisations. The most interesting sections are the specific anecdotes from Kasparov’ s chess life, but the nature of the book means that these are diluted by the more“ universal” content. The authors work hard to persuade the reader that the chess / life or chess / business metaphor is valid but prove unable to move beyond this to show that the metaphor in turn generates insights unavailable without it.
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So much for ventures into business literature from within the chess world; what about attempts to use lessons from business to learn about chess?
The book that I want to focus on tries to do precisely that: Foundations of Chess Strategy by Lars Bo Hansen( Gambit; 2005). Hansen is a Danish grandmaster who has made the career shift into business, where“ he teaches and lectures on business studies, with a particular focus on marketing, organisation and strategy.” A number of strong players have moved into other professions, of course, but Hansen is unusual in that he continues to write about chess and, moreover, actively seeks to import models and frameworks from business thinking and apply them to chess.
The business models in question are not particularly complex. At the risk of over-simplifying, they can be summarised as follows:
( 1) Outside-in or Inside-out – This refers to the notion of whether strategy should be determined by the external environment(“ Outside-in”) or the internal qualities of the organisation(“ Inside-out”). As so often in this area, there is no right answer, but Hansen makes the point that if strategy is driven only by the external conditions, there is a risk that everyone ends up with the same strategy and, therefore, no competitive advantage. Success, he argues, comes from a focus on what the individual( or organisation) does particularly well, i. e. the“ inside”.
( 2) The Five Forces – In business strategy, this is a famous framework devised by Michael Porter. Here, Hansen adapts the model to chess, replacing the four external forces identified by Porter with chess terms( Material; Initiative; Positional Factors and Environmental Factors) and the internal“ force” with the Human Factor.
( 3) Personal Style matrix – A classic‘ four-box grid’ so beloved of management consultants the world over. Here, it is applied to the definition of four broad groupings of chess styles. The Personal Style matrix brings us to the heart of Hansen’ s book, perhaps best summarised in the following table taken from Chapter 3: Space prohibits a detailed explanation of this model,