Recognising patterns in strategy
Sometimes it seems as though the people involved in strategy must have a rare intellect able to hold multiple conflicting threads of information whilst including future possibilities and probabilities finally coming up with something interesting.
But do they really.
In a similar manner have you ever wondered how chess masters can play 25 games at a time and still win nearly all of them? On February 8-9, 2011, Iranian grandmaster Ehsan Ghaem-Maghami achieved the Guinness world record for most simultaneous chess games. He played for 25 hours against 604 players, winning 580 (97.35%) of the games, drawing 16, and losing 8. A brain the size of Texas.......
But this experiment tells us something.
Strategists, at least good strategists, are doing something similar - given the environment and what is happening internally what are sensible strategic moves we should consider. Obviously given the additional time available strategists have the luxury of gathering any required information and thinking trough the issues before deciding what is to be done.
The key point to note though is that the chess master can't do this after not having played chess for a year. The patterns will look unfamiliar and he/she is likely to stumble far more. Strategists need to be doing strategy more often than annually if they are going to become, or stay, good.............
But do they really.
In a similar manner have you ever wondered how chess masters can play 25 games at a time and still win nearly all of them? On February 8-9, 2011, Iranian grandmaster Ehsan Ghaem-Maghami achieved the Guinness world record for most simultaneous chess games. He played for 25 hours against 604 players, winning 580 (97.35%) of the games, drawing 16, and losing 8. A brain the size of Texas.......
But this experiment tells us something.
First, present a grandmaster and a novice with a position from an actual, but unfamiliar, chess game (with about 25 pieces on the board). After five or ten seconds, remove the pieces and ask the subjects to reproduce it. The grandmaster will usually reconstruct the whole position correctly, and on average will place 23 or 24 pieces on their correct squares. The novice will only be able to replace, on average, about 6 pieces. Repeat the experiment except that now the 25 pieces are placed on the board at random. The novice can still replace about 6 pieces and the grandmaster-about 6!The chess masters recognise patterns in chess easily and given the pattern they see they have a pretty good idea of what to do. So in reality they aren't really playing simultaneous chess games, they are more solving chess puzzles one after the other after the other etc etc.
Strategists, at least good strategists, are doing something similar - given the environment and what is happening internally what are sensible strategic moves we should consider. Obviously given the additional time available strategists have the luxury of gathering any required information and thinking trough the issues before deciding what is to be done.
The key point to note though is that the chess master can't do this after not having played chess for a year. The patterns will look unfamiliar and he/she is likely to stumble far more. Strategists need to be doing strategy more often than annually if they are going to become, or stay, good.............
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