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August 17, 2004

Strategic Planning Pitfalls

The key to strategic planning is understanding what it is. It is a plan. A blueprint for what to do given what you know. It is not a combination for a padlock. Unlike a padlock, you don't know if it's going to be many turns to the right, two to the left and then one to the right. It could be any which way and there might be numbers you didn't account for.

Strategic plans that say, "should the enemy do X or Y, we'll do A or B" are of the better variety. This respects that the future is unknown. Strategic plans that say, "in Q1, we'll do A; in Q2, we'll do B; in Q3, we'll do C; and, in Q4, we'll do D" are fine only in the sense of knowing what the future will be. Most organizations and people don't have this degree of certainty in their lives.

Should you find yourself in an organization (business, marriage, detente) whose future is unclear, but whose plans seem so, try to find out what happens if the conditions change. Ask if, in all instances, this is what we'll do, no matter what. If your organization still wants to hold to plan despite future uncertainties, you'll be rewarded if you guessed right...

Posted by wayofgo at 04:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 16, 2004

The Nature of Things

Someone asked me about when to attack in Go. The Zen answer is to attack when the fruit falls from the tree. Not to be coy, let's explore the Zen answer.

When you were young, you lost your baby teeth. We'll hope, naturally. When those baby teeth first started to wiggle, you could have tried to pull them right out. Probably a bad idea, unless you like the pain of your teeth pulled. Another approach would be to have them dangle around in your mouth for a few hours by nary a thread. Again, not recommended unless you like playing with vestigal teeth.

The right time always seemed to be a bit before the thready action was going to happen or in the midst of a chew of apple. The point is that you're better off getting the timing right or you'll bleed profusely, experience tremendous pain, or be playing with a tooth that'd rather go.

Attacks are the same way. You can attack as soon as your troops are near the enemy, you can attack when you've done some initial jockeying for position, or you can attack after moving your troops around and around for days in plain view of the opponent. Depending on the circumstances, your probably best not doing any of these. Probably best to hit the timing right and then attack.

How? It's a matter of experience, often luck, and insight. For everything there is a timing. Attacks, teeth, and press releases. You best respect that nature determines the timing, your job is to understand what that nature is.

Posted by wayofgo at 08:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 13, 2004

Rules and Rules Part IV

Go's rules are dualistic. Once you know one rule, you can assume that its opposite is lurking. One Go rule is "Don't approach the opponent's strength." Good idea. If a car is coming at you, don't stand in front of it; move aside. If your opponent at the bake-off is really good at muffins and you're not, don't offer a challenge to end the contest by getting into a muffin-baking contest. Just as equity analysts don't offer much advice in sectors they don't cover, and just as lawyers focus on a particular brand of law, you best not try to compete where your opponent is strong.

However, there's also advice to Go players to approach strength!

The technique in Go is called a "lean." You lean on the opponent's strength, making the opponent stronger where the opponent is already strong, then attack the opponent's weakness. Just as you might hit to an opponent's forehand in tennis, the opponent's strength, to set up a shot to the backhand; just as Columbo might ask innocuous questions lulling the questioned into the trap of "just one more question," you can approach the opponent's strength, to get at the opponent's weakness and still be in the right.

Knowing which way to go is a matter of experience. There's no substitute for experience. GO'S RULES (covered in depth in the Way of Go) cannot help you gain it, but they can suggest, if you have the experience, to pay attention to both sides of the strategic coin.

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August 12, 2004

Rules and Rules Part III

The Way of Go is partly about the universal rules of thumb -- those maxims, heuristics, proverbs... call it what you will -- that cover the bulk of the strategy in the game of Go and, coincidentally, the rules of life. Bold statement?

The trick, again, is that Go cannot map directly onto the strategy of some other field. You need to look at the "rules" of Go from a standpoint of abstraction. From this standpoint, you can generally say the underlying grit of Go's rules is, in essence, the same underlying grit of baseball, cooking, Chado, archery, war, or your favorite martial art.

With this assumption in hand, you can do a lot. First, you'll find, in the Way of Go, that these underlying truths underlying these rules have a structure. This structure is dualistic in appearance. For every rule there's an antithesis! Just as one can use the rule "absence makes the heart grow fonder," one can also use the rule "out of sight, out of mind."

The key to the application is knowing something of the environment and cirumstances coupled with your own expertise/experience.

Posted by wayofgo at 12:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 06, 2004

Rules and Rules Part II

There are two kinds of rules. Rules that govern how play on the Go board goes and rules that dictate better play. Leaving the rules that govern alone, the "rules" (aka: rules of thumb, maxims, proverbs, principles, heuristics, strategies, etc.) of Go share their nature with other fields including, but not limited to, politics, business, war, martial arts, and life.

It's as if there is a tree of life and Go is a branch. At a distance, knowing the Go branch, its shape and relative position to other branches (i.e., "it's a game, like chess"), from the surface, doesn't tell you much about another branch somewhere else on the tree far away. However, if you're able to look at the underlying metaphorical DNA, you can get at something the casual observer of the tree doesn't see. This DNA commonality was readily apparent when I stopped my quest to become a professional Go player and started to do seemingly non-Go things.

My first job, in sales, was full of proverbs. "The customer is always right" and telling clients "don't judge a book by its cover" come to mind. While I hadn't organized all the proverbs I'd learned in Go (c.f., The Way of Go and GO'S RULES for that), I recognized that there was nothing about sales, at its roots, that was different from Go.

One of the more direct applications of Go to sales came when trying to sell the customer our product.

In Go, your opponent can see your every move. To manipulate the board to your favor, your plans must be subtle. An example of how not to be subtle:

(dialing. ring ring) "Hello?"
"Your net profit lessens with every ad you place with other publications. You need to advertise with us if you want to make a buck."
"Hunh? Hello? Who is this!"

While direct and not subversive (unless your lying about your claim), initial situations deserve some crescendo. Here, you go straight for it. As the Pointer Sisters said, "When it comes to love I want a slow hand."

Of course, as in Go, sometimes you have to be quick to the point and can't beat around the bush. While you don't have to be subtle to make your point, you should use the Go rule "press the enemy's strength, then attack." See HOG Heaven in Reverse Forward of the book, for more.

(dialing. ring ring) "Hello?"
"Hi, I am from X. Your product is something our readers (pick one: call us for on a regular basis/use in the field based on surveys we do/match well given your intended target audience). I see you're advertising in A, B, and C, but did you know that you can hit your target audience better in X and probably for half the cost of those other publications for a better sell through?"

As someone who did about 100 cold calls a day and got maybe a sale or two a day, I can vouch that the first example rarely works, if at all. The second approach is kinder, gentler and starts with their product in light of yours.

In Go, you press (aka "lean on") the strength of the opponent, meaning that you make the opponent's strength stronger, then go after a weakness. Just as you may hit to the opponent's strong forehand in tennis, then go for the backhand or, press a witness, as an attorney would, on pleasantries, softening the witness up, getting them comfy, before hitting with a really tough question, you do the same thing in Go and in sales.

Yes, Go is a different branch, but the Way of Go will show you how best to move rules from one branch to another and give you more than fifty Go rules, some of which you can quickly apply to whatever you want to do.

Posted by wayofgo at 07:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 05, 2004

Applying Go to _______

Make no mistake, you cannot map Go directly to any other topic. Period. What you can say, however, is that Go points to the fundamental essences of strategy and principles in other arts, ways, and endeavors. Is it any wonder that Go has been used to inform business, politics, military, martial arts, or other fields? No. The cool part about understanding the root issues is that those root issues don't change from Go to various arts and ways (i.e., martial arts, war, business, sports, politics, and life). This is the The Way of Go's message in part.

The game of Go strips away chance, and advantage in resource, making you play a game where you and the opponent are equally matched and resourced. You win based on your better understanding of those fundamental essences. If you can win in this pure competitive landscape, you can apply that understanding when you have advantages, chance and resources in your favor.

Does being a good Go player mean you'll apply these lessons in your life? Goodness, no! There have been plenty of top players that make miserable life decisions despite understanding the principles at the highest level. Key is to take the lessons from your field, abstract them, then reapply them. Otherwise, what you have learned is subject to the confines of where you learned it.

And remember, the distance between knowing and acting shapes how the word "execution" applies to you. ;^)

Posted by wayofgo at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 02, 2004

Improving your Go (from the US Go Congress)

A key part of the Us Them chapter of the Way of Go tells how best to improve either at Go or anything else. It's a timely prescription for Go players at the US Go Congress.

For the last three days, I've witnessed some surprising behavior with regard to getting one's games reviewed here at the Congress. Despite the offers of stronger players and pros, many people don't want their games reviewed. The top reasons:

- "I know what I did wrong"
- "I won"
- "I lost"
- "It was just terrible, there's nothing to learn from that game"

I cringe when I hear these remarks. While reading books, attending lectures, and watching stronger players play are all good supplements, reviewing your own games is the single greatest way to improve. A review of your own game is individually tailored to you. Your mistakes, your predilections are exposed and examined in a new light. Invaluable.

What's frightening is that stronger players seem to want to review more than weaker players do. Of players that sought to review their games the most, 6-dans, near the top of the amateur heap, were the most frequent seekers. The players most likely to give one of the above excuses for not reviewing their games, mid-level kyu players, or those closer to beginner ranks. Even adjusting for their total numbers, the trend is telling.

If you're less than 6-dan in strength and are in the I-don't-want-to-review-boat, please know that 6-dan amateurs are weak players. Each review with a pro Go player or even with other lowly 6-dans, a player can find innumerous mistakes, missed chances or wrong thinking. No 6-dans are so arrogant to think that another set of similar or stronger strength eyes cannot find a single problem with their moves across an entire game.

Whether in Go or not, review can be painful, but its individual prescription is the right medicine.

Posted by wayofgo at 03:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack