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September 15, 2004
Kiseido offers pictures
Kiseido has graciously offered the Way of Go to repost (not for reposting elsewhere) three traditional wood block prints.
Thanks Kiseido!
Samurai tying his shoe on an up-turned Go board
Ukiyoe of People Playing Go on top of a Servant
Posted by wayofgo at 09:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 14, 2004
Question from the Virtual Chautauqua
VC: "What made you commit pen to paper, as it were, to write this book? What was your writing process?"
When I started taking lessons in Go, from Paul Hu, the American champion at the time, the nuggets from the lessons were the rules of thumb that dictated better play when I would Go wrong. "Play away from strength" "Two meanings per move is better than one" "Don't play moves without purpose" "Eat what you can eat" "Safety First" "Attack from a distance." These "rules" appeared sporadically throughout my lessons.
As a linguist in school, I thought that I'd organize the rules into types. For instance, "Eat what you can eat" means to remove the opponent's position - on the verge of death - or prone to being eaten - from play by "eating" or capturing it. In Go, this is removing potential bad aji - the Japanese word for taste; that is, something that can linger and bite you later. In a sense, then, this rule is akin to other rules about extinguishing risk. Once you combine this with other rules like "Safety First" or "A stitch in time saves nine" (Go teachers are not adverse to using colloquial proverbs), you get a whole slew of rules around the term safety. In the book, it is part of the chapter Owe Save.
Comparing these rules with my father's rules from business, I saw the parallels. Most every business rule had a corresponding Go rule. On leaving for Japan and then coming back (another story, best left for the book), I continued to find these rules in most every topic.
Cooking, dating, business, politics, sports, and war all seemed to have in common the very same underlying rules. For more than a decade, I gathered these rules, tried to organize them, but left them for the back burner. That is until, I left the Industry Standard and had some time to reflect.
At that point, I felt that I had gathered and confirmed enough that these Go rules had their parallels wherever strategy was found. I investigated how to get the book published and after a few years of editing, rewriting, reorganizing and tinkering, the Way of Go was born.
Posted by wayofgo at 03:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Author at the Virtual Chautauqua
Group Jazz invites you to join us for an upcoming Chautauqua conversation. Chautauqua author sessions open on the 15th and run to the end of the month. September 2004: Troy Anderson on his new book The Way of Go: 8 Ancient Strategy Secrets for Success in Business and Life
Join us to:
* Engage in great conversations.
* Interact with stimulating guest authors, thinkers, and practitioners.
* Enjoy learning with colleagues and friends.
Visit the Chautauqua website, http://www.virtualchautauqua.com, register (free!) and stop by the cafe. Then, come back for Troy Anderson on the 15th!
Posted by wayofgo at 03:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
When To Stay The Course
The description of the Way of Go lists several examples of where strategies of Go could be applied. One, "Which initiatives to continue and which to abandon" needs a bit more explanation.
In the book, you'll find the most references to this critical decision in the chapter Expand Focus. This chapter covers the dilemma between the rules "not putting all your eggs in one basket" (Expand) and Vince Lombardi's "Success demands singleness of purpose" (Focus). In this chapter, you'll read about USG's decision to stay in a number of products or exit out of them.
You play Go on a big board. Virtually six chess boards worth of places to play - 361 intersections of places to play. In that spirit, if you're going to win, you have to have at least a presence over 181 of those intersections. But, at the beginning of the game, you don't know which parts of the board will be more critical to winning than any other.
Some of the keys to staying the course or not are to pay attention to the stage of the game you're in and then to pay attention to the spectrum of rules between focus and expand. At the beginning of the game, it is generally better to expand, keep diversified, don't ditch any positions utterly. In the middle, you have to start sacrificing because uncertainty is less and you have to make tradeoffs with the opponent. In the end game, it is rare to see big exchanges in territory or to have any investments around the board that you still have the option to renew.
So it is with most anything else; for instance, college. If you're not a strict pre-med or some other vocationally-motivated college program, you're likely to not know what you want to be when you grow up, much less what topic you want to major in. So, you take a variety of classes to see what sticks. This is Expand at its best. As you leave your freshman and start your sophomore year, you get more pressure to pick a major, but with still two more years, you don't have to ditch your favorite options, but if you want to graduate in four years, you'd best have some favorites and not be in between all options, like you could be freshman year. By your junior year (again, if you want to finish or if your parents require you to finish in four), you need to have narrowed things down considerably. Moreover, your options best be close topically. By your senior year, you can dual major and maybe even triple, if you've given up on the things most college students value most - social life, other activities - but most likely, you have to focus to have kept your options open till the end. This is college majoring options ruled by stages.
Aside from stage realities, you do want to pay attention to the Expand Focus advice from the book:
- Focus when you're clear what you want to do
- Keep your options open when uncertainty is prevalent
- A move with two or more meanings is better than a similar value move with only one
- Don't be like the chicken that partly crossed the road, once you've decided to cross the road, keep going; otherwise, foul fowl
See the Expand Focus chapter for more...
Posted by wayofgo at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 11, 2004
Four Questions Part III
Strength and weakness is relative to your goals. Sometimes, no matter where you are strong or where you are weak, you'd best be served by not playing to or against them.
If you're strong at embezzling, I can't recommend you play to your strengths. If you're strong at embarrassing people, you might want to play to this if you're Simon Cowell, from American Idol, but in most instances, this strength should be redirected.
As we saw in Four Questions Part II, the Four Questions can help you win a duel with an opponent with known strengths and weaknesses relative to yours. But what if the point was not to win. What if you wanted to get better at boxing? Challenging a relatively friendly opponent to a boxing duel, is bound to be the right choice, not the wrong one. If your time frame and long-range thinking is "how do I get better" then who cares if you lose twenty duels. If you can learn more from losing than winning, you win, not lose, if your goal is to learn.
To make the Four Questions work, well, you need to know what your goal is. If your goal is to win one match, one time, and never have to compete again, the temptation to cheat, lie, steal, etc. might seem strong. Of course, who you are and what you are and how people see you will be impacted.
In Go, there are dispicable players who attempt such trickery and foolishness. For the sake of the win, they'll do virtually anything. They suggest you take back their moves. They miscount the board intentionally. They mess up the board so the final count cannot be done. This short time thinking way is not a recommended way for gaining in strength and, in the long-term, will tend to keep them at the strength they are.
The Four Questions, as easy as they are, are no simple task. You need to constantly reevaluate where you are strong, where you are weak, where the opponent is strong, and where the opponent is weak. Moreover, you need to keep in mind your own goals. Am I focused on the long-term? The short-term? Learning or winning? Better myself? Better my world? Better my soul?
Posted by wayofgo at 05:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Four Questions Rule Part II
The Four Questions rule applies in many instances.
Imagine that you and an opponent have decided to duel. The opponent is strong at boxing and bamboo sword fighting, but weak at wrestling and log rolling. You are weak at boxing, strong at bamboo sword fighting and log rolling and have middling strength wrestling. What dueling venue suits you best? What dueling venue suits the opponent best? The answers are obvious if strength and weakness between you is relatively similar.
Should you decide to box, you will be boxing against an opponnent who is strong at boxing where you are weak. While the experience might help your boxing skill, if the point is to win the duel, then you'd be better off not choosing boxing.
Should you decide to bamboo sword fight, then who wins is largely a toss-up. Both you and the opponent are strong at it. Should you decide to wrestle, you might have a good chance to defeat the opponent, but given your middling strength, there still seems a better option.
Log rolling. You are strong at log rolling and the opponent is weak at log rolling. If the point of the duel for you is to defeat the opponent, you'd best be served by having log rolling as your venue.
Yet, despite this very simplistic and common sense reasoning, in Go, business, and other fields, things get in the way of this sort of reasoning. Founders of small companies, excellent inventors or tinkerers, think they'd be better CEOs - an entirely different skill - than someone they could hire. CEOs, blinded by ego, emotions, or otherwise, try to get into a business or enter a market because of some sort of "god complex," not because it suits the company best.
The discipline and attention to oneself, the changes in strength and weakness, at every moment, in every decision, to hold the Four Questions rule in mind is no small chore. Complicating matters is that people often don't know what they want to do in the first place.
Posted by wayofgo at 11:48 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 10, 2004
The Four Questions Rule Part I
Of all the rules of Go, the one most often applicable is the Four Questions rule. The Four Questions rule asks:
- Where am I weak?
- Where am I strong?
- Where is the opponent weak?
- Where is the opponent strong?
Much like business's SWOT analysis - Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat - the Four Questions get at where to play by telling you to play away from strength and play closer to weakness. Loosely, if you're strong in the North, South and East, then you should allocate resources to beef up West. Continuing to make strengths stronger and leaving weak positions to fend for themselves violates weakest-link-in-the-chain type thinking. That is, the strength of the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Posted by wayofgo at 08:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 09, 2004
Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan
I get a number of questions about what Go would say about how to handle Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan among other conflicts and struggles throughout the world.
The first thing, I'd advise all Go players, and likewise, everyone else, is to figure out what you want (Us) and what the opponent (Them) wants. Then look at where you stand, given where you're standing. Are you comfortably reading this in the confines of the suburbs on DSL, T-1, or a cable modem? Or, are you thinking about this problem as the stench of dead bodies permeate the air, guns go off around you, and water and electricity is unavailable? Put yourself in different shoes, mentally. Walk around in them and then think again about what you want and what the opponent wants.
Second, realize that we you can't really play good Go unless you see the board. If your information about what's on the board does not mesh well with what's actually on the board, you're likely to make poor choices. None of the above-mentioned conflicts are laid out clearly like so many Go stones on a Go board. Indeed, we have to guess at a lot of things about Us and Them that inform our decision-making, but that are likely wrong.
Third and finally, not to be self-promoting but... encourage people to read the Way of Go. The first two suggestions come from the Us Them chapter. There are other suggestions throughout the book, though some are rather subtle, that are directly relevant to the issues at hand.
From my vantage point, I know the situations are dire, but I also know what I don't know. I'm at a disadvantage with regard to information and what the metaphorical board there is like. Advising what to do would be folly. Advising how to approach the problem, however, I feel quite comfortable that a Way of Go, Aikido, Chado, Karatedo, Tae Kwon Do, Zen, or Shodo approach, among scores more, in their true forms, would be the correct approach.
Posted by wayofgo at 03:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 05, 2004
Tiger Woods
With every tournament Tiger enters, there's a chagrin that he doesn't dominate the way he used to. "Why did he ditch his coach?" "Why can't he compete the way he used to?" "Where did the real Tiger go?"
The danger of entering the cycle of Shu-Ha-Ri is that you don't have time to emerge from the learning to engage back in your art, field, or sport the way you need to. I would bet that Tiger not only has the time, given his age and detachment from being on top, but has the natural ability, should his cycling through Shu-Ha-Ri be true. Don't assume you know what's going on with him, as so many do. Hope that he's following the last post.
Posted by wayofgo at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 01, 2004
Black Belt Jones
The desire to be a black belt is admirable, but often mis-directed. Be it martial arts, Go, six-sigma, what-have-you, mastery is rarely achieved, if ever. When I asked Cho Chikun, one of the strongest Go players ever, what he knew of Go, he answered, "nothing." He wasn't being coy, but was expressing that Go's depth was so much more than his knowledge.
As with any field or endeavor with depth, there's always more to explore and learn from. In relation to your peers, you can dominate, but if that's the end goal of your "mastery," it's a shallow mastery at best. To attain a deeper mastery, you'd best follow what the Japanese call Shu-Ha-Ri.
Shu means learning the root forms, the basics, the fundamentals of the art or endeavor you choose. In golf, it is learning how to swing a variety of clubs and using them for driving, shooting from the fairway, chipping, hitting out of sand, and putting. If you get to the point where you can get around a golf course with these strokes, you're no master, but you have achieved a level of Shu that can take you to the next phase - Ha.
Ha means trying different styles, fighting against your comfort zones and learning things from a different perspective. In golf, it might mean learning a new way to address the ball, stand, space your feet. In business life, it might mean trying to do a presentation without PowerPoint, not reading directly from printed notes, taking risks when you've taken none, really, before. While your job, golf, or Go might decline in perceived strength - since you're trying some new - your real strength grows through revisiting the basics in another way. Once conversant in Ha, you may need to go back to Shu, but you might also be ready for Ri.
Ri is the recognition that both Ha and Shu are vital components of fundamentals and different approaches, but that the real art of your art or field comes to life when YOU come to life. That is, when you become part of the art. You are unique. Your intrinsic nature, your learning, your experiences are unlike anyone else in the entire universe. Until you respect your individuality, your moves, your approach, your art is subject to the pat forms you learned in Shu and the contrasting, but still pat approaches, you learned in Ha, that are just that - pat. Ri is trying to play, do, say, act what is right for the moment dashing all convention, if necessary, and bringing you, not the pat forms, to the party.
You can jones for mastery, but are you willing to sacrifice what you know to go through the Shu-Ha-Ri cycle? Cycle? Yes, once you've visited Ri, don't assume that you've now achieved mastery. Time to get back to Shu, then to Ha, then to Ri, then to Shu...
And should you get stuck somewhere along the way, consider getting help. Look for a some (k)no(w)-nothing who's been cycling for a few spins...
Posted by wayofgo at 03:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack