Is chess a good analogy to describe decision making and strategy in organizations? For most folks, probably not.

Less in control than we think

One of the paradoxes of modern leadership is that more responsibility also means less control. You are responsible for results but don’t have direct control over input. You have to work through others. Same goes for constantly changing external conditions outside your control but that nevertheless affect performance.

Conventional treatments of decision making and strategy ignore this fact, at least implicitly. The underlying assumption is that you can step outside the system, figure out what’s going on, and put things into motion that lead to desired outcomes. You can somehow extricate yourself outside the model and then rejoin the chaos at will.

No bird’s eye view

This is where chess comes into the picture in the context of strategy. The core ideals are of an overarching view, thinking ahead, and planning contingencies.

But unlike chess, it’s rare to have a clear view of everything that’s going on. We might be intimate with our own team’s issues but perhaps not so much with how it affects and interacts with others, let alone understanding it from their perspective.

A bird’s eye view by definition requires detachment and perspective which is a luxury at least at the lower managerial and executive levels. It’s more fantasy than reality.

Strategy often emerges from the engagement with reality rather than from a detached perspective. Thus Tetris might be a better candidate to describe what managers actually face on a daily basis — a constant barrage of undifferentiated issues, challenges, and crises that you are constantly tackling.

Tetris thinking

The lack of space to think and breathe is more of a nature of the beast rather than a problem to be eliminated. Recognizing this beforehand and adjusting accordingly can help.

The uber prolific Venkatesh Rao calls this Tetris thinking:

When they get to subjects like risk, books on decision-making traditionall