Go for Grandmaster, Not Flash (Or Learning from Chess)

A couple years ago, a film came out called “Critical Thinking.” It tells the more-or-less true story of the first inner-city high school chess team to win a national championship. The team faces many challenges, not the least of which is contending with school officials who want to take its money away and give it to the football team. Like many in their position, those officials are woefully deficient when it comes to wisdom, because the fact is, few activities are actually more worthwhile for young people than learning chess. All schools should require it — especially business schools

Carey Smith | Founding Contrarian

The brouhaha over Bud Light and the backlash to its marketing department’s use of a transgender “influencer” got us talking at the office about the importance of thinking through decisions before committing. In the case of Bud Light, it seems the company’s head of marketing didn’t quite understand her market.

While her mistake caught the nation’s attention, it’s no different than mistakes made every single day by founders who are unable to fully consider consequences or look past their immediate goal to think through their next steps. I’ve written before about founders who have no idea how to spend the money investors entrust in them — they suffer from the widespread affliction we call NFBP, short for No F*cking Business Plan. When left unchecked, it leads to wasteful spending, which leads to a chronic need for more money to burn, which leads to the worst consequence of all: founders controlling less of their own company.

Unfortunately, there’s no lack of shortsightedness — aka dimwittedness — in business, especially in the realm of marketing. The “New Coke” debacle of the 1980s is often categorized as a marketing blunder, but making a change to a 100-year-old formula is far more than marketing. A better example is the Pepsi ad of a few years back that showed police and protesters coming together over a can of soda proffered by one of the Kardashians. Though the impact on sales didn’t come close to Bud Light standards, the brand was eviscerated for the ad and a marketing leader resigned.

Another common example of not thinking ahead? Companies that are quick to lay off valuable workers during a downturn, unable to imagine the time in the not-too-distant future when the economy will pick up again and they’ll need those workers. At the fan company, we made our share of blunders, but that wasn’t one of them. As a result, we were ready to go — with a grateful workforce — when sales increased. 

If there’s one thing we should all be able to acknowledge and agree on, it’s that the future will one day be the present. It’s best if we prepare for it.

Chess teaches you to plan and makes you think several steps ahead. Steve Jobs played chess or a variant thereof, while it’s a good bet that John Sculley who unceremoniously led Apple in between Jobs’ stellar tenures played Chutes and Ladders. Few entrepreneurs these days seem to have either the time or the inclination for the kind of strategizing taught by chess, and inevitably, they — and their investors — pay a price for it.