How I used the chess to win a bet in the office?

"A player who is surprised is half beaten" (Proverb)

   At this time I worked in the Strategic  marketing department of a large company Mobile.

    The situation came just after launching a new range of price plans that showed some aggressiveness within the schemes that existed in the market these days. In the "launch day", our director called us for a meeting and invited us to think about the answers that could give our main competitor.

   In the round of the interventions, my comrades talked about classical schemes managing  the price per minute, and the amounts of Mb or minutes to be included in the offer, respecting fringes morning-afternoon-evening-weekend

   When I had to speak, I thought as I do during a game of chess ... putting myself in the place of my opponent, trying to think in terms of what would be the best for him, trying to take advance avoiding his best options

   Using this scheme I thought: Right now we have a larger market share (which in chess could be assimilated with an advantage) Our offer is focused to maintain the same way consolidating the advantage, if I was "my opponent" try to break this dynamic, so I should not make a move conservatively to keep the situation (fight scheme price within the same ideas), try to find counterplay to see if they can find weakness in the position of the side that has the advantage ... this requires aggressive action, surprise, not without risks, but in the end you have to catch up.
 

  My answer, following this reasoning chess, was that a family would fare spread the "promoted" hours in different bands, ie, if the "traditional" was to provide 6-8 hours of morning / afternoon / evening would let something like take 3 morning and 3 in the afternoon .... I thought it could be,  without an analysis of returns, something he had not offered by anyone on the market until this time and could attract attention, and, above all, could baffle the competition .... By doing this, they'd get counterplay with which, taking risks, could return to the fight for customers.

   The reaction of all my colleagues was "you have no idea", "how it shows you do not know anything about pricing", "the business case would never profitable" "absurd"

   To settle the matter, I proposed to make a little bet to see who was closer to the type of response. All of them accepted.

   A month later, the business proposal from the competitor was based on the distribution of hours in 2 bands of 4 hours, with their restrictions, but gave the client a flexibility that no one else offered that time ..... I took a few coffees with money from the bet

    The other consequence was that competition began to get more customers, getting cut our market share, which led us to "copy" your offer ... using chess terms, we lost the lead and our lead was in danger

   In this anecdotal situation  I used schemes any chess player, no matter his level, has internalized:

• Situation analysis (what is on the market and what's not)
• DO NOT underestimate the opponent (always think about what would be your best guess, and it is assumed that you will make the best choice for him)
• The principle that when you have an advantage you have to play trying to limit the opponent's counterplay capacity, and is at a disadvantage when you have to play aggressively to try to generate weaknesses in the opposite
• NO complacency in a better position,  because all we play games that have been taking advantage and we've  lost due to "relax a moment" or by an badly-timed error letting recover our rival.

The original post was published in Spanish in my collaboration with the website Chesslive.com

Next station "Hope"

 "The most powerful weapon in Chess is to have the next move" (David Bronstein)

   Among the many similarities we can find between business and chess, today I want to talk about one that humanizes both worlds, is the error of "hope".

   Many times, when we are thinking about a move, we start  the calculation of "if you do this, I answer and then you have to answer so ..."

   The error "Hope" is the time that we focus on the responses of the opponent that "I would like"  him to do and do not value all possible answers. In this way we are convinced of the "goodness" of our play based on the answers that we want the other to do, and of course, "the other" can do that or might not.

    This seems a truism, but  it is an error that occurs also in professional life.

   I have participated in brainstorming product launch where the type arguments wielded "if competition does this or that, we are benefited in this regard ..." and coincidentally or not all possible "moves" of competition we were driving us as winners. Not to sound great Guru, but I can say that in real life competitive market, not all possible answers always given to us as winners.

   Both in chess as in the analysis of market impact of the launch of a new product, like almost any other area of the business which involves a third player, the solution to this type of error is the objectivity the realistic assessment of your position and possibilities, as in get " being on the shoes" of the other, think like you "your opponent" looking his best choice, and once you find it, think an antidote to it.

   When you play a lot of games, at the end you understand that the rivals are determined to do what they consider best for them, so you have to learn to think as if you were them, you learn to look critically, objectively evaluating your options, without overestimate (or under-estimate, that it is also a big mistake)

   On this particular point, the improvement as a player comes when you are able to apply a filter of realism to your options, playing Based on the quality of your decisions and not in  errors of your rival

   From the point of view of a marketing department is the same approach: the best product is one that meets a need, it is in a cost-benefit proportionality and also competition, doing his best, takes long to replicate (or no can do). A product that is based on competition do what suits us, we will waste time, effort and money for minimal product life to be quickly offset by a better product (the best move)

Steinitz and market competition

"The hardest game to win is a won game" (Lasker)

  Speaking to a friend and co-worker, he asked me why I liked both chess ... He didn't understand this passion, I replied:

"Chess is a sport where you face the problems posed by the opponent you while you try to solve looking for the ways to provocate a problem to him so you get increased benefits lead you to victory, and where a error leads to backtrack all the way gone, do not tell me it's not exciting "

  He, as a marketing expert, understood at first, Why?  This idea  don't remind you to the marketing approaches a competitive market?

    Think, for example, in the mobile phone market, the different movements of any of the operators are intended to attract customers, that in the market at present, are in the customer base of a company from the competition ... marketing of any of them is aimed at creating "problems" (stealing customers) in the competition, while trying to solve the competitors posed to it (suffers theft attempts).

If you remember, in my previous post talked about the rules of Steinitz.

    In a very rude summary of them, you could say that when you are on advantage , you have to go for the opponent taking advantage of their weaknesses. If you are on "equal"  look for getting benefits ... and if we are worse, we have to defend ourselves understanding that maybe we have to sacrifice something in this defense

Think for a moment about what Microsoft has done since the '80s: Starting with a disadvantage to Apple for a product from my point of view clearly inferior, knew to hold and read your competitor's weakness.

     Apple believed in the quality of your product, itself closed in a specific environment.
 

    Microsoft reading this created the opportunity, allied with IBM, and due to that,  became a defensive less position in a better position to develop a competitive edge. What did it do there? Continued to attack strongly eliminating rival companies and products, to almost (or in many cases exceed) monopoly situation (in terms chess, given checkmate every opponent).

 A closest example we recently found in Spain.

    Until 4-5 years ago, in the mobile phone market in Spain, there was a clear picture in which there was a company (Movistar) clearly leading in market share, other (Vodafone) competing in a worthy 2nd Position also clearly differentiated, and another (Orange) had third place well away from the second.

  Since then the two main companies have made moves "classic" too conservative ... or in terms of a game, very defensive, did not attempt to keep attacking, defending the lead played. The third operator played hard trying to exploit the weaknesses of their two main rivals.

    Thanks to this air that gave competitors Orange, Orange has cut substantially disadvantage Vodafone market share, being now in technically equal, but with very different trends.

   Movistar maintains its top spot thanks to the enormous advantage gained, but would do well to avoid being distracted, looking for support in their strengths and attacking weaknesses of the competition, if you do not want to get into a fight for supremacy in the medium term.

   What  Steinitz said  in the nineteenth century is still true not only for playing chess also it can have the same readings in a business school than, for example, "the art of war."