Here is a review of a video program I watched from Boyd Matheson.
Boyd’s comparison really makes you think about the way you run your business, how you manage your time and resources, how you strategize, and how you prepare for the future of your business. It certainly made me re-examine my priorities!
GT
Boyd Matheson – Checkers vs Chess
Boyd opens his presentation by introducing one of the most difficult challenges and changes business owners and entrepreneurs must make if they are to survive in a challenging economy.
“They must transform their operation from one that functions like a game of checkers,” Boyd explains, “to a high-powered, forward thinking and extremely strategic game like chess.”
He notes that most entrepreneurs are in the checkers business.
“They’re playing checkers,” he says. “They live and barely survive from moment to moment, from event to event, from crisis to crisis without ever looking at the big picture or bigger opportunities that are just around the corner or down the road.”
In the video, Boyd gives some examples of what these entrepreneurs do, telling how to identify if YOU are in the checkers business. Then, in contrast, he profiles the way successful entrepreneurs think.
“Big leaders from every walk of life are strategists; they’re chess players; they are constantly scanning the playing field, looking for opportunities, searching for solutions, building for the future and striving to gain a little more momentum.”
Boyd then talks a little bit about why most people choose to be checker players. Two main reasons are because it doesn’t take a lot of thought and because a person can actually appear to be quite busy while playing checkers. Hmm. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
On the other hand, “chess requires you to think, feel and act on multiple levels in multiple dimensions at the same time,” Boyd explains, emphasizing the fact that chess is more fun, more exciting. “Many thrive on the challenges of chess because chess gives you almost limitless movement.”
Boyd then leads into one of the primary keys of the chess style of entrepreneurialism: Developing a strategy.
“Nothing happens until you have a strategy,” he advises, cautioning that “Hope is not a strategy.”
To help you develop your strategy, Boyd outlines in detail an exercise he calls the “1% Meeting.” Basically, you should spend 1% of your 24-hour day “meeting with yourself” and reviewing your performance. That is 14.4 minutes; or rounded up, 15 minutes each day.
As he draws towards his close, Boyd asks, “Are you spending most of your time IN your business, or are you working ON your business?”
He suggests an exercise to do to prepare for the next program in the series: keep track of the amount of time you spend on strategic chess-like activities versus the amount of time you spend on reactionary, checkers-like activities.
In closing he asks, “How are you going to play the future? Checkers? Chess? ... It’s your move!”
(End of GT's overview)
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