Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The corporate chess game

I have often equated corporate environment to chess... the reason is simple... like in chess a corporate always has a mix of Rook, Bishop, Knight, and various Pawns... but yes there are very few or only one King or Queen... Imagine the situation if the company has many kings, Many queens, and a mix of Rook, Bishop, Knight, and various Pawns.... I think I have identified one such company that matches to this scenario...
Well... this company has an emperor and a Shahensha and quite a few Kings, and queens... and since there is now place for an emperor and shahensha on the chess board, they actually stay out and ,ale things happen... the power points (the kings and the queens) in the company strive for more goody points from the emperor and the shahensha and in the process distribute powers to various Rook, Bishop and Knights apart from there existing powers... the result, they start acting like the queen and can actually move all over the place claiming they know the king and in the process the emperor....
The Kings process also has a few drawbacks... it unknowingly demotes some of the Rook, Bishop, Knight into a pawn position, particularly the ones who have just joined the game... this discourages them and actually creates a lot of instability in the system, causing distrust and lack of synergies within the corporate machinery...
While the emperor still feels the machinery is working fine, the bottom line is the company could have worked in a much better way, if the roles had been crisply defined and accountability be firmly demarcated...

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