Competitors or co-visionaries?

In real life or in business, if I must implement chess strategies, I would be cautious. Business is not a chess game. Neither your competitors are your opponents to target them, nor the goal of the business is to shut other´s business down. Business is utilising all the available resources and taking even the competitors along with you towards a common vision.

Why don’t we simply eliminate the word “competitor” from the business world and management courses? Does it give a comfortable feeling? Does it bring a positive sense? Instead of that, why don’t we call them co-visionaries? Though having an overview of competitors (co-visionaries) around is a partial requirement, a leader should give a limited importance to them. Because the moment a leader starts focusing too much on any competitor, it immediately narrows down the scope of free thinking and distances the leaders from inviting infinite combinations of available resources and opportunities to achieve remarkable success.

Mission is always sharp and well defined. But vision is usually broad. No matter how clearly and specifically one tries to express, it always appears broad, which is the very nature of it. Due to this broad nature, it enables the possibility of creating an infinite number of blue ocean markets with multiple combinations of strategies. The changing time always brings in innovative technologies, new political perspectives, and new business models, along with it. It also constantly creates multifold blue ocean markets where the businesses that are sharing common visions can swim across. There is still a positive way to understand the business in the terms of chess.

Assume that the opponent´s king is your goal. All the remaining opponent´s pieces are nothing but your laziness, your narrow-minded approach to things in life, lack of ability to sharpen your intellect, diminished interest to maintain an up-to-date knowledge in your field etc. You need to use your strengths and positive attitude to kill all these opponent's pieces and capture your goal. Otherwise, they will capture and immobilize your king. Which is nothing but your vision. Your vision is your King. You must use your positive attitudes of pawns (never steps back), your queen as your resilience, your rooks as goal oriented challenging work (never takes a cross lines), bishops as analytical skills (check on each corner) and the knights are your risk assessment skills to protect your king.