Control the Center

Control the Center

This is perhaps one of the most fundamental rules of high level chess. The player controlling the four squares in the middle of the board has a massive advantage. The reason is, from here, your pieces have maximum influence across the battlefield. Just think of it like The High Ground. The reason The High Ground is so important is because it gives you more reach without necessarily exposing yourself to more risk.

Let’s illustrate this point to really drive it home. Imagine a knight positioned in one of the four key squares in the center of a chessboard. From here, it exerts influence on eight different squares. But if you take that same knight, and put it into the corner, for example, now it only influences two squares. And the same can be said for the Bishop. From the center of the board, they control 13 squares. Whereas from the corner, they only control seven.

So the question to ask yourself when using this framework to make a decision is this: Where is the center of the board and what do I need to do to get pieces there so that they have maximum influence?

Let’s break this down into two examples, one from The Game of Life and one from The Game of Business to show how you might think through this in real time.

First, in the game of life, let’s say you’re trying to lose 15 lbs. The Strategic Way To Think through this is to identify those few squares on the board that are going to give you the most influence. When it comes to losing weight, you got all sorts of options. You could go on a diet. You could work out more. You could focus on getting better sleep. You could go on a fast. You could take a dieting pill. You could get liposection. There are thousands of squares on the board. But which is at the center? When you really boil it down to its essence, weight loss comes down to two things. Either you burn more calories or you consume fewer calories. If youn do that you’re going to lose weight. But let’s say you’re a busy bee, and you can only commit to one of these two options, which is the better square? Exercise or nutrition? Thankfully, the science on this is pretty clear. You can’t outwork your mouth. For example, one Butterfinger is 275 calories. And to burn an equivalent amount, you’d have to go for a 2 1/2 Mile Run. Good luck. Exercise alone ain’t going to get you there. But good nutrition can practically win the game on its own. So the correct strategic decision if you can only choose one is to focus on your nutrition.

Now let’s apply this framework to business by asking where the center of the board is. There’s three key squares to control inside of a business. You have marketing, that is, how are you getting customers. You have operations, which is, what what is the actual product and how do you deliver it to your customers? And you have Finance, which is, how do you manage the bank accounts to make sure you don’t run out of money while you do number one and number two. If you are just starting out, and you have limited resources, you’ll probably not be able to focus on all three squares simultaneously. That means, you’ll have to decide which is the priority at any given moment. If you don’t have a product to sell, don’t worry about finance and marketing. If you have a product, but no customers, well then Focus there. In the beginning of every business, you the founder are literally every piece on the board. And unfortunately, you can’t be everywhere all at once. But hopefully, this framework of controlling the center gives you a useful frame for decerning where your focus should be at any given moment until you can get to that point where you can start hiring other people to control squares on the board for you.

Once you get to that point, it’s time to master the next framework which is to understand the true value of a piece.