A The Wall Street Journal editorial a while back,  made an interesting observation about our President and his style of leadership and negotiating. The article was primarily focused  on how Mr. Trump is approaching trade issues with China, and the rest of the world and specifically his emphasis on protecting domestic car production. But, I believe this can be applied to much of how our President approaches issues from foreign policy to healthcare etc. The article, by Holman Jenkins, Jr., states that President Trump is playing checkers while the rest of the world is playing chess. He relies on his gut and ignores briefing materials, etc..

Long time readers may guess that I have my own story about this type of game theory.  I learned about chess vs. checkers during my work on USG Corporation’s financial restructuring.

It was early in USG’s three year financial crisis, I was alone in New York having lunch with our newest financial advisor, Lazard. I was with David Supino, one of Lazard’s senior Partners and the head of their debt/bankruptcy advisory practice. An appropriate title as USG Corporation had accumulated massive debt in fighting a hostile takeover and was struggling to stay out of bankruptcy!   

We were at the famous Sea Grill restaurant in Lazard’s office building at 30 Rock (called that before the Tina Fey TV show). As USG’s newly named CFO, I was trying to understand this bizarre restructuring process from David who had done this for decades. USG, you see, had all these multiple groups and levels of creditors we had to satisfy to avoid a forced in-court bankruptcy. I was explaining, to David, my thoughts about how to negotiate with all these parties at the same time. 

My approach was this. On Star Trek’s Enterprise they had a three dimensional Chess set; when you moved a piece at one level it affected pieces at the other two levels. I asked David if this was a good way to look at our situation, like a Three D Chess game.

David stopped eating, spit out a piece of food, and started to shake, laugh and cry all at once. At first I thought it might be a heart attack until David screamed at me, “James, This is your problem! You think you are playing Chess! It’s more like Checkers but half the pieces are missing or broken! There is no Board and no Rules! Now do you understand what it means to be in Financial Restructuring!”

And, as our three year journey continued, I realized that my friendly advisor, David, was exactly correct. As detailed in the Crisis Management chapter of my book, The Business Zoo, any major crisis brings its own terminology, its own rules (or lack of them) and an often unclear path and timetable to ever get out of the crisis. This can apply not only to a financial or business crisis but a personal one as well.

So, what I learned then, and perhaps what leaders around the world need to learn about dealing with President Trump, is that you really need to understand what game you and your opponent think you are playing. And maybe the condition of the pieces and the shape of the board!

Usually business, life and even politics can be pretty straight forward. So, I would choose a really good checker player over a weak chess player any day!