Euvic TalksEpisodesCheckmate in Business: Why Do Strategies End Up in the Trash? | Michał Kanarkiewicz | Euvic Talks
Checkmate in Business: Why Do Strategies End Up in the Trash? | Michał Kanarkiewicz | Euvic Talks
Is your company executing a well-defined strategy, or simply checking off the board’s wish list? In the latest episode of Euvic Talks, Bartek Śliwa sits down with Michał Kanarkiewicz – a strategic advisor and chess master who has spent nearly a decade helping global organizations turn strategic thinking into competitive advantage.
This conversation is a practical guide to applying the principles of chess to modern business leadership. Alongside compelling chess analogies, the discussion explores a fundamental question: in the age of the AI revolution, why genuine, meaningful human conversations are becoming one of the most valuable assets in business.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Strategy vs. Tactics: Why tactics without strategy are nothing more than noise before defeat, and how to challenge common corporate misconceptions about mission and vision.
- The Execution Gap: What it is, why it happens, and how to turn impressive presentation slides into real operational results.
- Decision-Making Under Pressure: How the discipline of chess and playing against the clock can help leaders stay calm and make better decisions in high-pressure situations.
- Business Gambits: The art of making deliberate short-term sacrifices to build lasting competitive advantage.
- Scenario Planning: How to navigate uncertainty and prepare your organization for an unpredictable market filled with “black swan” events.
Introduction (Teaser)
Michał Kanarkiewicz: What are the risks of lacking a strategy? Well, in my opinion, the main risk is that we will be executing a wish list rather than a strategy.
Bartek Śliwa: Whose wishes?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, usually the board’s, let’s face it.
Bartek Śliwa: Well, that’s how it looks in practice.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: In short, I also like this quote from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” And to be honest, I don’t know a better quote comparing strategy and tactics, because it’s not a question of which is more important, but what to do so that they can function in parallel.
Bartek Śliwa: Hi, this is Bartek Śliwa. Welcome to another Euvic Talks podcast, where we connect business with technology. And today, this business aspect will be enhanced with a strategic twist. Our guest today is Michał Kanarkiewicz, a strategic thinking expert and chess player. Hi Michał.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Hi. Thank you for the invitation.
Bartek Śliwa: Thanks, Michał. As standard, we start with a question about your business background, because the path you’ve traveled over probably the last few years is very important. What made it so that—I assume initial plans were different—today you are here advising many global businesses? So please, share your experience.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, first of all, let’s start with where chess came from. Yes, I started playing chess when I was 10 years old. I remember like it was today, my friend Ksawery came up to me and said: “Michał, look, this is chess, the game of the intelligent.” And as a 10-year-old, I thought to myself: “Okay, I want to be intelligent, or at least be perceived as intelligent.” And, of course, that’s half-joking, half-serious.
But chess really, shall we say, fired me up right from the beginning, and surely many listeners here have had some intersection with chess, whether in childhood or in adult life. After all, there was a recent boom in chess after The Queen’s Gambit—online chess, streaming, and various other things. So that’s how my adventure with chess began, and for several years I competed in junior chess, of course, giving it my all. The best result I had at the Polish Junior Championships was in rapid chess—that was sixth place.
And at a certain stage, when I was 16, well, I had to make a conscious decision… I don’t even know if it was a decision, I’d say rather that the circumstances simply forced it upon me. Because I was born and raised in a difficult, some would even say dysfunctional, family. In short: my father was an alcoholic; he died when I was a child. My mother, as they nicely put it in corporate language, was responsible for horizontal surface preservation, meaning she cleaned other people’s houses. And she did everything she could for me and my brother so that we could have the best possible start.
However, that start was economically difficult. Suffice it to say that going to McDonald’s was a luxury for us, only once in a while as a “reward.” But that made those economic conditions very tough. I bought my first chess set, a used one, for 10 PLN, and overall we had great difficulties, you know, like going to a tournament required finding sponsors. I remember—probably some of the listeners recall something called Gadu-Gadu—well, I still remember my number on Gadu-Gadu, and I remember writing to several people, chess players who ran companies, asking for sponsorship when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. And somewhere along the line, a few people supported me with amounts like 200, 300, sometimes a bit more PLN, but let’s say in the range of a few hundred PLN, so those were the amounts needed for a trip. Back then, those trips cost about 500 PLN for a few days, so I needed to scrape that money together. My mother couldn’t afford it, so proactively, as a 13, 14, 15-year-old, I wrote to those sponsors and acquired them. You could say, of course, half-joking, half-serious, because it was more like a kid, right, a young teenager writing to adults asking for support, so someone somewhere, let’s say, just decided: “Well, okay, maybe it’s worth supporting him a bit.”
And getting to the point, when I was 16, I had to make a decision: well, either I try to keep developing in chess somehow—mind you, as I said, the best result was sixth place at the Polish Junior Championships, but at the same time, you know, there was no horizon for me to be the world chess champion, there was no such horizon, so there’s no denying that the situation was difficult. So at the age of 16, I made a conscious decision to drastically cut back on training and playing chess, and focus on earning money. Because, first of all, I had to start earning for myself, and second of all, support my mother. So I started giving chess lessons. First a few free ones, let’s say practice ones to learn something, and then I started teaching the children of friends. You know, I gave lessons for like, I don’t know, 25 PLN an hour, and then that rate grew to 40, 50 PLN an hour, and so on and so forth. And when I was 16, 17 years old, well, I had to do that. So my path with entrepreneurship—because I think that’s where we’re heading a bit, this business adventure—started when I was 16.
Bartek Śliwa: Mhm.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: In high school, during my graduation year, I was already teaching classes—chess classes, of course—in primary school and middle school. That was funny because I was like 18, 19 years old teaching middle schoolers who were, you know, three or four years… maybe four or five years younger than me, so it was quite amusing. However, I was already running those classes and earning money. And when I graduated from high school, when I went to college, de facto on the very first day of college I also founded a company, a sole proprietorship—Szach-mat Chess School in Toruń. That’s exactly what it was called: Szach-mat School Michał Kanarkiewicz, and I started running a business.
So when I was 19, and for the first few years… after a year I returned from Toruń to the Tricity, because I come from the Tricity, and well, I was expanding this network of clients, so to speak. Because my clients were mainly institutions like primary schools and kindergartens, sometimes middle schools back when they still existed, and so on. Plus individual lessons, meaning individual clients I reached out to. And for the first two or three years, that’s how it looked. Meaning, de facto, for the first year, I was fighting for survival. Like many entrepreneurs, as a 19-year-old, I didn’t know how it was done at all. I was just learning on the fly, and there were months when I didn’t even have enough to pay for ZUS (social security). I’m not even talking about earnings, but really just breaking even, surviving, and sometimes there wasn’t enough to pay ZUS. But those were the beginnings. The first two or three years looked more or less like that. After three years, I reached a point where I started earning my first decent money, precisely by running this chess school. By “decent money,” I mean a magnitude of about 10,000 PLN a month, which back then allowed me, first, to live with dignity, second, to support my mother, and third, to think about developing myself as well. So I bought various training sessions, courses, and so on. And at a certain stage—this was a breakthrough moment, I think—I became interested, somewhat by accident, but I became interested in personal development in a broad sense, and short story long, I started reading books and watching a lot of YouTube videos that inspired me to look for something more.
Bartek Śliwa: Was there a spark that pushed you toward personal development?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Let’s certainly start with the fact that when I was 19–20 years old, when I was in my freshman year of college in Toruń, there was one book that you could say was the most important when it came to changing my approach. It was the book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind—that’s T. Harv Eker. And that was the book that changed my financial mindset. So we should probably say that already in my freshman year of college, I started to get interested in personal development in some way. But really, reading that book, okay, that was a big change, but then I still needed a bit of time, and de facto after about a year or two—making it a total of two or three years, now I don’t want to get into details so as not to twist anything—but I was 21–22 years old when I actually sank into this world of personal development, meaning it was 2016/17. That aligns with the timeline, because I’m thinking about dates right away, so in 2016/17 I started developing very quickly, going to training sessions, courses, I did absolutely everything.
My strategy was very, very simple: earn as much money as possible in a month, pay for everything that needed to be paid (meaning my costs), support my mother, family, and so on, plus whatever was left. That entire surplus—I simply reinvested it in training sessions and books and went absolutely everywhere I could. And the assumption was that potentially this money invested in development would give me a multiple growth in the future. So that was a very important moment.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: And when I was 22, I met some people from the training and development industry who suggested that… hey, maybe it would be interesting to combine chess with business. I had also just read Garry Kasparov’s book How Life Imitates Chess, so I already had some of those thoughts based on his book. Granted, Garry mainly refers to the world of politics, because after all, he once ran in the presidential elections in Russia and so on, but that inspired me that this topic could be explored. And somewhere around 2017, meaning when I was 22—that adds up—I started exploring it step by step.
That is to say, at first, when I was teaching clients, when I was conducting the first sessions for corporate clients, I taught strategic thinking more by simply explaining certain rules from the game of chess and referring to certain analogies. It was at a general level. I would say back then it was like 95% chess, 5% business. But over time, I started to increase the business part. I simply started developing: strategic management studies at Kozminski University, books, experiences of working with mentors. Along the way, I also had the pleasure of meeting several bank CEOs who also became my mentors. Thanks to this, this development accelerated greatly.
But the beginning was such that I talked mostly about chess, which also heavily limited the clients—meaning clients who wanted to cooperate. Because when I said: “I can teach you strategic thinking using the game of chess,” they would ask me: “But how exactly?” So I would show them these rules from the game of chess. They would say: “Well okay, that’s interesting, but you know… we’ll call you.” There was a lack of reference to business, and I only started doing that over time. I simply gained experience. But that’s normal, because at the beginning it’s hard to have experience when you’re just starting out somewhere. I was 22, which—let’s be honest and say it openly, right?—for most of those people I worked with back then, they still looked at me with a smile, basically like: “And what can you tell me about life?” Meaning, I’m sure some still think that way. Yes, I am 31 today, yes, but at least I can now back myself up with the fact that I’ve been working with corporate clients for nearly a decade.
Bartek Śliwa: Okay. I missed one detail that interests me. How did you get from the moment your friends told you that it might be worth combining chess with business to finding yourself in your first corporations on a consulting contract?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: I mean, let’s start with the fact that the first contracts I had were for conducting trial training sessions, mainly showing the comparison between chess and business. So it wasn’t like I got a consulting contract right off the bat; rather, I conducted training sessions, because that’s a very important distinction. Right now, there are projects that actually have that element, a consulting component, but more—let’s face it—it was conducting training sessions on strategic thinking. So that’s the first clarification.
And the second issue: well, I also just got lucky that some friends were kind enough and polite enough toward me to simply recommend me to a few of their clients, acquaintances, who simply placed their trust in me on a very simple basis: I just conducted the first three training sessions on a trial basis, meaning free of charge, in exchange for getting feedback after the training and being able to draw conclusions. So I conducted three for free, at no cost, in exchange for feedback and so on. And then later, thanks to that, based on that feedback and certain references I gained as a result, I was able to go out with an offer to clients and say: “Listen, I conducted three such training sessions at company A, B, C, so what do you say?” And in this way, I also built what’s called social proof, which you can say in short is the social proof of validity, showing that someone has already used what I do and has this opinion about it. So those beginnings were very difficult, because first of all, hardly anyone wanted to trust me, second of all, the issue of age, and finally third of all, I didn’t have that social proof at the start.
Bartek Śliwa: Okay, thanks for the clarification. Moving on now to the topic of either building a strategy or your definition of strategy in general, I wonder where you see this strategy should take place in a company. Yes, because very often we talk about a sales strategy, a marketing strategy, a general company strategy, an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) strategy, project strategies—so where do you think this strategy is totally indispensable? How do we build this strategy briefly, and what are the dangers of not having this strategy?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Okay, those are de facto three questions. So first: what are the risks of lacking a strategy? Well, in my opinion, the main risk is that we will be executing a wish list rather than a strategy.
Bartek Śliwa: Whose wishes?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, usually the board’s, let’s face it. That’s how it looks in practice. The second question concerned what a strategy consists of. So there are many definitions, but a definition that…
Bartek Śliwa: I’m waiting for those chess analogies, you know.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: …that I find interesting and useful simply in the business world, was written about in the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Professor Richard Rumelt—a very famous book. And he talks about how a strategy solves a specific problem. It consists of three elements there. First, we have the diagnosis of the problem, meaning we define what problem we actually want to solve, so that it’s not a wish list, regarding the first question. Second, we have the guiding policy, which is the general way of solving the problem. And finally, third, a set of coherent actions. I call them tactics.
And now, referring to the chess world, which you also brought up here, in chess we distinguish two issues: the strategic level and the—some call it—tactical level in business, you could say operational, and so on. And in a nutshell, I also like this quote here, it’s Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, that strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. While tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. And to be honest, I don’t know a better quote comparing strategy and tactics, because it’s not a question of which is more important, but what to do so that they can function in parallel. So the difference in short is that tactics are individual steps that help execute the strategy. And during a game of chess, a chess player who wants to win the game usually has a specific strategy to win that game. However, along the way, there are many such tactical steps. For example, I don’t know, setting tactical traps for the opponent to win a piece, to, I don’t know, set a so-called trap to catch a queen somewhere. There are situations when we play a Gambit, meaning a sacrifice.
In fact, this is an important concept, because my podcast happens to be called Gambit, I’ll just add that a Gambit precisely means sacrificing something in exchange for something greater in the future. Example: in chess, most commonly, for instance, I don’t know, the queen’s gambit—and the correct name is the Queen’s Gambit—in chess means sacrificing a pawn on the second move in exchange for getting the initiative, an advantage in the center. Whereas in business, it usually just means investments. Gambit equals, you can say in short, investment. It could be an investment in a marketing campaign to increase brand visibility. It could be an investment in acquiring the best talent from the market to build a stronger team. It can be all kinds of investments.
And I’m saying this because this strategy, in my opinion—of course, simplifying things a bit—I suggest looking at it in such a way that the entire chessboard from the starting moment to checkmate is the strategy we want to execute. Meaning we start at point A, we want to reach point B, which is where we want to deliver checkmate. And that is our strategy. Strategy is this whole map of the game that we want to go through to win the game, whether it’s a chess game or a business game. Of course, that’s a bit of a simplification. However, along the way, all those steps that need to be executed are tactics, meaning those operational things that must work together. So because the question often arises: what is more important, strategy or tactics? Well, that is a false dichotomy, because it’s a logical fallacy. You can’t say which is more important, because both elements are important. This is a frequent issue raised. However, what is worth knowing here simply is that strategy consists of many of these steps called tactics.
Bartek Śliwa: Okay. So let me paraphrase. Strategy tells us where we are heading.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, where and what we want to achieve, and tactics—how we want to do it along the way.
Bartek Śliwa: Okay. Tactics—how we want to do it?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, tactics—how we want to do it. Sometimes a certain… of course, again, this is a simplification, because if someone is listening to us who graduated, like me, in strategic management, they will say: “Oh my God, that’s such a big simplification.” But on the other hand, to streamline it a bit for the sake of our discussion, you could say that strategy answers the question “what,” and tactics—”how.”
Bartek Śliwa: Okay, I wonder when a given strategy should be abandoned. Because now, as you’ll probably agree with me, we live in a disruptive world after all. Here some celebrity virus, there some madman from Russia throwing bombs, an orange swan across the ocean, and more technological innovations. And depending on what kind of business we run, any of these events can affect us, or even turn our business upside down. I assume that also makes our strategy invalid at the same time. And how should we approach this in your opinion—when to pivot, when to stubbornly cling to this strategy, and when to abandon all hope and leave the ship we’re sailing on?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, that’s a very complex question and there are several threads there de facto. So maybe let’s start with when to pivot. Well, I think when we see that it’s not going in the direction we want to achieve. And I’ll give an example—I won’t give a specific industry, because that wouldn’t be okay to the client—but well, one of the companies I work with a lot, by the way, bases its strategy on four pillars. Well, that happens to be a very common case, so a lot of companies have it on four pillars, so I won’t reveal anything this way. But the point is that out of four pillars, they identified after a year that only two are working. One so-so, and the fourth isn’t contributing anything at all. And…
Bartek Śliwa: So it’s important that they were measuring it too, right?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Yes, they measured it. Now the question is, because you asked when to pivot. It’s not a question, in my opinion, for a binary answer, meaning some clear indication. However, basing it on the example of four pillars, well, this client simply decided to keep executing those two, improve the third, and completely shut down the fourth, and that’s also a kind of pivot because you’re abandoning something.
In fact, in strategy, an element that is frequently omitted is precisely elimination. Meaning in these discussions, because there’s a lot of talk about strategies, right? There’s a lot of talk about mission, vision. I also like to add hallucinations here. Mission, vision, hallucination is a trinity that is often talked about in the world of large companies and corporations. However…
Bartek Śliwa: What do you mean by hallucination?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, meaning like speaking in platitudes, making things up like wanting to be a market leader, some high-flown statements that don’t really mean anything but are just there to look nice on a presentation. And still sometimes some really out-of-nowhere visions appear there that are really very difficult to achieve.
And on my podcast, Gambit, some time ago I hosted the Managing Director of Dell Technologies Poland, and he said a sentence like many strategies are created with their head in the clouds. Darek Piotrowski said that sentence. Now I’ll paraphrase because I won’t say it word for word, but the point is that he said something like many strategies are created with their head in the clouds and look beautiful on paper, but they lack execution. So this execution gap, meaning the gap between the strategy we create and its implementation, well, it’s simply often large. And surely Darek didn’t mean Dell specifically, but generally his experience related to the market, so I didn’t want to point fingers at Dell in any way.
However, what I think is essential from the perspective of pivoting and precisely this issue of elimination, well, it’s the awareness that sometimes something needs to be eliminated. And in strategy—and here I think it’s also worth adding, because earlier you asked what a good strategy consists of—well, the concept of Michael Porter is famous, who talks about three such elements. Michael Porter, probably one of the most famous researchers when it comes to strategy, talks about three elements: first, we must know what we do differently than the competition, what different things we do than the competition (and those are two different issues), and finally third—what we don’t do, what we eliminate. So when we have four pillars, and it turns out that two work, the third so-so, the fourth doesn’t work—well, we continue with two, we consider what to do with the third. If we are able to resurrect something from it, spark a fire using current resources, or possibly by investing more, then maybe it’s worth trying. Well, and that fourth one, if it doesn’t run, then there’s no point in banging your head against a wall, right? Because the wall won’t suddenly move if we keep banging our head against it. And I have this feeling that in organizations, there’s simply too often an element of banging your head against a wall just because someone once announced such a strategy.
Bartek Śliwa: Mhm. Tell me also, in relation to what you said about strategy execution, who should be responsible for it in an organization? For the strategy?
Bartek Śliwa: Yes. I’ve encountered companies that have a head of strategy, or there’s someone for strategy in the C-level altogether, and there are organizations that don’t have a dedicated role, they just implement this strategy. And exactly, what is supposed to happen to it next, right? What in your opinion is the correct process?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Again, the consultants’ favorite answer: it depends. However, trying to be a bit more precise: my perspective on this is… and my experiences show that the entire company is responsible for strategy execution. Of course, you probably need to put some asterisks, because usually there are some asterisks. But as a matter of principle, it’s worth it for the entire organization to know what the strategy is about, at least in one or two sentences, so that it’s known where this ship is sailing, rather than it just drifting somewhere and not everyone even knowing what direction it’s all going in.
Bartek Śliwa: So the direction must be known to everyone.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: In my opinion, yes. When it comes to a head of strategy or other roles of this type that you mentioned, well, different organizations have different approaches to this. Meaning, I think it’s worth having such a person. But I also understand that there are different conditions, different sizes of organizations, and so on and so forth. We are getting into many details here. And whether, for example, in my opinion, an important aspect is whether the company permanently cooperates with a advisory or consulting firm, because there are companies that use them regularly, there are those that use them once in a while, and there are also those that don’t use them at all. And in my opinion, that matters, because if we have a clash with the external market, if someone there gives advice (meaning a consultant, right, who cooperates), well, it’s also a bit different, and I think that also influences whether we have that head of strategy or not.
And one more issue is worth adding here, because someone might say: “Well okay, Kanarkiewicz said something like everyone should be involved in executing the strategy, enforcing it, but in practice that’s impossible.” And let’s be clear—I partly agree with that, that it’s difficult. Because let’s face it, at the end of the day, a strategy is usually created by the board and a few people who are involved in it, sometimes an advisory firm, so later expecting everyone to be involved in it, well, it’s not that easily enforceable. But at least at such a level of communication that it’s clear what the strategy is, and so that front-line employees, meaning those who simply have contact with the client, know where this company strategy is heading and what the company wants to achieve—because I have this feeling, the experience of various organizations too, that this is supportive.
And the last thing here I’ll add with an asterisk, that an interesting idea—and several of my clients have implemented it—is the implementation of so-called strategic change ambassadors. Meaning, if there is some change of strategy in the organization—meaning not even a change of strategy, it can just be a strategic change during the execution of the strategy—there are such people at different levels of the organization who act as links. Meaning, for example, they go to a meeting like that with the board or someone else who organizes it, and they listen about the strategy changes, and later they are able to communicate it further. Because let’s face it, it’s not that easy for this message to reach everyone, those mailings that are sent out by the company. Of course, many companies take care of that, and that’s great. However, let’s face it, how many people read it is a completely different matter, and I’ll risk saying that not everyone does. I don’t think it’s a big risk I’m taking to say that not all employees read company mailings.
Bartek Śliwa: I think it’s known to the market, though.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That’s why I’m laughing, of course, half-seriously, that I’ll risk it. However… no, it was just a more… you’re right. But in any case, communicating strategic changes—that’s exactly what those ambassadors are for, so that this information gets through.
Bartek Śliwa: Okay. Tell me also from your experience, what is the best way to monitor whether a given strategy is bringing us the desired results?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Hm, interesting question. I think it needs to be clarified what is meant by a desired result.
Accepting how we defined strategy for ourselves, meaning: okay, in X amount of time we want to be in a given place, right? Or achieve a given thing. How do we check if our tactics, meaning all those intermediate moves… if I twist anything, tell me right away. How do we check if these tactics actually bring us closer to the goal, or if maybe we’re running in circles, maybe we actually turned around and are executing something completely different?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, I think that… one way is simply defining milestones, right? Meaning what needs to happen on the timeline. If a strategy is, say, three or four years long—those are often undertaken in organizations—then let’s do those milestones, for example, once a quarter, and check whether we are approaching that long-term goal or not. If it happens once that we aren’t approaching it, well, then it’s worth considering whether to change something. If twice, then surely you already need to change something. And if more than twice in a row, well, then that’s probably a serious problem to solve. So I would recommend a quarterly perspective here, okay? To verify this. Of course, it can be more frequent, it can be less frequent, but from client experiences, I have a feeling that often this quarterly perspective is just about right.
Because one more important thing is worth adding here, that depending on how large an organization is, that’s also how long the process of implementing a strategy from scratch takes. Because if it’s a very large organization—I’ve also talked about this with several CEOs of various large companies, corporations, it also came up a few times on my podcast—that from the very moment of publishing this strategy (meaning its creation, publication) to its implementation, so that you actually see some first effects, it’s often a minimum of a year to notice the first movements at all. So you also have to be aware of how large an organization you’re implementing it in and how much time it will actually take. Because it’s hard to expect that, for example, I don’t know, on June 1st we announce a new strategy, right, and on June 10th there will already be the first effects. Well, it doesn’t really work that way. Especially in a large organization. In smaller ones, you can do it faster, because that flexibility in implementation is also faster. And simply the effects are faster because it’s a smaller organization. But in large organizations, you simply need time for it, so adjusting this schedule of milestones—as it’s nicely said in Old Polish, milestones—well, it’s worth, it’s worth adjusting it to the size of the organization.
Bartek Śliwa: Okay. You mentioned—I’ll catch you on your words—that three- to four-year strategies are usually implemented now.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: I mean often. Well yes, in large corporations.
Bartek Śliwa: Yes, exactly. And until recently we encountered strategies that were even five- or ten-year ones. In your opinion, do these kinds of timeframes still make sense?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Let me put it this way, that probably not without reason clients choose this 3–4 year horizon, because they assume that in some way they are able to forecast certain things within a three-, four-year perspective. And let’s also add right away why they usually don’t do shorter ones: because in large organizations, corporations, they simply know that this implementation cycle, well, that’s a minimum of a year to see the first effects, and that’s where it comes from, because I also asked about that.
However, from my experiences, precisely this three-, four-year cycle is, let’s say, graspable in some way. And do they do these things, do they look at a 5–10 year horizon? Yes. However, it seems to me that this is already in the area of visionrather than the strategy itself, because the volatility of the world is simply too great to expect that we are able to execute a five-year strategy. Besides, you know, we should probably start with this sentence altogether, that the only certain thing about a strategy is that it will definitely change along the way. There is this famous saying in the world of strategy, but through this three- to four-year horizon, on one hand, we look far enough ahead to give ourselves a chance for it to be long-term in any way, and on the other hand, short enough so that it isn’t some misty, who-knows-what-will-happen thing.
Because you know, generally our discussion can be killed, in quotation marks of course, with a simple statement, right, that the world is so volatile that there’s no point in planning for longer than six months. And generally, in the IT world, many people will say that, right: 6–12 months. However, while it’s true that the world changes very quickly, at the same time certain things can be predicted, certain trends appear in advance, and from my perspective, you can simply adjust later at the tactical level. So those three- to four-year perspectives… Some companies 2 years, but let’s say that those large corporate three- to four-year ones, well, from my perspective, make sense because they combine a horizon long enough for it to be long-term in any way, and at the same time short enough so that it’s possible to forecast it in any way.
Bartek Śliwa: Okay. And before we started recording, you said that on your podcast, to which we invite everyone by the way, you use a time clock to time-box both yourself and…
Michał Kanarkiewicz: …yes, there is a chess clock, yes.
Bartek Śliwa: …and the interlocutor. And exactly, how is it that in chess you are able to win, to make accurate decisions under time pressure, and companies for some reason, having both time pressure and some external factors like competition, very often, however—I assume—like to bend those actions of theirs and sort of forget sometimes about this strategy. How do we deal with this in a business environment?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Maybe I’ll start with the chess issue. In chess, there actually is a clock that stimulates making a quick decision. Now, depending on whether we are talking about classical chess (meaning long ones), or rapid or blitz chess, well, the decision-making process looks a bit different.
Let’s start with classical chess, meaning those long ones. For simplicity, let’s assume that the players—because that’s often the time control—have 90 minutes plus 30 seconds added after every move. Let’s skip this second increment, because that’s more technical, to make a move, hit the clock, write the move on the scoresheet where the game is recorded. Let’s stick to this 90-minute issue. Let’s assume the game lasts, I don’t know, 60 moves. Then 90 divided by 60 means an average of a minute and a half per move. Does that mean that at the beginning of the game, every chess player thinks for a minute and a half over a move on every move at the start? Definitely not. In the first moves, we play very fast because we are prepared.
In fact, it is often said that a chess player spends the most time during a game before it is played, meaning on preparation. Because in the first 10–15 moves at a high level, sometimes even 20 moves, it’s simply a certain sequence of moves prepared at home that have been worked out—the so-called chess opening.
Bartek Śliwa: Let’s stop here for a moment, because I’d like to pursue this moment before the game starts. So I understand that there is some preparation there, studying the opponent’s moves from previous games.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Yes. Yes, well, you open the database and check how the opponent plays, and then we look for openings that suit us, while trying to choose ones that are uncomfortable for the other side. Meaning, we try, to put it in business language, to create a competitive advantage over the opponent, the adversary at the chessboard. And well yes, that’s what it consists of: you look up the name, you look for weaknesses in the opponent’s openings, and you look for an option that will favor you.
And it’s a very important caveat here that it’s not always about the objectively best opening, in a computer sense. Because let’s remember that computers are better than humans at chess right now. Since 1997, de facto, when Kasparov lost the famous match against Deep Blue, well, we already know that machines calculate faster, better, more efficiently than a human and are generally better at chess, so this human versus machine competition in chess makes no sense. But we have learned to cooperate with artificial intelligence in a broad sense, although these are chess engines, other terms. I don’t want to get into the nomenclature here, because surely the listeners here… those who are somehow familiar with the chess world, you know that there were chess engines and AlphaZero, and so on, and there was a lot of that. However, in short, to narrow it down a bit, of course, I mean AI machines, chess engines, and so on.
Well, for nearly 30 years—because yes, it’s 2026, 29 years ago was Kasparov’s match with Deep Blue—well, and we’ve already known since then… we’ve learned better that it’s better to learn to cooperate than to compete. And as a result, we use machines in a broad sense, chess engines, and so on, to prepare for a game of chess. And yes, well, that’s a very important element because a lot of time is spent on it, particularly in classical chess, meaning those long ones. Well, because you want to exert pressure on the opponent, because psychology plays an important role in chess. Although Bobby Fischer, a very famous world champion who played the famous match against Boris Spassky in 1972, said a sentence like he doesn’t believe in psychology, but he believes in good moves. So there is Fischer’s perspective. But at the same time, many chess players confirm this, somewhat in counter to Fischer, that this psychology does play an important role after all. From my perspective, it’s also an essential element, well, because you can exert pressure on your opponent simply by putting them in an uncomfortable situation.
Bartek Śliwa: Returning to the moment I interrupted you, right? So the chess player has prepared, meaning the business has done market reconnaissance, reconnaissance of the market, the first moves go quickly, right? And then this pressure appears. What then?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Well, first of all, as I said, there’s a minute and a half on average per move, but when such a critical moment comes… meaning such a moment—and Jeff Bezos talks about this metaphor: one-way door decisions and two-way door decisions, meaning one-way and multi-way decisions. You can easily visualize this with the metaphor of a door. Yes, if there is only one door behind that decision, well, it’s hard to reverse because either its cost is very high, simply… you have to make it very deliberately. Example: a company rebranding, example: an investment in acquiring competition (some acquisition), and so on and so forth. Well, such decisions that are difficult to reverse or simply the cost is very high. Those have one door behind them.
But there are also decisions, both in chess and in business, that are potentially easily reversible. Meaning, for example, there is a choice of one door or another, and depending… it doesn’t matter much which one we choose, one or the other, let’s say the result will be similar or the cost of reversing that choice won’t be high. Well, I don’t know, for example, testing headlines in an offer or some functionality in an application, and so on. Of course, all, all these assumptions have certain exclusions. You have to remember that I know there are irreversible situations and so on, but for a certain simplification, that’s how I would visualize it.
Well, and in chess, such situations are easily reversible, for example, in the opening, when depending on… or otherwise, maybe like this: regardless of whether, for example, we play the Sicilian Defense with white (E4 C5) and now whether with white we choose Knight F3 or Knight C3, well, objectively both moves are okay. It just depends on our preference, which position we prefer: whether a more open one (Knight F3) or a more closed one (Knight C3). However, there are such positions in chess where after the 15th, 17th move, when the position crystallizes, well, you have to work out a plan of attack against the opponent and you have to think of some way to… exert pressure on him somewhere. And often this one, two, or a sequence of three or five moves—well, the result of the game very often depends on this, because either you will have the initiative, or you will give it to the opponent. And those are those hard-to-reverse moments.
And at that moment when there is just such a… such a decision, the rule is (and I was taught this since childhood) to spend 10 times more time making the decision. Meaning, in short: not a minute and a half, but 10 times more, meaning 15 minutes. 15 minutes out of a 90-minute budget is already a big commitment. And it has happened to me in games to think for almost an hour over one such move because I knew that this one move decided the final outcome of the game. And this is a very important distinction here between reversible and hard-to-reverse decisions. Because in chess, after every move, at least you should evaluate the position, meaning assess it, how we find ourselves in this position. And there is also something called the theory of candidate moves. That means that after every move—and I was also taught this—to consider at least three options before we make a move.
And in business—and now returning to the business world—I have this feeling that too many managers are more like a firefighter, in quotation marks of course, who runs around with a fire extinguisher and puts out every next fire. Instead of stepping into just such a role of a person thinking strategically, who looks not from the perspective of a single tree. Okay… firefighter, tree. Beautiful. There will be memes. But my point is not to be a manager who has such a perspective of a single tree, but to have a perspective of the forest, to look at everything from a broad perspective and to think in scenarios. Because chess teaches this excellently: thinking in scenarios. Not only what if everything goes well, because I once heard a sentence like that, that any fool can think about what if everything goes well, meaning the optimistic scenario. In my opinion, the art consists in the fact (and some managers do this) that they also think about a realistic scenario, meaning what if it goes more or less according to expectations. However, very few think about a pessimistic scenario, meaning what if something unforeseen happens on our way. Well, it’s nicely called a black swan, meaning a highly unpredictable phenomenon having immense consequences.
Bartek Śliwa: And I understand that again now I’ll try a chess analogy. If I use your example, we think a few moves ahead, right? Meaning we analyze not only our next step, but also how the market, competition, or even our clients will respond to this step. And only based on that response do we plan our reaction. Is that exactly this chess calculation of variations transferred to business grounds?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Exactly so, you hit the nail right on the head. In chess, we call it calculating variations, and its absolute opposite is something that plagues business incredibly often, namely wishful thinking. What does it look like in practice? A manager or a board says: “Okay, we are launching a new product on the market (my move), the competition will surely get scared and won’t lower prices (their move), and clients will rush to our offer.” That is not a strategy; that is exactly the hallucination I mentioned. Chess teaches you a brutal truth: your opponent also wants to win. He isn’t sitting on the other side of the table just to make your life easier. Therefore, scenario thinking consists of asking yourself the question: “I play move A, and what are the three best, most malicious responses of my competitor?” And you plan your actions based on their best, not their worst reactions. If your business plan falls apart the moment the competition simply does something smart, it means you don’t have a strategy.
Bartek Śliwa: Well okay, but with such huge volatility as we discussed, is it even possible to calculate these variations, say, five moves ahead? After all, in business, unlike on the chessboard, those rules of the game can change during the match.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: You are absolutely right, and that is the main difference between chess and business. The chessboard always has 64 squares, and the pieces move according to fixed rules. In business, a new player can suddenly enter with a technology that completely erases the existing rules.
Therefore, in business, it’s not about calculating variations “deeply”—meaning 20 steps ahead—because that is impossible and inefficient. It’s about calculating broadly. This means that you focus on the nearest two or three moves, but you consider different environmental scenarios.
Golden strategic rule: Stick rigidly to the long-term goal (in the vision), but maintain maximum flexibility at the tactical level.
If you see that your variation stops working because external conditions have changed, you don’t immediately change the ultimate goal; you just modify the next moves. A chess player who sees that his plan to attack the king has been blocked does not resign the game. He regroups pieces, switches to defense, or looks for a weakness at the other end of the board. This is what many companies lack—when Plan A fails, they don’t have a Plan B prepared; they just start improvising in a panic.
Bartek Śliwa: It sounds like a powerful lesson in humility and flexibility. Michał, if you were to leave our listeners, managers, entrepreneurs with one single, most important piece of advice drawn from the royal game that they can implement in their companies starting tomorrow—what would it be?
Michał Kanarkiewicz: I would say: implementing the habit of assessing the position before making a move. In the business rush, we have a tendency for immediate action. A problem appears—we immediately implement the first solution that comes to our mind.
A chess player, before touching a piece, takes a deep breath and evaluates the entire chessboard: is my king safe? What is the opponent planning? Where are my weaknesses? I would like business leaders to give themselves the right to such a “chess stop.” Before you make a decision, especially a hard-to-reverse one, sit down with the team, look at the forest rather than a single tree, consider candidate moves, and only then make a move. I guarantee that the number of fires put out in the company will drop drastically.
Bartek Śliwa: A beautiful conclusion. Scenario thinking, a broad perspective, and above all, calmness before making key decisions. Michał, thank you very much for this extremely inspiring conversation and for a ton of strategic knowledge delivered in such an accessible way.
Michał Kanarkiewicz: Thanks a lot, Bartek. See you and good luck on your business chessboards!
Bartek Śliwa: And to you, dear listeners, I invite you to the next episode of Euvic Talks. Talk to you soon!
Meet our guest
Michał Kanarkiewicz
Strategic thinking expert and creator of the GAMBIT model
Entrepreneur
Michał Kanarkiewicz is a strategic thinking expert, chess player, and bestselling author who has inspired more than 100,000 participants through over 500 keynote speeches and corporate training sessions delivered for organizations including Dell, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Volvo, BNP Paribas, mBank, PwC, and EY.
He has been a keynote speaker at international conferences exploring the role of chess in business and education, including events in Washington, D.C., and London. His work focuses on helping leaders make decisions the way chess masters do—thinking strategically rather than simply reacting to challenges.
Michał is the creator of the GAMBIT™ Methodology, a proprietary framework built around six pillars of strategic thinking. For the past 12 years, he has run his own business, and for the last nine years he has researched what chess can teach managers about strategic leadership, scenario planning, and decision-making under pressure.
His workshops and keynote presentations are not lectures about chess. Instead, they are highly interactive, hands-on experiences that challenge participants to confront their own decision-making habits from the very beginning. The engaging format ensures that the insights gained remain with participants long after the session ends.
He holds a degree in Strategic Management from Kozminski University and has been featured in leading business publications such as Forbes and Puls Biznesu. He is also an honorary member of the Professional Speakers Association of Poland.
Michał has hosted his own television programs on TVP and Kanał Sportowy, and currently hosts the GAMBIT podcast. In 2020, he achieved a draw in a simultaneous chess exhibition against the 12th World Chess Champion, Anatoly Karpov.
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