As organizations grow in volume and complexity, the demands on leadership change. The same old moves won't cut it any more. In Chess Not Checkers, Mark Miller tells the story of Blake Brown, newly appointed CEO of a company troubled by poor performance and low morale. Nothing Blake learned from his previous roles seems to help him deal with the issues he now faces. The problem, his new mentor points out, is Blake is playing the wrong game. The early days of an organization are like checkers: a quickly played game with mostly interchangeable pieces. Everybody, the leader included, does a little bit of everything; the pace is frenetic. But as the organization expands, you can't just keep jumping from activity to activity. You have to think strategically, plan ahead, and leverage every employee's specific talents—that's chess. Leaders who continue to play checkers when the name of the game is chess lose. On his journey, Blake learns four essential strategies from the game of chess that transform his leadership and his organization. The result: unprecedented performance! Chess Not Checkers is an accessible and easily applied guide to help leaders deviate their own leadership and the performance of their entire organization.
Author
My career at Chick-fil-A began over forty years ago as an hourly team member in one of the local restaurants. Shortly thereafter, I became the sixteenth corporate employee—my first job: working in the warehouse. Since that day, I have worked all across the business from starting our Corporate Communications group and our Quality & Customer Satisfaction Team to leading in Restaurant Operations, Training & Development, Leadership Development and more! For the last twenty years, I have focused much of my time on serving leaders, helping them grow themselves, their teams, and their organizations. In addition to my role at Chick-fil-A, I’ve also had the privilege to teach and lead in not-for-profit organizations domestically and globally. Although the context is different in every organization, the problems have common roots and so do the solutions. Along the way, I have been fortunate to author (and co-author) a few books – eight and counting. Today, more than a million books are in print in 25+ languages. My approach to writing has always been to find what is true in principle and figure out how to make it applicable to the real world.
