Checkmate

Introduction 

How many of you have ever played chess? In the game of chess there are 2 types of players. The one who plays the attacking game and the one who plays the defending game. Who do you think will win? Yes the attacker.

Contest Master, Toastmasters and my dear friends, don't you think our life is also like a game of chess? Every time we play the attacking game, we win.

10 years ago when I stepped into the corporate world, little did I know that I was going to be thrashed. In school or college I was not taught about corporate politics or how to play the attacking game.

Those days, when ever I got an escalation email, the first thought that would come to my mind was to convince myself that ' Yes, I would have made that mistake.' I would not even check whether I really did it and send an apology email defending myself with the excuse on the amount of work pressure.

 Everytime I defended, I was attacked! What happens when you heat and beat a piece of metal? Yes. It becomes better and better. I learnt to play my attacking game. 

10 years later, I was moved to a new project where we were replacing a bunch of managers from Europe. Ofcourse they were of Indian origin. They were loosing their job due to cost cutting. It was a matter of life or death for them. Richard Dawkins in The Selfish gene says that humans or any species for that matter will go to any extent for their and their genes survival. One of the manager was finding fault it each and every task I did. You can imagine that he would say 'since Kavitha sneezed today at 3pm all our deadlines were missed. 

I looked naive and inexperienced in my Teams profile pic. He mistook me to be an easy target. 

The art of war Sun Tzu says,

"Appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak."

I kept quite and observed the project and the people for 2 months. From the third month I started off my attacking game with an email. 

I got an email from him stating that I had hardly done any work in all these days and whatever I did was all wrong. It was a great opportunity for me to start my game. It was like  Podra bgm ah moment. I immediately copied his manager and my manager and gave the complete statistics in a table of the work I have done and the work he has missed. In the last line I indicated that I am calling him for a battle. I wrote, "With all this data, do you think your previous mail really makes sense?" While I was typing and clicking the send button, I felt myself like a King calling for war. It gave me a sense of excitement, pleasure and an adrenaline rush. I could hear the bgm.....

After sending that email I was eagerly waiting for a reply. Till date I have not received it. Checkmate.

In management we call this as a dog chase theory. When a dog chases you, you keep running. When you stop, stare and start chasing the dog, it might run.  But there is no guarantee that it might run away. It might also come and bite you. It depends upon the courage possessed by you and the dog. This is why Sun Tzu says 'Know your enemy'.

The same is depicted in a movie where vadivelu raises his knife and says ' If my enemy is scared of this knife  I am his master. If he takes a bigger knife then he is my master.

Conclusion:

The most important lesson from the book The art of war is that 

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting" and 

"He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”

So before playing your attacking game ask yourself these questions:

1.Am I honest and in the path of the righteous?

2. Is it possible to make your enemy your alley? Or is the fight inevitable?

In life the one who raises the sword first, wins the battle. If you think you are in the path of the righteous go ahead and raise the sword first. The world is for the righteous.