Sudoku as a metaphor and model for strategy.
As some of you may know, I’ve recently become addicted to Sudoku. I’d played it a few times back during the height of the Sudoku craze but had never really thought much of it back then. So, my recent fascination was as much of a mystery to me as it continues to be to my family. Having reflected on it a bit more, I have an answer for why I find it so compelling.
For me, playing Sudoku is like doing marketing strategy. It involves the same kinds of thinking, deduction and tactics that I might employ when trying to figure out strategy for a brand or product. In fact, I think playing Sudoku is a way to improve your strategy.
Strategy: At the start of any strategy project, it’s a wide open field. The possibilities are limitless. The problem is, this much choice tends to be paralyzing. My approach is to quickly limit the number of possibilities by asking the very fundamental questions, the main one being, “what’s really the problem here?” In fact, if I were to put a percentage against it, I’d say that strategy is 80% figuring out what the real problem is and 20% figuring out the solution. Usually it’s not exactly obvious where the real problem is and so I’ll engage in a process of elimination and narrowing in. This can involve asking questions like where is the problem, is it in manufacturing, distribution, product, packaging, naming, etc.
Sudoku: This is very similar to my strategy for Sudoku. The goal is to eliminate possibilities starting with the big obvious ones before diving into a row by row or cell by cell analysis. Here I’ll start by looking at individual numbers e.g. 9s across the entire board. Trying to fill in the obvious gaps and trying not to get caught up in too much detail. It’s here that I’ll also begin to form a sense of which numbers and which cells are going to be the real problems.
Strategy: In Sudoku as in strategy, big sweeping surveys of the landscape can only take you so far. That’s when you actually need to dive in and start to get you hands messy. In strategy, this would be the research phase, asking questions, eliminating more potential problems and generally narrowing in on what the problem or problems might be. In this phase it’s very much a process of juggling lots of different pieces of information and trying to make sense of them. Trying to see how and where they fit. Typically I’m drawing from a lot of different sources to try to form a cohesive picture in my head. So there’s a lot of having to cross-reference bits of learning from one place and testing them against another place to see what happens.
Sudoku: On the Sudoku board this is also where I’ll dive in and try a variety of different strategies an approaches for filling in more numbers. However, as before, I’m also trying to eliminate possibilities and winnow the choice for any one individual cell down to only two possibilities. Typically, on a tough Soduku board this is the most time consuming part of the game. It requires a lot different approaches combined in different ways. For me, it also requires a bunch of back-tracking too because I’m not that good at Sudoku yet. But, I can feel myself getting better and as in strategy, there are patterns that you see over and over again and it becomes easier and easier to spot them with practice.
Strategy: After having done all the research and synthesized it, I’ll typically be able to finally arrive at the real root of the problem. But in the real world, there are often a number of different ways to solve them. I’ll try to get the potential solutions or strategies down to a small number two or three at the most and then test them out. This may involve researching them but more often it involves brainstorming against the varous strategies and seeing where they take you and what the implications of following that strategy might be. Great strategies are great because they create great possibilities. The brainstorming process reveals the possibilities in each strategy and helps me decide which strategy to pursue.
Sudoku: On the really tricky boards you have no option other than to simply play through scenarios. You can get a number of cells down to just two possibilities but you can’t figure out which of the two numbers fits. At this point you just have to pick one and then see how that impacts the rest of the board. If it works you’re in luck, if it doesn’t then you know the only answer is the other choice. It’s time consuming and painful but that’s why I prefer playing on the iPhone.
Finally, I suspect this post may be of no use to anyone other than myself so to redeem it (slightly) I’m linking to this fantastic Sudoku guide here which may actually deliver some value.