Chapter One: Global Local It is easy to get lost in local battles and not focus on the global position. The winner in Go is not the player who wins the most spectacular battle somewhere, but the player who wins the war. Having a global focus in Go gives you an edge on locally minded competitors, because there can be almost a dozen different battles going on at any one time, and you get only one move at a time. The more you put each battle into a global context, the more likely you will play the right move aligned with the overall objective -- winning the game. It's the same sort of thing you learn as a child. Would I rather have the piece of candy in front of me or get a whole pitcher of candy later? When you are a child, you always want that local, immediate win, no matter the bigger picture. As you get older, you realize that this local, immediate loss pales in comparison to the bigger win -- except when you forget that there is a bigger picture, which happens to everyone no matter the age.At the same time, without an understanding of things on a local level, you really don't have a good grasp of which positions are strong and which are weak.

Really understanding things at a local level can lead to wonderful opportunities that are not apparent from a global twenty-thousand-foot view. Getting down in the trenches and really understanding the inner workings of your positions not only gives you a better assessment of things but also can pay dividends when situations change and a different purpose is called for locally. The founding executives of Hewlett-Packard were big fans of managing by "walking around." Instead of being cooped up in an office, away from the people actually doing the work, at HP, executives were encouraged to walk around and see things locally. Getting the worker's perspective and seeing the problems at their root level was a local, instead of global, technique that was a large part of the "HP Way" and was a foundation for understanding their business. Global Local Rules and Structure The principles of Global Local are that you must change lenses as appropriate to the circumstances. Your perspective, your framing of the goal, and the stage of your work all matter in considering what side of the spectrum of the Global Local duality you need to be pulling from. Without the local understanding, you cannot have a right global understanding.

Without knowing where you're going globally, a lot of work locally can have you going the wrong way. Appreciate the danger of applying a rule from the wrong side of the duality.It is a good momentum-inspiring practice to celebrate small wins, the joys of doing something right as a person or an organization. However, when these small-win celebrations cloud global issues pertaining to strategy or direction in the bigger board or picture -- the one goal that has to define and measure the benefit of the small win -- you obscure the bigger-picture problems. Despite the euphoria they provide, small wins can't bandage what needs a tourniquet. Small wins can be evil successes when not in the context of the global perspective.The other side of the coin is equally nefarious. Everyone knows you should not be obsessed with quarterly results at the expense of the longer-term view.

It's a poor global business attitude that is not aligned with customers' best interests. If you work for such a company, you're bound to be in for a world of hurt. You ought to quit and find another job. However, if this is your only job prospect and you have to meet your quarterly goals to stay employed, you'd better care less about the global view until the quarter's up. If you care about your global prospects, you'd best try to remain employed while you look for other work and forget all about the global till then. You may be desperate to get the sales you need this quarter, but imagine the desperation you'll experience should you be unc.