BY:  Cenen Herrera
         Skill Development and Talent Optimization Consultant
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As a Lolo (Legacy Worker), my primary role these days is to provide advice to my children (whenever they will seek my advice) in the skill development and talent optimization of my future generation, i.e., my grandchildren.  In this regard, I am trying to apply the strategies and tactics of the chess game in mentoring and coaching my future generation.  I believe knowledge and mastery of the chess game is very important in successfully managing one’s life, e.g., career, financial, family, social, spiritual, physical, and psychological life.  It begins by helping my children in laying down the foundation of their future generation, i.e., children.  I told my children that if someone will ask me what life is in one word, my reply:  Preparation.  During my life’s working years, I played hard, worked harder, and prayed hardest for my future generation, and after my working years, i.e., retirement, I am preparing for a seamless transformation to eternal life.  Such is my experience in life. Throughout the preparation stage, however, I found chess as an important transformation tool that helped me in preparing for the best scenario for my future generation as well as during my retirement.
 
After working for about 45 years, I consider myself to be a barefoot grandfather, meaning, start all over again my life with my wife after retiring from two prestigious organizations.  The main reason why I have to restart my life after retirement is as a Filipino parent, like other
Filipino parents, we focused on providing the best education for our children, and even went to the extent of providing them opportunities to study abroad.  We believe education is the best inheritance we can give our future generation, i.e., a legacy value Mom has importantly advised me during the stewardship of my children.  Thus, at the threshold of retirement life, we are basically providing our future generation the important strategies and tactics in their skill development and talent optimization of their children through four modalities:  (i) faith development focusing mainly on the appreciation of the values that we have imbibed  throughout our journey in life, i.e. La Sallian Animo Spirit; (ii) extreme humility in all our works by making our future generation realize that we are nothing, and God is everything in this life; (iii) Possessing a positive attitude even in times of failure and letting our future generation realize that failure is necessary to provide us the important lessons that will help us win in our succeeding endeavors; and (iv) Appreciating the gift of life, and the graces, blessings, and miracles that come with it.
 
At the end of the day, we have to orient our future generation about the important chess strategies that could be applied in their preparation as well as the tactics and gambits necessary to win in life.  After all, if you are a Champion, you should not be surprised if you are surrounded by Winners, i.e., your winning brothers and sisters, children, cousins, ancestors, grandchildren, and friends.

Writing from Sparks, Nevada, U.S.A.
Wednesday, 5 January 2022


Whenever we start a project, the primary objective should always be to gain a positional advantage.  This means an impact first impression where you are able to put your best foot forward.  A good example is when you start a career in the accounting world.  The traditional core financial statements are the balance sheet, the income statement, the cash flow statement, and the related M&A write up for the annual report.  A leading multilateral bank would focus on the simplified financial statements, i.e., a simplified balance sheet, a simplified income statement, and simplified NCR (net cash requirement) statement.  In simple terms, we gain a positional advantage in our professional career by being able to simplify what otherwise would be a technical world that would have a limited audience.  At the board of directors' presentation for example, the members would appreciate if you can focus on simple ideas with high impact values.  A resource statement, which is the equivalent of a balance sheet would explain, in simple terms, the overall net worth of the company, its total assets which are financed either by equity or liability.  If the company assets are financed by 60% liabilities, then it follows that the remaining assets are financed by 40% equity.  This provides a clear positional advantage to the members of the Board in that they immediately are given a picture of how much company assets are financed by outside creditors, and how much are financed by ownership resources.  The income statement is translated into an income engine broken down into three major categories:  total revenues, total expenses, and the residual margin or profit or losses.  The NCR is the Net Cash Requirement or working capital needed to sustain operation, and growth by the company.   It is common across large organizations to have a 45% to 65% net cash requirement, meaning for every $100 of planned operation, we should at least have a minimum 45% of cash flow reserves on hand.  Prudent planning dictates that these financial policies should be appropriately defined at the very outset, and our key performance ratios should provide a clear measure of how much we are able to meet these baseline objectives.
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The same is true in chess.  At the very outset, i.e., in the opening moves, our baseline strategy should be focused on obtaining a positional advantage.  Thereafter, we should explore all possibilities that could enable us to achieve a transformational opportunity.  This means that we are able to transform the positional advantage we have gained in the opening, to a material or winning advantage in the middle game or at the very least at the end game.  

  

Writing from West Des Moines Near the University Avenue, Iowa
Saturday, 24 April 2021

Who said that auditing and chess don't go together?  In my latest work assignment I found out that hard work alone is not enough to complete a quality audit report.  Hard work must be reinforced with a brilliant mind, meaning one should not be satisfied in what happened in the past, i.e., by just copying and pasting the audit strategy from a previous work.  A brilliant mind means looking beyond the chess board, and just like the audience, i.e., kibitzers watching the chess game, one must be prepared for the counter moves of his or her opponent at least several moves ahead.  After screening all the possible moves of your opponent, you must then prepare your own innovative strategy on how to gain either a material advantage or by being in a better position to win.  Apart from possessing a brilliant mind through innovation, one must have the courage to execute the best combination of moves by adopting what he or she considers a brutally accurate strategy.  This means gaining a clear advantage, and ultimately reaching what many will consider a winning position, if not, an inevitable check mate!

Once a chess player reaches a winning position, the hard work is not forgotten, but whatever sacrifice or pain one experiences is temporarily forgotten giving way to a feeling of euphoria.  At this stage one must be very careful to sustain the material or positional advantage. Remember that whatever innovation or strategy one adopts during the game of chess, the chess player should always be aware of the time limit of the game.  Thus, apart from possessing a brilliant mind, the winning chess player must have the speed, and a brutally accurate strategy ready to be executed in a timely manner to gain a material or positional advantage.  

by Cenen Herrera
Writing from Sogod Bay, Southern Leyte Philippines

​Life is a space in time.  If you take away your dream, life becomes meaningless.  According to Khalil Gibran, we should trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate of eternity.  Bobby Fischer once said that a good chess player normally is a great dreamer.  When playing chess, one is expected to have a dream, an ambition, or at least a goal of winning as many forces and as brilliantly as possible.  At the end of the game, the inevitable check-mate is the overarching objective.

There are two types of chess player:  an offensive or defensive chess player.  The financial gambits that I used to talked about during my professional career as an accountant and auditor all emanated from an offensive chess player.  A financial gambit aims for a quick win.  For example, in dealing with the financial market, there are players who take advantage of the opportunities with a very minimal risk.  They call these transactions “arbitrage.”  Webster defines arbitrage as the nearly simultaneous purchase and sale of securities or foreign exchange in different markets in order to profit from price discrepancies.  Sometimes quality differential could be sacrificed for the sake of a positional advantage.  This is precisely what arbitrage is all about, i.e., taking advantage of market opportunities.

They say that offense is the best defense.  The defensive chess player thinks that the risk to all offenses could be effectively mitigated through a solid defense.  The defensive chess player is in the opinion that a winner is simply able to take advantage of the mistakes of another – so the first one who makes a mistake loses the game.  Prudence is the name of the game for a defensive chess player.  Tactical and strategic patience is required to win a chess game, not innovation under the guise of a strategic offense.

Both offensive and defensive chess players require extreme sacrifices to win a game, but though their approaches might be considered opposite to each other, the ultimate objective is to win the game.  Thus, whatever type of chess player you are, the winning combination you choose, plus your ability to take advantage of the mistakes of your opponent would spell the outcome of the game.

​Writing from Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America
by Cenen Herrera
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A prominent Pastor said that the Finish line is what matters most in life.  We might have an excellent opening during our childhood days, and we got almost all the things we dreamed about during our middle-life (middle game in chess), but the end-game is what matters most.  How much is left materially, socially, and spiritually during our end-game?  Our opening might be as hard or difficult as the life of Philippine Boxing Legend Manny Pacquiao who had to sell freshly cooked bread during his childhood days, but his life-story did not end there.  Manny started to earn his living at a young age, and he was introduced to boxing at the age of 12.  From there, he met a lot of challenges locally at first, then nationally, and finally on a worldwide basis.  Yes, it was a difficult climb to the top, but his life-story was exceptional in that it showed that there are no boundaries in life when one possesses an excellent attitude for Hard Work, intense prayerfulness and solid determination to win every major game that he encountered in his boxing career.  

Three important lessons emerged in the life-story of the greatest Philippine Boxer Manny Pacquaio:  (I) Value Pyramid - Our extreme desire to focus on value-adding activities such as continuous improvement, and life-long learning;  (ii) Waste Hierarchy - In life we can't be efficient and effective all the time in the utilization of resources, but at least we should avoid doing efficiently what is not needed, i.e., Peter Drucker calls it Efficiently Ineffective; (iii) Neutral Positioning - Diversity is the name of the game in any major subject matter these days. Professionalism is an evolving construct and the new mantra today is that to fully appreciate diversity we should embrace neutral positioning.  For example, we should be gender neutral in our writings, religion neutral in our beliefs, and even class neutral in our business dealings.

The three dynamic pyramids offered above are merely a portion of the great and evolving lessons in life that we could learn from a Great Philippine Boxing Hero, who has become an Honorable Member of the Philippine Senate.  Thank You Mr. Pacman for continuously inspiring the Filipino Youth, and Congratulations for your many accomplishments as a World Boxing Legend - cenen reyes herrera.

Friday at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, United States of America

The year 2018 is about to end, and a lot of challenges in and out of the chess world as well as in my professional career in Finance have occurred.  I have received a number of comments that hopefully would improve on my future games.  I would like to present the life of a simple chess servant, which I consider "A Life of Miracles": I was once a banana vendor in the streets of San Andres, Manila (circa: mid seventies), a car wash boy in the streets of Signal Village at Taguig, and a Motolite battery man in the streets of Las Pinas City, and Tunasan Muntinlupa, Philippines (circa eighties, and nineties).  I view my chess career very favorable to the extent that it has inspired me to transform my professional career from a Third World to a First World level.  Having represented one of the top Philippine schools in the NCAA Chess Tournament, and having won several championship trophies at the national level, I was able to continue to grow in my professional career. For over 40 years I have been extremely privileged to hold at least two very stable jobs: (i) First in a US$150 Billion Regional Multilateral Development Bank located in Asia, where I was able to retire as a Senior Credit Officer; and (ii) As a professional staff, I was again able to retire in one of the largest space organizations of the world.  I consider every privilege I enjoy today and yesterday a miracle. Please let me reflect on that important meal that we are about to partake with our family this New Year Eve (for welcoming 2019): Remember our friendship as well as the privileges of serving the Author of Life. Wishing you all the very best of our humble beginnings, and hoping that the coming years will be full of Miracles for you and your family.

I would like to thank all those who provided this blog with positive feedbacks.

Cenen
www.cenenherrera.net
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Writing from Cedar Rapids - Iowa
by Cenen Herrera
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Fast or Speed Chess is the name of the game.  Traditionally, with a five minute time limit, a variation has become popular these days which could go to as little as one minute.  The best brain exercise is to engage in fast thinking, which Rapid Chess offers its players.  Rapid Chess calls for quick thinking without sacrificing the quality of the game.  How many amongst us would rather sacrifice time over quality?  The question that arises is how do we balance quality and timeliness? How much lead time can we afford to give each time we engage in a productive activity?
Peter Drucker said: “there is nothing more useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”  In Rapid Chess, committing this famous Peter Drucker bluff is virtually improbable.  Bound by time, we focus only on what is important, and prioritize only the moves that could provide the winning opportunities.  Winning opportunities are difficult to find especially if you are pressed for time.  Thus, every chess player needs to have foresight, and knows what to prioritize.  Finding the winning combination isn’t enough, there must always be an awareness of how much time is remaining for capturing your opponent’s King. 
Some of the paradoxical value-adding quotes that might help while preparing for a game of chess follow:
(i)              Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment (Rita Mae Brown/ Mark Twain);
(ii)            Like chess, life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live/play as if there were none – Albert Einstein;
(iii)          If you are willing to do only what is easy, life will be hard and you are most likely to suffer a loss; but if you are willing to do what is hard, and sacrifice life will be easy, and most likely you will win by brilliancy – T. Haw Eker; and
(iv)           Failing to plan is like planning to fail – You should never start playing chess if you do not have a plan to win – Stephen McCrame.
 
At the end of the day, whether it is a long or short game of chess, the important thing is one’s preparation.  Your health must be in top shape, you must have slept well, and your stamina should be able to meet the rigors of playing chess.  Preparation will ultimately spell out the outcome of your game, and for the avid chess player, rapid chess could be the best form of practice in the age of brilliance.
 
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Writing from Bracknell, United Kingdom
Strategies, Tactics and Maneuvers in Chess
By Cenen Herrera
Posted on May 21, 2016​
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We often encounter the constructs strategy, tactic and maneuver in business, school, church, and even in our personal world.  How do these concepts influence our goals, our limited resources, our income engine, and our sphere of influence to win in what many will call the game of chess or is it really the game of life? After working for about forty years, i.e., almost non-stop from Asia to North America, I could not imagine how things could have turned differently had I not known how to play the game of chess.  Mother bought the first chess-set in the family when I was six.

In chess, just like in real life, one has to construct a winning mission statement identifying clearly the legacy values one wants to accomplish and pass on to the next generation. Most chess players will aim to win the game in order to advance.  Others would try to win the game or salvage a draw to improve his or her ranking say in a tournament.  Still others would aim to fight a good chess player to gain insights and learn how an expert plays the game.  Whatever purpose one might have in playing chess, the overarching objective appears to be how to win the game.  In other words, once we have defined our mission statement, which normally happens after high-school graduation, i.e., for some it could happen after elementary or middle school graduation or still for some after graduating in college, the next steps would involve strategies, tactics and maneuvers to help us accomplish our mission or goal.

Foresight is the most important strategy in chess.  It means how far in advance could you project your situation given a series of moves that you are about to take.  It is said that a grandmaster could foresee in advance about 20 to 25 moves ahead.  The alternatives could appear to be endless, but adopting sound tactics such as trying to gain a material advantage or sacrificing a piece to gain a positional advantage, could very well spell victory in the long run. The actual maneuvering happens when one exchanges a piece or two with his or her opponent.  Be careful when you actually execute the maneuvering, i.e., material exchanges.  It is in actual maneuvering that sometimes you end up losing the game because after the material exchange, you find yourself down by a piece or down by quality. Some of the best maneuvering tactics in chess could involve the following: (i) try to gain an early positional advantage by focusing your pieces at the center of the board; (ii) avoid having double pawns, (iii) the bishop could be better than a knight in an endgame; (iv) in general, a bishop pair in an endgame is better than a knight pair; and (v) always remember that the best defense is a good offense.

Preparation is the most crucial part of the game, whether it is chess or the game of life.  When I was a bit younger, I remember asking myself why I have to study every day.  When I finished college, I taught it was the end of my studies, yet I saw many people enrolling in higher-education to take up say an MBA, and still others will continue to study after their MBA, and complete their Ph.D., and finally I observed that most professional players embrace Life-Long Learning (Triple L).  Indeed, professionalism is all about discipline, and to achieve the highest level of discipline (one prominent author calls it Level 5 Discipline), one must embrace Triple L.  In a knowledge-based world, professionalism has become synonymous to Triple L.
 

Playing Chess Could Help Business Strategists Perform Better in their Leadership Functions

By Cenen Herrera

Writing from the City of Olds, Iowa
United States of America
4 September 2015

Business leaders are under constant pressure from stakeholders to meet their respective interests in the organization and increase the firm’s competitiveness in the market. As a result, corporate leaders continuously strive to sharpen their analytical skills, focus on long-term thinking, improve their strategizing abilities, and look at the “big picture” for assessing risks and potential rewards.

In my long years of playing chess, I learned a number of important lessons which allowed me to perform better in my career.

First, just like in chess where you expect the moves of your opponent, I learned to expect the moves of my boss. When I was a young professional, I practiced the art of expecting the next two to five moves of my boss. As I mature in my career, not only did I learn to think several moves ahead of my boss (up to 25 moves), but I also learned a number of important lessons that helped me increase the accuracy of predicting the requirements of my job as well as winning the excellent ratings from my boss.

Second, I learned that both business and chess rely on exchanges, and successful trades usually end up to one benefitting from the exchange and the other losing in the exchange. Thus, hard work, perseverance, learning from mistakes, and other intellectual and character traits are needed to successfully play chess, and the same is true in business.

Third, I learned that ethical behavior is important in both business and chess. Winning in chess is better if it results from a superior strategy rather than just as a result of a careless move by an opponent. The same is true in business; having a superior strategy creates a win-win situation that ultimately results to the company's positive performance.

Fourth, I find the classic chess gambit as the equivalent of opportunity cost in business. Chess gambits are normally applied to a chess beginner, and while it normally involves gaining a piece or two, the chess beginner normally ends up in an awkward position.

Fifth, I learned that flexibility in chess means the ability to have contingency plans for every move that the player takes. Flexibility refers to the ability to quickly change strategy in light of the development in the markets, i.e., depending on the opportunities and threats. I fully agree with Robert S. Graber of University of Arkansas – Monticello that there are a number of parallels between chess strategy and business strategy.


"Do you have an algorithm for success?"

17 July 2015 - Friday

by Cenen Herrera

Writing from Boston, Massachusetts

In my many years of experience in international finance, I learned three important phases in strategic planning:  (i) Strategy Formulation; (ii) Execution; and (iii) Performance.  For me, the best definition of strategy is resource optimization, which means maximizing the use of our limited resources to reach a desired goal.  Execution is the actual implementation of your strategy, which could either focus on innovation or execution virus.  Innovation according to Peter Drucker is change that creates a new dimension of performance. Execution virus emanates from institutional habits that kill innovation.  The last phase of planning is actual performance, which could be any of the three results:  a. Superior; b. Good Enough or c. Inferior.

The ultimate test of our collegiate level degree is when we are able to pass a Board Exam or a Professional Certification that is universally recognized.  The post-graduate degree reinforces our educational training with a macro-view of our chosen specialty.  Studies had shown that functionality has no correlation to educational attainment.  If you want to achieve success in your specialization, you should adopt a personal algorithm for success. Formulating a strategic winning gambit or developing a personal algorithm for success is imperative if you want to achieve a superior performance. 

CVP is my personal algorithm for success in life.  It means continuously building your Character by engaging in activities that will strengthen your Values, and improve your People management skills. 







"Stewardship Headroom"

 By Cenen Herrera
Writing from the San Francisco Bay Area, USA


The strategic copula between Trial-and-Error Empirical Learning (TEEL) and Value-Chain Business Planning (VCBP) provides the groundwork for increasing one’s stewardship headroom.  What is stewardship headroom?  I define stewardship headroom as the difference between your existing creative capacity to contribute community-based values and the existing limit of your innovative skills.  As a career professional, I generally find three layers of knowledge maturity, i.e., g-level career or entry level function, m-level career or management function, and c-level career or stewardship function.  Bootstrapping the finance functions, i.e., controllership, treasury, risk management, auditing and information technology, drives the strategic copula between TEEL and VCBP.The g-level career is mostly characterized by TEEL.  In this entry-level mode, one increases the functional level of knowledge through concrete and hands-on experience.  It is at this level that the skill-set of an employee and its alignment to the job function is held to be of extreme importance.  Reading the office manual is not enough, your research efforts must be grounded on the core principles of how values are created in your organization and the accompanying rationalization of the financial support that goes to each value that is created.  At the g-level, it is extremely important to have a reliable training program aimed at continuously improving the skills of employees.The m-level group is characterized by people who are able to differentiate risks and potentials and because of TEEL, it is heavily influenced by the science of management.  The m-level starts from the supervisory position to senior management.  At this level, leadership traits such as character, credibility and reputation are considered to be of high importance.  This is the functional group that enables the organization to monitor the day-to-day progress of work and measures the 5 Es of organizational excellence, i.e., ethics, effectiveness, efficiency, economy and the eighty-twenty rule. The performance dashboard typically outlines the difference between the rolling plan and actual performance. Gap analysis is then performed and any deviations from the rolling forecast are then accounted for in terms of pricing, material economics, product mix, business performance, and other factors such as contingent events.  The science of leadership in turn provides the groundwork for appropriate delegation, accountability and responsibility. The third level of career maturity is popularly known as the c-level group in the organization.  These are people who are not only charged with the management of the organization, but also its stewardship.  It is at the c-level group where the interplay between TEEL and VCBP is expected to play the greatest importance.  As the c-level group matures, it is critical that the stewardship headroom is maximized to continuously generate the benefits that the stakeholders of the organization expect from them.