By Andrew Lerner
Managing Partner, IA Capital Group
andy@iacapgroup.com
Last year Magnus Carlsen defeated Viswanathan Anand to become world chess champion. Carlsen, 22, convincingly beat Anand, 44, a top grandmaster since 1988, two years before Carlsen was born.
A chess match, of course, is decided solely based on performance. The subtext of developed country (Carlsen is Norwegian) vs. developing country (Anand is Indian) was irrelevant to the outcome. So were other contrasts such as a white person vs. a person of color, and a young adult vs. a middle-aged adult. The beauty of a chess match is that nothing matters but merit. We can categorically state that Carlsen was a better player than Anand.
In fact, chess has all the necessary ingredients of objective assessment: it is a measure of intellectual skill with no luck involved; rankings are based solely on competitive achievement, without subjective factors; every competitor is assessed (rated) using identical factors; professional competitors try their best and are highly motivated; and rankings reflect the cumulative result of hundreds of hours of competitions and thousands of hours of preparation.
And one more factor is critical. In chess, experience matters. If a high-level professional has seen a particular series of opening moves before, he enjoys a tremendous advantage. At any point in the game, prior experience with particular piece patterns is a big plus. Simply put, the more games a player has experienced, the better he should be.
So how can a 22-year-old become world champion? The indisputable conclusion is that many factors must matter more than experience. Experience is important, but the returns are diminishing.
The essence of chess is good decision-making in dynamic situations. This sounds similar to what is needed in a corporate or government leader. But chess is nothing like the real world. In business or politics, who you know is more important than what you know.
Can you name another intellectually-oriented profession in which a 22-year-old even has an opportunity to compete to be the world’s best? Not medicine, law, or education, where a 22-year-old is barely able to acquire a professional license after the requisite training. Not government, big business, or the not-for-profit sector, where a 22-year-old is lucky to enter the profession at the lowest rung.
Compare the ages of the world’s best chess players (objectively measured by international chess rating) to the average ages of individuals who are considered the “best” through subjective assessments—perhaps the CEOs of the 10 largest U.S. corporations, the 10 most powerful members of Congress, or the justices of the Supreme Court. The average age in each of these groups exceeds 55—over 25 years older than the world’s best as measured by the impartial standards of professional chess.
The seniority systems that pervade most large organizations (including Congress, courts and corporations) are a major impediment to innovation and change. Unfortunately, older workers that benefit from seniority systems need to justify their superior pay, title, and job security. So they promote the demonstrably false argument that experience equals merit.
Today, the most talented young adults gravitate toward meritocratic endeavors such as start-ups, computer programming, professional poker, and hedge funds. Professions that preserve seniority systems will die slowly from a brain drain as the best and the brightest like Magnus Carlsen take their talents elsewhere.
