Half full Reality.

This is one of the key tenets to building lasting partnerships. The beginning of any partnership is to establish the reality of a venture. This helps to manage expectations and facilitate good planning. And so all relevant factors must be weighed and measured and the goal agreed.

Mislead a partner and the partnership will flounder on rocks further down the road.

The percentage chance of success is not always high in every venture. Each venture comes with its own risks. And the estimation of success only becomes easier when there are previous known examples with similar variables.

So lets use the example of finding the first GM in Malaysia here. What is the reality? What are the forces that will aid us in that direction? And what are the forces of reaction?

An aside: I wrote some articles called "Force field analysis" previously. You can search for them. In the main, I think its still accurate.

Back to finding that first GM. This journey is particularly difficult in Malaysia because there are still many known unknowns not properly investigated. And added to this are the unknown unknowns. What does the unknown unknowns mean? Well an example is we still do not have a clear picture of what today's chess is all about. To this end FGM has engaged the services of a trusted strong and still playing GM. This helps us in analysing the technical issues. This is a known unknown. But we have different conditions from the ones that this GM come from. So we cannot assume all things are the same. And so as we travel down that road we will still find that there are things we didn't know that we didn't know. The unknown unknown.

So what does chess teach us to do under these circumstances. A difficult position to assess. I believe it tells us that we continue to see the glass half full and to continue to strike out towards the win. I believe that it also tells us we need to frustrate the plans of the opponent that can cause us to lose until the conditions for our plans to win can be established.

Note: A win here is our first GM and the opponent here are the issues that take us backwards. Remember, issues not people.

An exciting journey, a difficult reality. But seeing it half full will give us the energy to do this journey. And if we remain grounded on reality, we can accomplish this. Many many Nations (richer and poorer) have succeeded, so why can't we?

But first we have to find the right partners, agree on the realities, agree on the issues that will take us forward and the issues that wont. And then we all need to see the glass half full.