Children who play chess have moves mapped out to the boardroom, says Lord Price
HE HAS spent decades at the helm of Britain’s biggest companies and most recently represented the nation’s trade interests on the global stage.
Now Lord Price, the former trade minister and managing director of Waitrose who is affectionately known in retail as the “Chubby Grocer”, has revealed the secret of boardroom success: mastering chess at a young age.
Lord Price, who earlier this month stepped down from his role as minister of state for trade and investment, said the skills he learned from playing chess at school proved invaluable in business.
“You need to try and understand the game from your opponent’s point of view,” he said. “So much of life is about thinking about the people around you – what are they thinking? What are they going to do?”
Lord Price, 56, said that a good chess player does not rush in, but rather, they stop and think before making each move.
So passionate is Lord Price about the importance of chess, he has written a fairy tale, The Foolish King, on how the game came about.
“It all started when I taught my eldest daughter – who is now 22 years old – how to play chess when she was six,” he said. “I made up a story to help her understand how all the pieces move.”
He said that while there are plenty of online chess offerings, they are largely geared towards adults or professional players, so he developed an app for children. “I couldn’t find anything that was fun for children and talked their language,” he said. “I wanted children to play chess in a fun way.”
Lord Price writes a weekly column based on his book, called Workplace Fables: 145 True Life Stories as well as a monthly column in The Daily Telegraph about happiness in the workplace.