The Chessboard and the Web

Starred review from February 20, 2017
This paradigm-changing book cogently encourages fresh ways of thinking about the workplace and the world. Slaughter (Unfinished Business) promotes the use of social networks for solving any challenging problem, whether it’s spreading new ideas (as done by TEDx) or addressing global problems at a local level (as done by the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy). She groups “the hardest problems” and their corresponding networks into three broad categories: resilience, execution, and scale. This schema is the heart of the book, which outlines considerations for successful networks: how people should be connected to each other, what kind of people should be connected, and how information should be shared. Different types of situations, she explains, may require more diverse or more homogeneous groups. Similarly, sometimes well-networked networkers shouldn’t all be on the same team, and sometimes they should. Sometimes the network needs to be decentralized; sometimes a team leader is just the ticket. Slaughter takes a more polemical tone in the third part, in which she advocates for “open society, open government, and an open international system.” Readers will likely end up taking this book to work with them when especially challenging problems arise.

July 31, 2017
Slaughter, a former director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning, presents a new framework for foreign policy, proposing a fundamental shift away from the traditional chessboard method of international strategy that pits sovereign nations in competition with each other for resource allocation. Instead she argues for an approach that builds both literally and metaphorically on the rise of digital networks, one that relies on “open society, open government, and an open international system.” It’s a complicated argument that’s both technical and academic, and as result not conducive to the audio format. Voice actor Perrin does the best with material she has, reading in a clear steady voice; still, listeners are often left in dizzying confusion. A Yale Univ. hardcover.