Wargaming For Leaders Strategic Decision Making From The Battlefield To The Boardroom Deals on Wargaming

Wargaming for Leaders: Strategic Decision Making from the Battlef...

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Editorial Reviews

If you had the opportunity to probe the future, make strategic choices, and view their consequences before making expensive and irretrievable decisions, wouldn't you take advantage of it?

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Of course you would. And in a world of asymmetrical conflict, security threats, intense global competition, and economic uncertainty, there is an even higher premium on road-testing plans and strategies--whether they're spearheaded by government organizations, transnational corporations, or emerging megacommunities.

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Wargaming for Leaders provides a methodology to get at the issues that one leader, no matter how visionary, cannot grasp on his or her own. How? By bringing together the real experts on the topic at hand to wage "cognitive warfare." Through tapping the collective wisdom surrounding an issue, experts can experience the future in a risk-free environment and find answers to questions that had not been on their radar--often with unexpected and startling results.

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With examples from the fields of military, corporate, and public policy, three wargaming developers from Booz Allen Hamilton deliver compelling insights on this problem-solving method, including fascinating details on how

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A large equipment manufacturer determined whether making a merger was strategically right for its business growth, as well as which technology investments it needed to drop.
A four-star U.S. general tested his war plan for Iraq and uncovered specific fixes that might have prevented a prolonged conflict.
An increasingly clogged air-traffic system faced a security-versus-convenience issue determined whether military airspace could be used during peak demand periods

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Wargaming allows organizations of every type and every size to organize information, plot out scenarios, and tap into the collective expertise of participants. The results allow everyone to identify and tackle obstacles, solve problems, and find new ways to innovate and further performance goals.

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Get ready for the battle of your organizational life--and prepare to reap the spoils of victory.

Customer Reviews

Wargaming as applied game theory

Reviewed by Dr. Michael J. Welker, 2009-07-14

This text brings a new voice to the field of game theory and the applications of simulations to for-profit and non-profit (and, of course, battlefield) decision making platforms. It represents a fundamental shift from scientific game theory to applied simulation design and implementation for its value-added effects. I recommend reading the first two reviews, especially the second, as you will get a fairly good description of the gist of this book. I want to add that it can serve as an excellent source text for an advanced business strategy course, or perhaps as a reference for simulation design, research, and future implementation. The authors, by the way, are all extremely experienced in this field, so what we have here is a little "window" into their everyday world, a real place where history, game theory, game design, management science, and systems analysis all integrate in ways that provoke lessons, warn of hopelessly false assumptions, and enable strategic excellence. In my view the text is a wonderful introduction to the whole notion of simulations for pragmatic intent. It's no secret, I think, that kids who play first-person shooters on their PCs wind up being excellent marksmen--their brains get hardwired by all that exposure. This book demonstrates that business and government can become hardwired for success, too.

Corporate wargames

Reviewed by Olivier Clementin, 2009-07-08

Before the advent of the General Staff system, military decisions were usually made by the commander in chief after taking council from his subordinates. The system was not very efficient as most subordinates would advocate boldness so as not to be found lacking in courage or decision, as was famously shown at the council of War which General Meade called on the field of Gettysburg on the night of July 2, 1863, when all corps commanders voted "to stay and fight it out". In the nineteenth century, the Prussian military started running wargame to train their officer corps, and they have been adopted by many nations since then. Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton offers professional wargames to military and corporate clients.

As described in this book, wargaming is before all a cognitive method allowing organizations to share knowledge and opinions in a more efficient way than traditional business meetings or other communication and training techniques such as brainstorming sessions, where middle managers are often reluctant to challenge the boss' view leading to groupthink. Wargaming is thus an alternative cognitive tool, a bit like "wise crowds", Delphi methods or prediction markets as described in James Surowiecki's "Wisdom of Crowds", which demonstrates that information aggregation can be rendered more efficient within organizations. Wargaming is particularly adapted to situations where several competing sides can be defined: military conflicts, business competition or industry concentration (mergers and acquisitions) for example.

Wargaming is also a planning method to prepare for the unexpected, although, as the authors stress, the scenario must be plausible but not necessarily predictive. It is not a forecast exercise. On this aspect, however, it relies significantly on the model used by the control team (in this book, the consultants from Booz Allen Hamilton), which is why I suppose that the value of the exercise as a planning tool is very dependent on the quality of the organizers of the game.

The book goes through a number of interesting examples of wargames run for the Pentagon, for corporate clients and for non-profit projects, usually played with teams of high level executives, and with sometimes very powerful results. One thing wargames seem to be very good at is identifying bad ideas and projects that are about to be implemented at the client company: competing teams seem to take a great pleasure trashing those in the context of a wargame, because they they know their company's weaknesses but probably would'nt dare exposing them in a meeting situation.

More than just about wargaming

Reviewed by M. Miller, 2009-02-24

While this book does a nice job showing the value of wargaming, I thought it did an even better job showing the value of stepping out of your comfort zone, looking around at the bigger picture, and taking the time to plan for the unexpected. Too often, we are afraid to learn the truth, and this book, through its liberal use of of scenarios, illustrates the potential people have to overcome complex problems by working together. Some of the scenarios were disturbing, many were eye-opening, and all were insightful. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in strategic planning, training, consulting, process improvement, or leadership.