Wargaming for Leaders: Strategic Decision Making from the Battlefield to the Boardroom

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.

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.

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.