Whether you are working at a senior level in the Pentagon, running a Fortune 500 company, or managing a not-for-profit organization, remorseless competition, security threats, economic uncertainty, and change are the only constants today. This reality raises the premium on testing ideas, plans, and strategies before the point of no return. Wargaming is a vital tool in the process, providing decision makers the opportunity to create a virtual future, learn from what they see in a risk-free environment, and apply those findings to shape the real world in which they operate.
Modern professional wargaming—what Wargaming for Leaders authors Mark Herman, Mark Frost, and Robert Kurz and their colleagues at Booz Allen Hamilton do for clients in the military, for large corporations, and for nonprofit organizations around the globe—is a methodology for understanding the issues that one leader, no matter how visionary, cannot grasp on his or her own.
In the following video podcast series, the authors of Wargaming for Leaders: Strategic Decision Making from the Battlefield to the Boardroom (McGraw-Hill, December 2008) describe wargaming and discuss how the technique helps test assumptions, mitigate risk, and reveal unintended consequences.
Mark Herman, a co-author of Wargaming for Leaders, provides an overview of what wargaming is, explains why wargames are better than computers for solving multifaceted challenges, and shares fascinating examples from the dozens of games featured in the book. View the podcast Overview of Wargaming
Focusing on wargaming for businesses, Mark Frost, co-author of Wargaming for Leaders, shows how this methodology gives companies the opportunity to look outwards and better understand their competitors in the marketplace. View the podcast Wargaming for Businesses
Wargaming for Leaders co-author Robert Kurz clarifies how wargaming is different from and more effective than brainstorming, takes viewers through Wargaming 101, and describes how wargaming has helped government officials and private-sector leaders solve problems in ways they otherwise couldn’t have. View the podcast Wargaming 101