1st Edition
Winning the Uncertainty Game Turning Strategic Intent into Results with Wargaming
This book is about the challenges that emerge for organizations from an ever faster changing world. While useful at their time, several management tools, including classic strategic planning processes, will no longer suffice to address these challenges in a timely and comprehensive fashion. While individual management tools are still valid to solve specific problems, they need to be employed based on a clear understanding of what the greater challenge is and how they need to be combined and prioritized with other approaches. In order to do so, companies can apply the clarity of thinking from the military with regard to which leadership level is responsible for what and how these levels need to interact in order to produce a single aligned response to an outside opportunity or threat. Finally, the tool of business wargaming, while known for some time, proves to be an ideal approach to quickly and effectively bring all leadership levels together, align them around a common objective and lay the groundwork for effective implementation of targeted responses that will keep the organization competitive and in the game for the long run.
The book offers a comprehensive introduction to business wargaming, including a historical account, a classification of different types of games and a number of specific real-world examples.
This book is targeted at practicing managers dealing with the aforementioned challenges, as well as for students of business and strategy at every level.
Introduction
Part One: Challenges Of A VUCA World And The Need For A New Approach
1. Vuca As A Driver For Change
2. Strategy As A Tool To Deal With Uncertainty
3. The Essence Of A "Joint Approach" - Lessons From Military Planning
4. The "Joint Approach" In A Civilian Context
Part Two: Background To Wargaming
5. The History Of Wargaming
6. Business Wargaming Methodology
Part Three: Wargaming In Practice
7. Tactical Wargaming
8. Operational Wargaming
9. Strategic Wargaming
10. Hindsight: How Well Does Business Wargaming Work? And Why Does Business Wargaming Work?
Part Four: Business Wargaming In Teaching
11. Challenges In Teaching In A VUCA World
12. Reflection On Applying Business Wargaming In The Classroom: Critical Success Factors
Part Five: How To Get Started
13. Design, Execution, And Evaluation
Outlook And Conclusion
Biography
Daniel F. Oriesek is a Swiss general staff officer, civil servant and entrepreneur. After many years in banking and strategy consulting, while pursuing his military career as a reserve officer, he served two tours in the Balkans and in 2014 became a full-time employee of the Swiss Department of Defense. He serves on the board of a real estate company co-founded by him and has participated, designed and conducted numerous business and military wargames.
Jan Oliver Schwarz is a professor of strategic management and leadership at the ESB Business School, Reutlingen University, Germany and a senior advisor at the Institute for Innovation and Change Methodologies (IICM), Munich, Germany. His academic and consulting work specializes in future-oriented strategy development which includes implementing corporate foresight processes and applying approaches such as scenario planning and business wargaming.
