Wargaming for leaders

The greatest war heroes in history triumphed by anticipating their enemies’ moves. That’s why wargaming, a strategy used for centuries in the military, has now become essential for business and government leaders to survive and thrive in today’s era of heightened competition and unforeseeable crises.

In Wargaming for Leaders: Strategic Decision Making from the Battlefield to the Boardroom, Mark Herman, world-renowned wargame designer for Booz Allen Hamilton, with coauthors Mark Frost and Robert Kurz, explores the strategies learned from wargames designed and staged for the US Army, global corporations, and nonprofit groups, revealing how these exercises led to significant decisions and effective competitive advantage.

The authors tell how they used wargaming to help companies like Caterpillar and ConAgra face competitive threats, and how they have been using the same approach to fight post-9/11 terrorism, HIV/AIDS in India, pandemic flu, and Alzheimer’s, and in over two decades of work with the US military battling foes like Iraq.

Wargaming gives “players” an opportunity to look into an imagined future, learn from what they see in that risk-free environment, make sense of their competitors’ options, and apply those findings to confront problems in the real world in which they live before it is too late.

This book is for anyone interested in testing assumptions, mitigating risk, and revealing the unintended consequences of decisions yet to be made.