About Wargaming

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. Such wargames range from tabletop exercises that last a few hours to those involving hundreds of players lasting weeks, though most wargames fall somewhere in the middle.

As a general rule, a successful wargame requires two conditions. First is the identification of a clear objective or, in military parlance, a concept of operations. Second, it is crucial that there be key groups with different equities-interests that are at real or imagined odds with one another, based on arguments over strategic or tactical plans, data, or institutional culture.

The planning, research, design, and preparation of wargames begin with a conversation or series of conversations with the client's core group of decision makers or policymakers. They have come to Booz Allen with a problem they want addressed, but the critical objective of a prospective wargame needs to be identified. Preparation for a wargame often takes at least 6 weeks and as many as 12 weeks-occasionally even longer. Booz Allen realizes that one size doesn't fit all in wargaming; everything is made to order, and that requires customized research.

Team members come from the client: uniformed and civilian personnel in military games, executives in business games, invitees in games the firm cosponsors with nonprofit groups. Booz Allen and the client determine which teams will be represented and who will play on each one; real-life roles are generally mixed up so that many participants get the chance to walk in someone else's shoes by playing an adversary or competitor.

The typical game consists of three moves, the first of which is a reaction to the world as it is or to a scenario or environment supplied by Booz Allen's design team. Why three? Through trial and error, the firm's wargaming experts have learned that a three-move exercise provides the flexibility to develop and complete the game without placing an unreasonable burden on the players' time. Three moves, furthermore, give the players enough experience with the possible scenarios to get to the endgame and envision a resolution.

Booz Allen wargamers serve as the control group during the game, adding new information or scenario shifts as the subsequent moves unfold. In a military or business game or a game on a major public policy issue, teams of competitors, adversaries, or stakeholders react to the initial scenario-for example, a major regulatory change in the commercial airline business, the imminent auction of wireless leases, a different approach to missile defense, or the deaths of a few people from avian flu in two large cities.

Teams usually meet in separate rooms or at separate tables if the game is staged in a huge ballroom. As the game proceeds, teams designate a spokesperson to brief everyone else in a plenary session after each move. There is plenty of opportunity for interteam communication and no small amount of confusion as the participants grapple with alterations in their virtual environment supplied by the control group.

In the end, games often produce astonishing results that lead to change in the real world. Game scenarios need to be plausible, not predictive, but outcomes sometimes foreshadow what will happen in a few weeks, months, or years. Consider the following:

• 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 facing a security-versus-convenience issue determined whether military airspace could be used during peak demand periods

As explained in Wargaming for Leaders, wargames designed by Booz Allen give leaders the opportunity to test ideas in an environment that simulates the complexity of their fields of practice, so they can gain insights and make strategic breakthroughs that may lead them to rethink their entire approach to their work. In the process, the games become nothing less than a remarkable and unique weapon in the strategist's arsenal-to lead, compete, and win.