ABSTRACT

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.

part one|34 pages

Challenges of A VUCA World and the Need for A New Approach

chapter 1|9 pages

VUCA as A Driver for Change

chapter 3|9 pages

The Essence of A “Joint Approach”

Lessons from Military Planning

part two|26 pages

Background to Wargaming

chapter 5|16 pages

The History of Wargaming

chapter 6|8 pages

Business Wargaming Methodology

part three|62 pages

Wargaming in Practice

chapter 7|21 pages

Tactical Wargaming

chapter 8|22 pages

Operational Wargaming

chapter 9|8 pages

Strategic Wargaming

chapter 10|9 pages

Hindsight

How well does Business Wargaming Work? and Why does Business Wargaming Work? Together with Felix Werle and Felix Von Held 1

part four|23 pages

Business Wargaming in Teaching

chapter 11|15 pages

Challenges in Teaching in A VUCA World 1

chapter 12|6 pages

Reflection on Applying Business Wargaming in The Classroom

Critical Success Factors 1

part five|15 pages

How to Get Started

chapter 13|13 pages

Design, Execution and Evaluation

chapter |5 pages

Outlook and Conclusion