p.3 in the real world, decision makers almost always are forced to make
choices that are based on incomplete information.
p.3 Thomas Schelling [quoted] "One thing a person cannot do, no
matter how rigorous his analysis or heroic his imagination, is to draw up a list of things that would never occur to him."
p.7 Wargaming has emerged as a strong tool for such purposes
[road testing the plans and strategies of large institutions], giving "players" an opportunity to look into an imagined
future, learn from what they see in that risk-free environment, and apply those findings to shape the real world
in which they live.
This book is for anyone interested in testing assumptions,
mitigating risk, and revealing the unintended consequences of decisions yet to be made.
p.11 A wargame is not the answer to every problem or challenge. The issue may not be large
enough or may be addressed better by one analyst or a small team of analysts.
p.12-13 A few years ago an insurance company that was expanding rapidly
and diversifying its offerings wanted to know whether we could wargame its future... Impossible, we said, unless the project
could be divided into a series of wargames that narrowed the scope of each game.
p.13 When does a wargame make sense? As a general rule,
a successful wargame requires two conditions. First, we and our client must be able to identify 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.
p.13 Someone or something must serve to narrow the disagreements
and build a rough consensus on a way forward... wargames can drive change by the very nature of the process.
The game allows... leaders... to work in a contested environment of their own creation; they can test overarching strategies
and specific plans before committing their organization... to a course of action from which there is no turning back. It
is a way to experience the future without the risks attendant in the real world.
p.14-15 We need to know with as much precision as possible what the client
hopes to achieve from the game. It can be a ratification of an existing strategic plan, identification of a plan's potential
weaknesses, the wisdom of a new-product introduction, an assessment of a program for major change in military procurement...
Clarity of purpose is essential because a wargame cannot be all things to all people.
p.15 A wargame often takes at least 6 weeks and as many as 12 weeks - occasionally even more - of preparation.
p.17 Modern wargames usually are played in moves, too. 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 our design team. Why
three? Through trial and error, we 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.
p.20 "Intellectual activity does not progress... by going forward step-by-step
from one clearly stated and well-confirmed truth to the next... On the contrary, the constant need for course corrections...
is the essence of intellectual activity." [Seymour Papert, Mindstorms]
p.21 Using his theories of dynamic feedback behavior and system dynamics,
Forrester pioneered the use of "flight simulators" for management education.
p.23 Wargames often can lead participants to recalibrate perceptions about their competitive or political
environment.
p.24 In the end, games [wargames] often produce astonishing results that lead to change in the real world.
Game scenarios need to be plausible, not predictive
p.25 wargames can produce fascinating and useful results that can influence an organization's behavior
p.31 None of us as individuals could imagine what we did not know.
p.42 The point is that wars are fought by human beings, not by machines
p.43, 44 At one point, a guy playing one of the other games walked
into our space. His group had played out the same scenarios [just prior to the 1990 Gulf War] we had and had concluded
that if the Iraqis attacked a combined American-Saudi force, they would take Saudi Arabia and we would suffer 30,000 casualties.
That was what his model said.
Interesting, but we didn't quite see it that way... Pointing at the
interloper who had brought bad tidings to our deliberations, he [the Army colonel in charge of our wargaming group] said:
"Your model's not capturing it correctly."
p.47 At their best, wargames provide a nonthreatening environment in which the collective
play of participants can reveal unpleasant truths about a particular strategy or set of goals.
p.75 Wargames give players the opportunity to create an environment to test plans without
the risks of real-world decision making.
p.81 the basic principles of a military wargame seemed easily transferable.
A military wargame was designed and conducted to test a strategy or battle plan in a virtual environment... A wargame for
a commercial client could serve the same purpose: It could test a strategic plan [JLJ - excellent idea for
a computer playing a game]
p.82 When our partners mentioned the possibility of a wargame to FPL's executives,
they were intrigued. They had been wrestling with these tactical and strategic issues for some time and were unsure how to
proceed. Gaming out their quandaries before they committed billions to new plants seemed a no-brainer... Creating
the model might have been the toughest part. We always have some sort of model that we use to adjudicate
the decisions made in each move and help us set up the scenario for the next move.
p.91 Our commercial wargames do not promise outcomes. They do manage to create
an imagined business environment in which unexpected change occurs as a consequence of the work
done by the game's participants... Often, although not always, the real world mirrors the game,
sometimes sooner than anyone might have imagined.
p.94 Games... also can be predictors of what is going to happen
or should happen.
p.101 The wargame, in the early 1990s, had several
general objectives. Chief among them were to get a better understanding of changes in the civil avionics industry and to
get a clearer perspective on strategies that might guide our client's future, including new and potentially unorthodox strategies.
p.147 We insist with the passion of zealots that wargames do not predict the future. They pose plausible
scenarios; players take those scenarios, discuss how to proceed and work through the issues, and then, sometimes,
it is the players who point to an actionable outcome.
p.150 He and others insisted the problem had to be the market model we were
using.
p.152 It's fine to have a strategy going into a wargame. Our
job is to test that strategy as rigorously as we can... Sometimes a wargame ratifies a strategy, sometimes it suggests
nudging it in a slightly different direction, and sometimes it leads to an outcome no one could have anticipated... The
power of the game is in the experiential learning
p.158 The capacity of a system, community, or society potentially exposed to hazards to adapt by resisting
or changing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure.
That's the definition of "resilience" according to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster
Reduction.
p.159 In other words, to support resilience, you need to allocate
resources to contingencies that you hope and in fact believe will never occur... In the post-9/11 world, "diversity"
has become one of the new buzzwords in resilience planning, that is, diversity in delivered services such as electric power
and communications.
p.189 The lessons of this wargame [concerning a pneumonic plague epidemic] were clear and painfully paradoxical:
... Aggressive containment and prophylaxis can limit the spread of the disease. Right, except that moving too quickly can
consume reserve capacity needed later in the crisis or for future contingencies.
p.245 successful strategies leverage the unique capabilities, resources,
and skills of each group.
p.249-250 Our wargaming is objective and unbiased. It is about problem solving or, at a minimum,
problem exposing.
p.261 Such is the power of wargames: They create a virtual world
players can experience, learn from, and integrate into their tactical and strategic decision making. Let's repeat
what we said at the outset. If you had the opportunity to probe the future, make strategic choices, and view the consequences
of those choices in a risk-free environment before making irrevocable decisions, wouldn't you take advantage of it? [JLJ -
a powerful argument for using the concept of wargaming in a heuristic for a machine playing a game. The only real question
is, how exactly do we go about doing this?]
