Daniel F. Oriesek - Winning the Uncertainty Game

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.

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.

First published 2021

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2021 Daniel F. Oriesek and Jan Oliver Schwarz

The right of Daniel F. Oriesek and Jan Oliver Schwarz to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schwarz, Jan Oliver author. | Oriesek, Daniel F., author.

Title: Winning the uncertainty game : turning strategic intent into results with wargaming / Jan Oliver Schwarz and Daniel Oriesek.

Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2020031724 (print) | LCCN 2020031725 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367418526 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367853594 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Management games. | Strategic planning--Simulation games. |
War games.

Classification: LCC HD30.26 .O75 2008 (print) | LCC HD30.26 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/012--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020031724

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020031725

ISBN: 978-0-367-41852-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-85359-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

This quote by science fiction author Isaac Asimov () precisely captures the challenge decision makers are increasingly facing, namely having to take decisions in ever more complex and instable environments, while the magnitude of the consequences triggered by their decisions are, for the most part, ever increasing. Some of the decisions made today are literally bet your company types of decisionsthe decision to opt for a particular technology, which may generate significant revenue or may be obsolete before you have even completed its implementation.