Wargaming: How to prepare your business for uncertainty

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Commenting on the benefits of adopting wargaming, Sara explains: “Business wargaming gives participants the chance to see the potential consequences of their decisions. Through either role play or real resistant interactive external environments, business leaders can get inside the heads of their customers, patients, competitors, regulators, or media. This fresh perspective means they can get inside-out and outside-in points of view. This is particularly helpful in flushing out unknowns, unintended consequences, biases and false assumptions.

She adds: “Business wargaming is a game changer for leaders. Not only can it test the content of a decision or plan, but it can also transform behaviour. It gives business leaders a proven method to experience potential futures and have a practical and robust plan on how to move forward. It enables leaders to see what might be coming around the corner and how that might impact their business and employees.”

Sara goes on to say that, “running specific resilience wargaming exercises can make your business downturn proof. Business leaders can use business wargaming to prepare for an upcoming downturn by testing their downturn readiness contingency plans against a set of differing scenarios, ranging, for example, from downturn scenario A (good conditions) to B (reasonable worst case) and C (extreme worst case). This enables leaders to run a downturn readiness testing programme powered by wargaming for each impacted area, so the team is prepared no matter what might happen”.

Sara concludes: “Wargaming can also provide major downturn support for any key decisions a business has on the horizon, such as a new acquisition, new talent strategy, new product launch or a major digital transformation. Leaders can run a business war game on a specific decision challenge to help make a more informed and confident decision.In a downturn, resilience wargaming – running specific resilience wargaming exercises focused on key possible downturn scenarios – can help leaders ensure their plans are “downturn proof”. It shows which areas of the business the downturn would impact most and means leaders can prepare their business and teams ahead of time.”