What is wargaming?
The word summons an image of military combat, but as former Royal Marines Lieutenant Colonel Chris Paton explains, it’s simply an opportunity for organisations to evaluate their plans before committing resources.
“Wargaming is a pressure test”, he explains, “a 360-degree pressure test.”
Designed to “force organisations into challenging their thinking”, wargaming brings together internal stakeholders and external representatives to discuss problems, and understand how to co-operate and work together to find solutions to those problems.
How wargaming can mitigate risk
Wargaming, or pressure testing, allows companies to imagine the action and the reaction that will be caused when their plan is enacted. This encourages more objective thinking about the likely success of a business strategy.
“All too often when we’re in business, we design and write a plan based on what we can see right now of the ecosystem that we’re going to launch the plan into – and then we hope it works.
“But it’s basic laws of physics. By launching that strategy, you’re going to cause a reaction. So running a wargame enables you to predict where those reactions will come from.”
All about the strategy
Involving your workforce in the strategy development process is key to achieving a strategic focus throughout an organisation, says Chris.
Doing this helps people to feel more involved and therefore want the company to succeed, Chris explains.
“The worst thing to do is to sit as a senior team to plan out the strategy because you feel like you’re the only people who can do it, and then simply drop it onto people who have no context or no engagement with it.
“I think there’s a sense that doing this means you have to slow everything down, you have to consult with everybody and you just don’t have the time – but there are lots of ways in which you can do it."
By involving people at different stages, the process becomes very time efficient, Chris explains. It also helps your workforce understand the context and buy into it.
Balancing act
“The main thing involved in getting strategy right is to ensure you go through a process that people understand," explains Chris.
Striking the right balance in what you’re doing is another essential element required to both engage and motivate your workforce across all levels, as well as retaining the client’s interest, Chris says.
“I see lots of organisations who deliver and develop a strategy around what they want to achieve, and what they’re able to achieve, and they sort of forget about the client.
“And so they run around delivering what they think is a fantastic solution, and are then wondering why the client then doesn’t take it.”
Keeping resource at the right level, and rationalising things back against your objectives are central to delivering an effective strategy for your organisation.
Engaging the organisation
Involving the whole company in developing a strategy can be pivotal to its success, Chris explains. By creating what he terms “tiger teams” within the organisation to look at specific areas of a plan, you can get employees to work up ideas and get them engaged in the process from the start.
“You’re also using that wider intellect," he says. “If only one team attempts to come up with a plan, then you’ve only got the collective experience of that one team.
By spreading it out wider, you draw out more experience and expertise, you get more ideas, and then it can all funnel into one point to then be blended together.”
Managing change
The key thing about change is the appetite of those who are to be affected by it, Chris says.
“The more that you can help people engage with the process and the socialisation of the change…the more you’ll find they start to buy into it.”
Resistance to change is caused by many factors, he explains, but a major one is when people feel they have been confronted with the change, with no opportunity to challenge it.
“If you give them that opportunity in advance, then you start to sow the seeds for successful change.”
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