In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive market, staying ahead of the competition is more important than ever.

Whether you’re in the tech industry, manufacturing, or any other sector, the ability to anticipate competitors’ moves and develop effective strategies is crucial to success. This is where Wargames come into play. Not only do they provide a dynamic and interactive way to simulate competitive scenarios, but they also offer valuable insights that can lead to better decision-making and strategy alignment across your team.

What’s a Wargame?

Simply put, a Wargame is a simulation used to evaluate key players’ reactions and their impact, helping to refine strategy and grow market share.

What benefits do Wargames offer?

The main benefits of a Wargame include:

• Designing or testing out-of-the-box. This is helpful when your current strategy isn’t delivering the expected results or when you’re anticipating a new scenario.
• Uncovering blind spots and weaknesses in your strategy, as your team will need to consider different perspectives.
• Aligning the team for strategy implementation, since they’ll be involved in the design process.

How to design and implement a Wargame?

If you’re wondering how to design and implement a successful Wargame, you’re in the right place. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process step by step, explaining both the planning and preparation phase and the actual Wargame itself. By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to create a powerful tool for sharpening your competitive edge.

First, we need to be clear that there are two phases: one for design and planning, and another for implementation.

Phase 1: Planning and Preparation

The first phase of any Wargame is planning and preparation. This is where the majority of the work happens. In fact, it’s estimated that this phase lasts between 4 to 6 weeks and accounts for the bulk of the project’s effort.

Think of this phase as the foundation—you can’t have a strong Wargame without a solid base. Each step in this phase is carefully planned to align with your goals and ensure a smooth execution later.

One of our clients, a Marketing Manager, once noted, “The organization, information management, summaries, and pre-read materials were excellent and key to the success of the Wargame.” This shows how crucial it is to get the planning phase right—everything starts with solid goals.

The overall Wargame design process is:

Step 1: Goal Setting

Every successful Wargame begins with goal setting. What do you hope to achieve by running the Wargame? Are you trying to test a new market entry strategy? Do you want to develop a new one? Or are you looking to uncover blind spots or weaknesses in your current approach?

Goals are initially outlined in the proposal, but we revisit them before we dive into the planning process to ensure the Wargame is designed specifically to meet these objectives. Clear goals act as the guiding light for the entire process.

Step 2: Wargame Design

Once the goals are clearly defined, the next step is to design the Wargame itself. During this step, we consider factors such as:

• Number of Rounds: How many competitive cycles will be played?
• Players: Who will we simulate? Will it be just competitors? Should we include customers or regulatory authorities?
• Necessary Information: What background information will each team need to play effectively? Do we need to prepare market data, competitor profiles, or customer insights?

A Wargame is more than just a strategy session—it’s an immersive experience. The design phase ensures that it feels as real as possible while also being manageable and structured.

Step 3: Participant Selection

Choosing the right participants is crucial to ensuring a well-rounded perspective during the Wargame. A key guideline is to have at least three people per team, but the more diversity in experience and expertise, the better.

Participants should come from various departments (such as marketing, sales, operations) and different levels of hierarchy. This cross-functional approach enriches the experience because it provides multiple viewpoints on the same challenges.

Additionally, it will help to align the teams for the implementation and spot possible implementation problems right at the beginning. This is key benefit, as strategies developed by external consultants generally lack the internal support we get through Wargames.

Step 4: Playbook Development and Distribution

For any Wargame to run smoothly, playbooks are developed for each team. These playbooks outline the information needed to play the role during the Wargame, including detailed information about their competitive position, market insights, and any restrictions they might face.

By role-playing as competitors, teams get a fresh perspective on how rivals think and operate. This is a unique and often eye-opening experience that participants usually appreciate. Also, this contributes to take off any blind spots the participants might have, as putting themselves into the other player’s shoes they see the competitive scenario different and can change their points of view.

Step 5: Ensuring Playbook Understanding

Sometimes, checks are implemented to make sure all participants have read and understood the playbooks. This could take the form of a short quiz or a pre-Wargame briefing to confirm everyone is on the same page.

As this phase draws to a close, everything is set up for the actual Wargame. By now, participants are familiar with the objectives, their roles, and the competitive landscape they’ll be working within.

One client put it perfectly when they said, “We left the preparation phase with a crystal-clear understanding of what we were supposed to do. The entire process was incredibly well-organized.”

Phase 2: The Actual Wargame

The second phase is where all the planning comes to life. The Wargame itself is an interactive, real-time simulation that helps teams anticipate competitor actions and improve their strategies. Typically, it takes place over one or two days and consists of six key steps in a simplified version we use for this article. All Wargames are tailored to the customer’s needs.

The steps of a typical Wargame are:

Step 1: Introduction to the Wargame

We begin with a general introduction to the workshop and an overview of the competitive scenario that will be played out. This session sets the stage and ensures that everyone understands the rules of engagement.

If we did not make sure that the participants know key data, this is the moment to play Jeopardy or the like with key data to put everyone on the same page.

Step 2: Develop in teams the competitor’s strategy

Participants are then divided into teams, with each team playing the role of a competitor.

During this time, each team develops one or more competitive strategies. This is where the deep insights from the preparation phase come into play, as teams think through how to best position themselves in the marketplace.

Step 3: Present the competitor’s strategy in a plenary session

After teams have developed their strategies, we move into a plenary session, where each team presents its strategy to the rest of the participants. This is often a highly interactive session where teams challenge each other, asking tough questions and testing the strength of the proposed strategies.

In this step we, as facilitators, play a key role in the process, asking tough questions to the group and also helping the group stay focused.

Step 4: Develop in teams the company’s strategy

Next, each team shifts perspective and begins working as the company. The goal here is to develop a strategy that counters the moves made by competitors in the previous round. This reversal forces participants to think critically about how they would respond to the tactics they just created.

Step 5: Present the company’s strategy in a plenary session

Similar to the earlier plenary session, teams present their company strategies, once again facing challenges and questions from other participants. This back-and-forth creates a dynamic that mirrors real-world competition and helps identify weaknesses in the strategies.

Step 6: Debrief and discuss the experience

Finally, we move into a debriefing session, where participants discuss the lessons learned, identify blind spots, and highlight opportunities for improvement. This reflection is crucial because it helps participants take actionable insights back to their day-to-day work.

Two weeks after the Wargame, we deliver a comprehensive summary of the strategies developed, lessons learned, blind spots identified, and the opportunities that emerged during the session. As one client, a Go-to-Market Manager, said, “We left with a clear and organized strategy. The experience and dynamics were excellent.”

The Value of Wargames

Wargames are more than just strategy exercises—they’re opportunities to learn, anticipate, and adapt. With a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 82.2%, it’s clear that our clients find real value in these sessions.

Some of the key benefits is the ability to develop out of box strategies, discover blind spots in existing strategies, but perhaps the biggest advantage is the consensus-building that occurs across departments and teams.

In a world where markets can change overnight, and competitors can shift strategies in an instant, Wargames help companies stay agile and forward-thinking. By simulating competitive scenarios, teams can refine their strategies, anticipate moves, and react faster when the stakes are high.

If you’re ready to take your strategic planning to the next level, a Wargame could be just what you need. We’re here to help guide you through every step of the process—from goal-setting and design to the actual gameplay and beyond.

Are you ready to outsmart the competition?

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