This Military Strategy Tool Could Save Your Business Under Fire
Red Teams vs. Blue Teams: What happens when your assumptions go to war.
Last week I wrote about how scenario planning prepares companies for multiple futures—but how do you test if your strategies hold up under stress? This article introduces wargaming: a dynamic simulation method used by military leaders and now adopted by forward-thinking businesses to sharpen decision-making under pressure and uncover hidden vulnerabilities.
When Planning Falls Apart Under Fire: A Corporate Blind Spot
Most strategic failures aren't due to poor planning—they're due to plans collapsing when reality gets messy. In 2020, Boeing faced intense scrutiny over its handling of the 737 MAX crisis. While technical issues were a core factor, internal documents revealed that executives underestimated potential regulatory backlash and media fallout. Their decision-making processes failed to simulate high-pressure responses to worst-case outcomes.
"We prioritized speed over safety," admitted one former Boeing engineer to The New York Times. The problem wasn't a lack of strategy—it was the lack of stress-tested responses. Wargaming could have helped simulate a grounded aircraft scenario, exposing the reputational and operational impacts before they became unmanageable. This article explores how you can avoid similar blind spots by applying military-grade thinking to corporate strategy.
1. What Is Wargaming?
A simulation technique to test strategy under dynamic, adversarial conditions
Wargaming is a structured role-playing exercise that pits opposing teams (like Red Team vs. Blue Team) in simulated competitive or crisis scenarios. Originally used by the military to plan battlefield tactics, it's now embraced by businesses to test strategic responses under realistic stress.
A typical wargame includes a facilitator, multiple teams with conflicting objectives, a rule set for engagement, and evolving scenarios. Unlike traditional scenario planning, wargames inject conflict, real-time decisions, and unexpected developments—mimicking the fog of war in markets or crises.
2. How Companies Can Use It
From product launches to M&A, wargaming pressure-tests key decisions
Wargaming is increasingly used in boardrooms to simulate responses to competitive moves, market disruptions, regulatory shocks, and PR crises. For example, a financial services firm might simulate a cybersecurity breach, assigning one team to represent internal responders and another to act as hackers or media.
Other applications include:
Pre-launch simulations for new products
Competitor reaction forecasting in M&A
Policy response testing for regulatory changes
Each session forces executives to respond dynamically, improving their agility and exposing flaws in assumptions or preparedness.
3. Designing an Effective Wargame
Build with intention: roles, rules, and rapid feedback matter
An effective wargame requires:
Clear objectives: What decisions or systems are you testing?
Defined roles: Assign teams to represent internal stakeholders, customers, competitors, or regulators.
Scripted triggers: Simulate escalating events to provoke response.
Debriefs: Reflect on what worked, what failed, and how to improve real plans.
The value lies not in "winning" the game, but in identifying overlooked risks, power dynamics, and decision bottlenecks. In this way, wargaming complements scenario planning by forcing your teams to live through possible futures, not just theorize about them.
If scenario planning helps you imagine different futures, wargaming lets you live them. After identifying plausible scenarios, wargaming becomes the execution lab—testing how your strategies, teams, and systems respond under simulated stress. It's where theoretical resilience becomes practical capability, and it ensures that when one of your scenarios begins to unfold, your people don’t panic—they perform.
4. Preparing for the Simulation
Detailed prep turns theoretical games into strategic revelations
Successful wargaming begins with thorough preparation. Here’s a structured approach:
A. Define the Simulation's Purpose:
What is the decision or situation you're stress-testing?
What questions must be answered by the end?
B. Gather the Intelligence:
Compile internal data, market research, competitive insights, and regulatory frameworks.
Include previous scenario plans as baselines.
C. Build the Scenario Script:
Draft a detailed narrative that includes:
Initial conditions (market, product, team structure)
Key external variables (economic changes, customer reactions)
Possible escalations (PR fallout, legal pressure)
D. Choose Roles and Assign Teams:
Blue Team: typically represents your company or key functions.
Red Team: simulates competitors, regulators, activists, or hostile media.
Observers/Facilitators: capture decisions and outcomes neutrally.
E. Design Ground Rules:
Time limits for decisions
Rules for communication and disclosure
Criteria for evaluating success
This preparation phase ensures realism, focus, and participant buy-in.
5. Preparing the Red Team and the Facilitator
Ensure adversarial realism and disciplined monitoring throughout the game
The effectiveness of any wargame depends heavily on how well the Red Team and the facilitator are briefed and prepared. Here's how to do it right:
A. Red Team Preparation:
Red Team Brief (Offensive/Disruptive Team)
This team simulates external actors like competitors, regulators, hackers, activist investors, or journalists. Their brief includes:
Mandate: Disrupt, challenge, expose weaknesses, or trigger crisis escalation.
Context: They are not just troublemakers—they represent forces with real-world power or motives. The facilitator may provide a fictional competitor’s profile, a regulatory agency’s intent, a politician on a mission, or a consumer watch dog.
Tactics Guide: What they’re empowered to simulate—e.g., launch a competing product, issue a press leak, simulate customer backlash, escalate legal threats.
Strategic Goals: Pressure-test the Blue Team’s decision-making, force trade-offs, or surface blind spots in communication or coordination.
Constraints: Any limits to their actions to maintain realism (e.g., no random disasters without facilitator input).
B. Blue Team Preparation:
Blue Team Brief (Defensive/Responding Team)
This team typically represents your company or a key functional unit. Their brief should include:
Objective: Defend your position, maintain operations, protect brand or revenue, and respond to emerging threats.
Background Info: A fictional but realistic scenario based on actual business conditions—financial performance, market share, recent developments, current projects.
Rules of Engagement: What they’re allowed to do (e.g., communicate with media, call in legal teams, deploy budget).
Initial Intel: Any prior red flags, early warning signs, or indicators relevant to the scenario.
Mission Scope: Their core responsibility—e.g., mitigate reputational damage, outmanoeuvre a market entrant, manage crisis response.
C. Facilitator Responsibilities:
Facilitator’s Meta-Brief
Facilitators get both sets of information, but their role is to:
Pre-Game Setup:
Clarify learning goals.
Coordinate scripts, timing, and materials.
During Simulation:
Keep time and rule adherence.
Maintain energy and narrative pace.
Inject new developments to evolve the scenario.
Evaluation Role:
Record team decisions and rationale.
Capture learning moments, conflicts, and oversights.
Stay neutral and manage debrief objectivity.
The facilitator is both referee and orchestrator, ensuring the simulation delivers insight without descending into confusion or theatre.
6. Running the Simulation
Execute with structure, energy, and real-time feedback
When it’s time to run the simulation, follow these steps to maximize impact:
1. Kick-off Briefing:
Introduce objectives, structure, teams, and ground rules.
Set the tone: this is a safe but serious space for experimentation.
2. Begin Simulation Rounds:
Start with baseline conditions.
Inject triggers or complications at regular intervals.
Allow time-limited responses and require documentation of decisions.
3. Encourage Inter-Team Interaction:
Let Red Teams disrupt or challenge Blue Team decisions.
Encourage backchannel tactics, alliances, or public posturing to simulate complexity.
4. Track Decisions and Outcomes:
Facilitators log reactions, reasoning, and consequences.
Use real-time dashboards if available.
5. Conduct Immediate Debriefs:
After each round, pause for 5-10 minutes to review key learnings.
Ask: What worked? What failed? What would we do differently?
6. Final Review:
Bring all participants together to reflect on insights and changes needed in real strategy.
Wargames are as much about learning agility and collaboration as they are about testing strategy. Run them with intention, and your team will walk away smarter, faster, and more resilient.
Closing Thoughts
Wargaming makes strategy battle-ready, not just boardroom approved.
Scenario planning outlines what could happen. Wargaming reveals how your organization might actually respond. By embracing military-inspired stress testing, companies can train their leaders, refine their plans, and stay calm under real fire. In an uncertain world, the ability to rehearse the unexpected is the new competitive edge.
Share this with leaders who plan for the future but don’t yet rehearse it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
Until next week
Clive
