Wargaming & Scenario Planning
What are they?
A Wargame
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Wargames can range in complexity and sophistication, but at their foundation, they are exercises that allow people to strategize for a scenario before it occurs in real life. A wargame will have several 'turns', forcing participants to strategize beyond just an initial reaction phase.
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In military circles, defence plans and operations might be simulated using a map, with pieces representing assets, civilian infrastructure, adverse conditions, and enemy forces. Importantly in a wargame, the enemy/adverse conditions will actually work against the participants, civilians will act freely, and these factors will need to be contended with. The same can be done to assist policing operations and strategies, as well as civil contingencies.
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Wargames can also be utilised at the 'high strategic' and political level of government decision making. Working through a political approach to international development, energy strategy, trade negotiations, crisis response, and election campaigns are just a few applications.
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KSG delivers wargame events for military and government, but also brings them to the private sector. Banks, oil & gas, hedge funds, technology companies, and international manufacturers all need to wargame their responses to difficult scenarios, and red team existing strategy. Wargaming allows the company to examine how external forces might react to that response, which in turn requires another response altogether. This is particularly useful when assessing threats to supply chains, value chains, mergers & acquisition, changes in government, changes in policy, and market entry.
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The benefit of wargaming is that it allows people to plan, consider, assess, and think many 'turns' into the future. Whereas a simple meeting discussion might only permit exploring 'one turn ahead'.
A Scenario Planning Exercise
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The core purpose of a scenario planning exercise is not so different from a wargame. The major difference is that a wargame tends to have several phases, by which the actions that people take in the wargame have consequences later on. A scenario plan tends to avoid walking people through several phases, and focuses on detailed response options and strategies to a given situation, as well as purely generating a shared understanding for the problem set facing the organization.
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Scenario planning is designed to unlock the strategic mind! A KSG facilitator has a range of methods to constructively explore problems, build responses, and set in motion a strategy.
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You may also have heard this described as scenario testing, or in military and government, the preferred term is a table-top exercise (TTX).
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An exercise of this nature will often uncover vulnerabilities that an entity might become exposed to in certain situations, and it allows that entity to put mitigations in place before that event ever happens.
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KSG can advise you on which approach best suits your needs, and will often deploy a range of both wargaming and scenario planning approaches.
Wargaming the Effects of a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan on a Hedge Fund's Portfolio
As a sample of our work, the below link is the analytical product of a KSG wargame exploring a Hedge Fund strategy vis-à-vis a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
The wargame was reported on in Business Insider, providing a briefer overview of the wargame's significance and findings.
