A strategy can feel convincing while everyone imagines the same friendly future. A tabletop exercise gives the idea a more difficult opponent: events the team did not choose.
Pick a decision that matters. Give participants different roles: customer, competitor, supplier, or regulator. Ask each to respond to a plausible move. Halfway through, announce that a supplier has withdrawn. Which commitments can the team still keep? Let the consequences unfold one round at a time. Notice which assumptions collapse and what choices remain useful. Then ask what information the team needs before committing.
Keep the exercise grounded. Use a specific challenge, a short time limit, and a debrief that turns surprises into questions or actions. If the game becomes a contest to prove who was right, it has stopped helping. The best result may be a clearer contingency, a stronger plan, or a reason to revise the strategy now.
Arjan Singh’s Harvard Business Review conversation describes corporate wargaming as a way to stress-test strategy and expose blind spots. A playful simulation can make risk easier to discuss because people respond to a scenario together, rather than defend a proposal alone. The debrief should leave the team with one assumption to investigate and one decision to revisit.