Why You Need to Stress Test Your Strategies (and Tactics)

Harvard Business Review IdeaCast (Jun 4, 2024), host Alison Beard with Arjan Singh — consultant, Southern Methodist University adjunct professor and author of Competitive Success: Building Winning Strategies with Corporate War Games — argues that most scenario planning does not go far enough and proposes corporate war games, borrowed from military doctrine, as a more disciplined stress-test. War games operate as dress rehearsals against competitors, shifting market dynamics and unexpected events, helping leaders identify risk and find innovation. For SEA mid-market boards approving competitor-sensitive strategy, war-gaming is a deeper move than the routine red/blue exercise.