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

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

While many teams and organizations engage in scenario planning, most don't go far enough. Arjan Singh, consultant and adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University, says a more disciplined approach, borrowed from the military, can help leaders truly test how their strategies, operations, and tactics hold up against competitors, shifting market dynamics, and unexpected events. He's helped hundreds of companies identify risks and find new ways to innovate by leading them through corporate war games, and he explains his process and results. Singh is the author of the book Competitive Success: Building Winning Strategies with Corporate War Games.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Got 30 minutes?
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0:12.6	Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBRIDICAST from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard.
0:33.0	As a leader, how often do you think through the different ways that your plans could go wrong,
0:44.0	how your strategy and business model could be disrupted,
0:47.0	what a shock to your operations would look like,
0:49.0	how you might be out-manewered by existing competitors.
0:52.0	Our guest today says that while many teams in organization be outmanewvered by existing competitors.
0:52.8	Our guest today says that while many teams and organizations engage in scenario planning,
0:57.4	they aren't doing it in a disciplined or thorough enough way that pushes them to think
1:01.4	beyond their current realities.
1:03.6	He thinks more companies should borrow from the military and engage in corporate war gaming.
1:08.8	Arjun Singh is an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University who teaches popular classes on war games there and at other
1:15.0	universities.
1:16.4	As a consultant, he's also helped hundreds of companies use this process to de-risk their strategies
1:21.4	and find new ways to innovate.
1:23.0	And he has advice on how individuals can do the same to advance in their careers.
1:27.0	His new book is Competitive Success, building winning strategies with corporate war games.
1:32.0	Argen, glad to be talking with you today.
1:35.0	Awesome, thank you for having me. Now I do want to be sensitive about this term war games because as we know many people in the world from Ukraine to Israel and Palestine are dealing with actual war right now
	...

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