Decision-making under pressure

A description borrowed from military planning processes, decision support covers a range of activities designed to bring clarity and context to situations in which there are complex choices to be made. Organisations will increasingly use technology and technical processes to help bring analysis and data to bear on decision making; we can bring an alternative, complimentary set of techniques which allow more nuanced, human factors to be brought into the equation.

What sort of decisions can we help with?

Risk Management

Managing routine, expected risks is easy. More challenging is the management of those risks that are harder to anticipate; those risks which are difficult to understand, both in terms of immediate impact and longer-term consequences. By playing through a range of scenarios, we can help organisations understand where their vulnerabilities and resilience lie. We might not be able to predict exactly what lies ahead, but by working through a range of risk management dilemmas, we can prepare and educate teams to be more ready.

Read More >>> “An Innovative Problem Solving Approach to Risk Management Challenges“

Problem Solving

Novel problems often need innovative solutions. When traditional ways of understanding and solving problems come up short, a scenario-based exercise to really explore the issue and potential ways to overcome it can generate creative and emotional involvement from a broad group, unlocking ideas and securing early buy-in from across the team.

Read More >>> “Building confidence in innovative thinking through problem solving games“

Selecting a Strategy

Effective strategies require strategic context; it can be easy to get fixated on the short term and on process; on the ways and means rather than on the ends. By running an exercise which is designed to make teams think about where the organisation is aiming and about what is really important, we can help to bring major strategic decisions into focus.

Read More >>> “To energise your strategy development you are going to need to play games“

Bringing Scenarios to Life

Gaming through scenarios is a highly effective way to get decision-makers immersed in detail; often a place where it can be a challenge to get them, but where small oversights can have big impacts. By working through scenarios as a team, the details which would normally only be the preserve of specialists can be exposed across the team. By having some of the team play the role of competitors or even antagonists, we can introduce an element of Red Teaming, highlighting the way vulnerabilities and strengths look from a different perspective. Similarly, by having members of the team play the role of stakeholders, we can create a better understanding of how they might think and behave.

Read More >>> “Crisis and scenario games”

Why use a game?

We are keen on the use of games to allow people to experience the challenges they face, rather than simply theorising about it. We can make sure that scenarios are experienced form a range of perspectives and that the development of a decision includes a broad range of speciality knowledge and experience. Games can also be an effective way to unpick bias; scenarios which intentionally challenge preconceptions and include an element of chance are a great way to prevent hope becoming a part of the plan. Finally, a really effective wargame can be used to confirm a decision and rehearse the plan which falls from it; by the time the detail of a plan has been worked out, the whole team can have been through it.