Dear ,

Thank you for registering for the "Tabletop Exercising 101 for Consultants" workshop conducted last week!

We had an insightful journey during the workshop thanks to EACN. We learned how tabletop exercises can help within the consulting toolkit, and how to design them and participated in a lightning exercise.

What was covered?

What ARE TTXs? Tabletopping is a medium for improving decision-making, it is active and dynamic. Particularly suited to some situations:

• Complex or dynamic situations
• When you're exploring unknown-unknowns
• While simulating stakeholders' decisions

Pain points: This is one of the best ways to immerse a client in the problem you are solving a pain point in a project. Stagnation in decision-making

• Team misalignment
• Unidentified risks
• Insufficient stakeholder buy-in

Designing a TTX: Three core tasks to think about:

• Define the aim
• Outline the rules of the scenario
• Design ways to measure/reflect

WHY ROLE-PLAYING?:

• Putting on another stakeholder hat/ lens
• Understanding differences
• Practicing different skills
• Opening new thinking pathways

Facilitation Techniques: Game masters run the game. They have three hats:

• Simulate the world as a guide
• Referee or adjudicate
• Elevate others and manage time

Myths: Organisations don't run more scenarios because of:

• Perceived Complexity
• Insufficient resources
• Fears of exercising

What happened in the lightning exercise?

We simulated a TTX sprint with the audience role-playing a technology disruption scenario.

The Players:

1. BigTree Consulting — a Big 4; every intern's dream job
2. Nakamoto Corp — Leading MNC Tech firm
3. Shellyfish Co. — Small, agile consulting firm
4. Sandcastle Ltd. — BigTree's Large Client

The Scenario: BREAKING NEWS: "Bigtree consulting is rumoured to cut 1/3 of Junior research staff, reportedly 'replacing' them with technology developed by Nakamoto-techcorp

Round 1: Respond — Each group took the role of one of four organisations in the simulation of a disrupting technology and drafted their own as a response to the press release.

Round 2: Take action — In light of each other's press releases, each organisation then decided on a covert action to their organisation's position. The success or failure of the action was then confirmed to them with a roll of a dice utilising probabilistic thinking.

Round 3: Forecast — Consultants time skipped a year into the future and forecasted an epilogue, based on their organisation's success or failure.

The Responses:

• BigTree- "BigTree's investment in Nakamoto's tech does not take precedence over investment in our talent."
• Nakamoto - "Don’t worry, managers will only be laid off by V2.0"
• Shellyfish - "As a small and agile firm, we'd never make the terrible decision by our competitor to drop key talent"
• Sandcastle - "We are excited for the use of new technology but concerned for the disregard towards people."

The Actions:

• BigTree- Attempted to acquire Shellyfish and failed.
• Nakamoto- Successfully undercut Bigtree by supplying the product directly to Sandcastle
• Shellyfish- Hired all of the redundant workforce from Bigtree
• Sandcastle- Wanted to investigate the technology further and was partially successful.

Epilogues:

• BigTree- Lost the main client, and the talent and was undercut by Nakamoto.
• Nakamoto- Went direct to consumer, cutting out the middle man in Bigtree.
• Shellyfish- Became a bigger fish by acquiring the talent lost by Bigtree.
• Sandcastle- Went direct to Nakamoto and dropped Bigtree.

Participant Takeaways — TTXs can help consultants:

• Learn teamwork
• Develop probabilistic thinking skills
• Experience first-hand a dynamic decision-making environment
• Embed practical decision-making tools in future toolkit

If you found value in the workshop or the resources and insights shared, we invite you to share the opportunity with your colleagues and peers who may benefit from a deeper understanding of tabletop exercises.

This workshop was just the beginning. There are many opportunities through which tabletop exercises can significantly contribute to refining your strategic approaches and delivering enhanced value to your clients. Feel free to reach out to us at email@longgameproject.org for more information and service inquiries.

In the meantime, we're preparing more workshops to learn and grow with you. Watch your inbox for what's next. If you want to have a say on topics of interest, please let us know by voting here.

Get ready to level up with us at the next game – we can't wait to see you there!

Regards,

Dan

Founder,

The Long Game Project

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