What’s a War Game and Why Can It Fall Short?
The first time I led a War Game, I was convinced I’d nailed it. I spent a whole night correcting and perfecting the pre-game briefing books from our vendor. I customized a War Games playlist for the cocktail hour (“Run to the Hills”, “War Pigs”, “Gimme Shelter”…). My post-game feedback was nothing but accolades. I walked away with a bonus, blissfully unaware of how deficient my approach had been.
One thing I love about leading my own CI firm now is getting to turn my clients on to a better way of doing this, a way that is less riddled with unconscious bias, motivates more disruptive thinking and elevates a shared sense of belonging across multi-functional teams.
What’s a War Game and Why Can It Fall Short?
A War Game is a scenario-planning, role-playing workshop. It typically involves ~40 stakeholders from across the company. Picture experts from sales, marketing, research, manufacturing, government affairs, regulatory affairs, medical affairs and senior management coming together for anywhere from one afternoon to a couple days. The idea is to focus enough brain power on the company’s key competitors that we can reasonably deduce their most likely strategies and form robust counter strategies.
The thinking error in the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to conducting a business War Game is twofold: For one thing, there is the assumption that all participants will grasp what they need to learn to contribute in a meaningful way from flippng through a pre-game briefing book, and maybe listening to an opening presentation. Then, there’s the assumption that participants will feel comfortable and connected enough with their colleagues from other departments to participate authentically. When these underlying assumptions are flawed, the value of bringing together a diverse, cross-functional group is squandered.
I have seen this play out firsthand. There’s a diversity of team members at the table, but the only ones contributing are white men. Don’t get me wrong. Some of my favorite people are white men. I’m happily married to one and forever grateful to another, my mentor in grad school, who sponsored and inspired me throughout my PhD and beyond.
But if your goal is to re-envision how patients are treated and be better at addressing unmet need, how much of a competitive edge do you gain from conducting a strategic planning exercise in which authentic participation is limited to a minority of participants?
How can we conduct this exercise in a way that accesses the level of significant insights that can only come from bringing together diverse points of view?
1. Don’t Call It A War Game
First, stop calling it a War Game. War connotes imperialism, eurocentrism, colonization. The patient populations that biotech and pharma companies serve when they make best-in-class, clinically meaningful therapies include people of color, women, sexual and gender minorities – all populations that are not historically the victors of war. This is not a zero-sum game, and war in not the right metaphor.
2. Differentiate Your Content
Next, structure the exercise to make the baseline knowledge easily accessible to everyone involved. Your competitive landscape is dynamic, complicated stuff. Understanding a variety of cutting-edge scientific approaches, manufacturing strategies, changing regulatory precedent and pre-commercial product positioning can be daunting. Advances in the field of education have shown us that a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching only works for a minority of learners. And even highly-educated, highly-capable people can feel uncomfortable revealing their knowledge gaps and asking questions in front of other team members.
Diversity, by definition, means multiple intelligences. Differentiating the way content is delivered enables individuals to learn in the way that works best for them.
This might sound counterintuitive, but you’ll know you’ve succeeded in this when you notice an uptick in questions. Questions aren’t just the hallmark of engagement. They are the sparks that propel our biggest breakthroughs. Questions are what lead us to reframe our thinking and challenge underlying assumptions.
3. Keep the Focus On What Matters Most: Patients
The people who will get the therapies you’re developing come from all walks of life, all races, all socio-economic backgrounds and sexual preferences. Your individual team members will feel more connected to each other when they see themselves in the patient population you serve. By keeping the exercise framed on benefiting patients, versus getting kudos from senior management (aka, white men), team members will invariably get more engaged.
An Inclusive Team Culture is the Basis for Great Competitive Readiness Planning
Over 75,000 interventional clinical trials are currently active in the NIH database. Competitive intensity for emerging therapies is tremendous. The rules of the game can change with each approval and guidelines, at least in oncology, are updated 4 or 5 times a year. Cometitive readiness planning means staying abreast of emerging trends, and keeping your strategies aligned with what is (and will be) clinically meaningful for patients. A good CI partner guides your thinking beyond your implicit biases and illuminates any blind spots in your forecasting.
At the same time, companies have started to realize that increasing diversity in their ranks is not just the right thing to do from an ethical standpoint; greater workforce diversity has been shown to result in greater innovation, productivity and profitability. But realizing this benefit requires more than hiring for diversity. It requires developing a culture of inclusivity, in which workers feel comfortable asking questions in front of their colleagues and feel connected to one another. A strong sense of workplace belonging increases job performance by ~56%. Organizations that establish an inclusive culture are more likely to be high-performing, innovative and agile, and more likely to achieve better business outcomes.
Cross-functional workshops are a prime opportunity to deliberately boost a sense of workplace belonging. A facilitator that brings a comprehensive grasp of your competitive landscape, and the skills to teach that information to a diverse group of learners while foster ing a culture of inclusivity will maximize the value of the exercise. The cross-functional alignment that emerges will increase the sense of belonging to the purpose and mission of your business, and to the overarching goal of what your team's success will mean for patients.
About The Author
Dr. Eileen Faucher is the Founder & Principal of Brass Tacks Health, a boutique consulting team that provides biotech and pharma clients with original insights into their competitive clinical development landscapes, grounded in perspectives that reflect the diversity of the patients populations being served. We guide clients in how to build their competitive advantage by tapping into their organization's commitment to advancing health equity and inclusion.