War-game a customer advisory board before the invite list becomes politics

War-game a customer advisory board before the invite list, agenda, and public branding teach your market that a few logos own the roadmap.

Advisory boards fail when members are only friendly logos, when NDA and antitrust rules are informal, when product treats feedback as a commitment, and when sales uses the seat as a discount lever. A polished charter PDF is not evidence that the forum will stay useful.

Freeze the board design

State the purpose, the selection criteria, the term lengths, the meeting cadence, what members get (access, influence, compensation if any), and what they do not get. Attach the candidate list with ICP fit notes, existing contractual favors, NDA drafts, and the decision rights product still keeps. If sales, product, and counsel disagree on why the board exists, split the package until one design is under fire.

Write the decision you will make if the war game finds nothing new, and the kill criteria if the board becomes a capture channel or a rumor factory.

Seats that matter

Customer member. What they expect in return, and what would make them walk.
Non-member customer. How exclusion reads, and which promises leak as rumor.
Product. Which feedback becomes an accidental commitment.
Counsel. NDA, antitrust, and selective disclosure risk.
Skeptic. The claim that looks strongest and is least sourced.

Optional finance seat if the board implies credits, early access, or preferred pricing. Give every seat the same pack.

Loop the review

Feed Pingpong the charter, invite criteria, and exhibits. First pass steelmans the design. Later passes attack from member, non-member, product, and counsel seats. Final pass turns surviving objections into tighter criteria, clearer non-commitments, or a hold. Delete invented "representative" samples and dual-counted influence.

Force a day-after narrative: what non-members post, which roadmap items sales starts quoting as "CAB-approved," and what happens if a member leaks a draft. If those stories are stronger than your charter, fix the package before invites. Separate listening from governance. If the memo blurs them, ask counsel and product seats to attack until decision rights are explicit.

When the board implies early access or preferred pricing, force finance to price the next cohort that will demand the same deal without a seat. Write eligibility, term limits, and conflict rules into the charter, then ask finance and counsel seats to attack those rules. A board that only works by forever matching every request is not an advisory forum. It is capture with better branding.