To war-game a company strategy choice, write the preferred path in one sentence, name the alternatives you are about to shut down, and play that path against the board seats that can stop the spend plus the outside moves that would make the choice look wrong within a year. Do it before headcount or a board vote locks one path.
This page is for that fork: expand, specialize, partner, price up, or exit a line of business. For war-gaming any board ask, start at war-game a decision before the board meeting. For colliding finance, counsel, and operations seats on one memo, see multi-perspective strategy review. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
What war-gaming a strategy choice means
Choosing path A means path B and path C get less cash and often no second chance for a year. A document review asks whether the memo is accurate. A war-game asks which director objects first, which competitor responds, and which number breaks when one assumption fails.
Four inputs matter. The preferred ask states what you want approved. The discarded alternatives state what you stop funding, so the review can test whether the memo buried a better option. The seats are the directors or executives who can block the spend. The outside responses are competitor, customer, and capital-market moves that would punish the choice after approval. The output is a short list of changes to the ask, the kill criteria, and the fallback.
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. The chief executive of a 180-person B2B software company must choose one three-year strategy before the next board meeting. Path A is mid-market expansion into two new regions with a $4.8 million first-year ask. Path B is healthcare vertical specialization with a $3.1 million product and compliance ask. Path C is a platform partnership that trades margin for distribution. The preferred recommendation is Path A. The draft pack includes a strategy memo, a comparative model, win rates by segment, a competitor pricing export, and an expansion hiring plan.
Before the pre-read goes out, the chief executive puts the pack into one request with three seats: the investor director who watches burn, the independent director with enterprise sales background, and the audit committee chair. The request also names three outside responses: the category leader matches the new-region discount within two quarters; new-region win rates stay 40 percent below the home-region rate for a year; and Path C would have closed a channel deal the company will forfeit.
A useful pass turns up concrete problems. The hiring plan front-loads twelve sellers before local pipeline exists, and the burn table under the slow-win scenario breaches the cash covenant from last meeting. Path B's healthcare compliance spend is already half paid in the product roadmap, so killing it wastes sunk work the memo never prices. Under the competitor-match scenario, Path A's contribution margin falls below Path C by month nine with no trigger to reopen the partnership.
The chief executive changes the choice before the board sees it: a nine-month Path A pilot in one region with a hard stop if win rates stay below 60 percent of home region, a written option to revive Path C if the channel term sheet returns, a sunk-cost line for Path B, and a burn table under all three outside responses.
A request you can copy
Below are a strategy memo recommending one company path, a short comparison of the alternatives I am about to stop funding, the exhibits the recommendation relies on, and the decision I want the board or leadership team to approve. Read the pack as each of these seats: [list the directors or executives who can stop the spend]. For each seat, list every claim the exhibits do not support, quoting the page or line, and the first five objections that seat would raise to the preferred path. Then play these outside responses: [list two or three competitor, customer, or capital moves]. For each response, say which path looks worse, which number in the model breaks, and what kill criteria or fallback should be in the ask before the meeting. Don't rewrite the memo.
Leave the comparative model and the discarded alternatives in.
How Pingpong runs the war-game
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer. One pass might play the board seats; a later pass might score the outside responses against the model. Check every flagged figure against the source file. For the steps inside the app, see running your first review.
What a model can't war-game
A model does not know which director already favors a path from a prior closed session, what a competitor will actually do, or which disclosure counsel has cleared. Legal, tax, accounting, and personnel questions belong with the people responsible for those answers. Use the war-game to sharpen the ask, the kill criteria, and the questions you bring to them.
If the board pack is already assembled, see review a board pack before the meeting. For a seat-by-seat question list, see anticipate board questions. For slides outside a full board pack, see stress-test a pitch or strategy deck. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.