Insight Beyond Sight – Wargame 

PK Team 

Note from your Gijs De Best (VP Strategy & PD S&SA) SFS LT nominator 

In 2021, the PK SFS team piloted a war games concept aimed at gaining a better understanding of the local competitive arena. The team brought together cross functional participants through this initiative and helped them develop reality-based market scenarios. Through their involvement, participants were equipped with a broader external perspective & provided strategic exposure. The war-games helped lay down the foundations of an early warning process by factoring in competitors’ moves before committing to a specific strategy. Several of the initiatives that came out of this process have already been implemented in the affiliate and have started to show initial results which the team is monitoring closely. 

Background & Project details 

The SFS team in Pakistan had developed a platform by the name of “Insight Beyond Sight” to bring a holistic view combined with collective wisdom for forward looking discussions within the SMT. The wargame exercise was an extension of the same theme that went on for 3 months and combined scenario planning, business war gaming to anticipate future competitive dynamics and test the robustness of our existing strategy. 

We wanted to engage the organization in strategic dialogue through collective wisdom and we opted to engage a wider audience comprising of cross functional teams that were beyond the SMT through our Wargame exercise. With ever changing market dynamics we did not have an early warning mechanism and we wanted cross pollination of ideas to shift from an inward looking approach to wearing competition hat by developing reality based market scenarios 

In Phase 1, to get a holistic view of the competitive landscape we divided the teams between the tax-paid industry & illicit (Pakistan has a large illicit sector (36%-39%). SMT members were nominated to become MD’s of respective teams supported by its cross functional leadership team. The teams were to develop and present a 3 year strategy for their company. PMI strategy was then tested against the competition strategy and a gap analysis was conducted.  

In Phase 2, the same teams were engaged in developing a strategy road map for PMI Pakistan post taking in to consideration the competition moves presented & shortlisted in phase 1. This enabled a comprehensive overview and helped identify gaps & opportunities that were later made part of the updated strategy paper for Pakistan for 2021 & beyond. 

Key milestones achieved  

#increaseproductivity 

#changeinmindset 

#increaseinrevenue