Business Strategy Simulation: Strategic Thinking and Impact

“Everyone gets something different out of this business strategy simulation. If you work with purchasing, you learn about brand image, and if you’re in marketing you learn about finance and strategy.”

Simon Eade | Senior Leadership Development Specialist | Volvo Car Group

Description
This proven and highly experiential Business Strategy Simulation can be delivered live or virtually. It immerses leaders in the complexities and implications of strategy design and strategy execution. Participants experience realistic business outcomes based on their choices of running an enterprise in a competitive and ever-changing environment.

The goal is to effectively build and sustain shareholder value by strategically acquiring new clients while simultaneously expanding and retaining current accounts.

Teams of 4 compete with other teams for the same clients in the same markets. Leaders learn how to offer the right product or service mix and how build a profitable and high performing organization with the right talent supported by efficient processes.

Leaders must make high stakes strategy decisions to help their company stand out in a competitive market, be willing to adjust when circumstances change, and embrace data to meet changing client demands. The highly experiential simulation allows participants to see the big picture of their organization and understand how to make a greater business impact.

Objectives
In this proven business strategy simulation, participants elevate their business, operational, and financial acumen for commercial strategy by:

Targeting and selling to preferred ideal target customers.
Developing and maintaining an attractive and profitable product portfolio.
Investing in people and processes for optimal strategy execution.
Creating a strong and sustainable brand.
Communicating company strategy.
Building a common understanding of the big picture in each employee.

Target Audience
Available in over 10 languages, this proven business strategy simulation is for high potentials and leaders (e.g., Directors and above) who want to enhance their business strategy skills, decision-making capabilities, business acumen, and financial acumen.

Business Strategy Simulation: Improve Strategic Thinking and Business Results

Key Concepts
Customized to meet your unique situation, typical decisions participants face involve understanding and applying concepts related to main business drivers such as:

Business Area	Key Topics
Customer Behavior	Purchase decisions Customer needs, values, and preferences
Customer Segmentation	Targeted customers Market positioning and brand value
Business Finance	Income statement and key financial indicators Cash flow and the cost of capital
Key Performance Indicators	Balanced scorecard Capacity utilization and benchmarking
Strategy	Unique value proposition and pricing Disruptive technologies, plus red and blue oceans
Intangible Assets	Knowledge management Shareholder value
Operations Efficiency	Good and bad costs Optimization
Forecasting	Product lifecycle Rolling forecast
Growth and Profitability	Creating long-term value Building investor confidence

To speak with an LSA Expert and learn about business strategy simulation program customization and delivery options onsite at your company, please contact us.

Related Information

For our go to training outsourcing partner, LSA provides exactly what we want and need – which is not an easy task.

As always, they design and deliver outstanding leadership development results and high quality management training programs that totally align with our unique business and talent strategies!

Elizabeth Siebert
Director, Organizational Excellence & Development

Great job in designing the Mergers and Acquisition strategy session for our global leadership team. The session was excellent.

I gained additional insight on the importance of the role of HR regarding strategy, culture, and people in Mergers and Acquisitions and would recommend LSA to anyone looking to align strategies and cultures.

Gloria Veon
Senior Vice President, Human Resources

What a refreshing change from the half-baked psycho-babble you normally get from training and consulting organizations. LSA gives you the practical and results-oriented assistance you need to define and reach your goals.

Their leadership, management, and sales expertise has been invaluable. They think strategically and provide a results driven plan – not just a temporary fix.

They are great to work with, and even more importantly, they “get it!”

David Fiano
Director of Merchandising

LSA has a tremendous ability to distil complex, multilayered challenges into meaningful, impactful, and clear strategies and action plans.

The time we invested as a leadership team to get aligned was well spent in gaining laser focus and identifying ways to prioritize what was meaningful individually and as a team. The facilitation and leadership style was direct, firm, and compassionate.

LSA provided the high level thinking and support for our team to co-create in a rapidly scaling business.

Bindu Garapaty, PsyD
VP, Talent and Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity

Having tripled in size and recently merged, LSA helped our executive team to increase our level of strategic alignment, to solidify our new direction, and to push our agency forward.

As we look to rapidly scale, the clear, actionable, and critical few strategic moves combined with how we differentiate ourselves to our top accounts and target clients has really set us on a great path to success.

This is exactly what we needed to get to the next level. Thank you LSA!

Matt Britton
CEO

LSA’s action-learning leadership approach has been very beneficial to me, our leadership team, and the entire organization.

The balance of development and results has been excellent.

We have made huge progress, and I was also able to identify 2-3 high potentials while having the extra benefit of people stepping up to carry key strategic projects forward.

The experience was better than anticipated. I could not be more pleased.

Heather Feltman
President & CEO

We consider LSA Global the top outsourced learning and development partner.

We work closely with LSA to customize leadership and management development programs to meet our growing business needs.

I would highly recommend LSA to any company wanting to deliver high quality and practical learning solutions for their leaders and managers.

Terri Wright-Scheer
Vice President Human Resources

I continue to be impressed by the depth and breadth of LSA’s expertise in leadership development, and management development.

What a smart and client-centric group of great people who really know how to help leaders attract, engage, develop and retain top talent in a practical and results-driven manner.

Thank you LSA!

Tracy Esposito
Director, HR Business Partner

We partnered with LSA Global to help us invest in our people. LSA custom designed an impactful management curriculum to help upskill our key managers and leaders.

We consider LSA to be our trusted learning and development partner and a valued extension of our team as we rapidly scale. Thank you LSA!

Lisa Bruun
SVP Human Resources

LSA has been a tremendous asset at my current company and my past company.

As an HR leader, I am always looking for ways to find external resources that can provide impactful leadership and management development expertise. LSA consistently does that for me.

The tools and practices are crisp, business relevant, and easy to apply on the job.

Ken Boehm
VP of Human Resources

The quality of LSA’s Leadership Training Programs and facilitators is always top notch. We recognize and appreciate the hard work LSA always goes through to align to our unique culture and meet our specific requirements. Thank you for regularly going above and beyond. Your support and dedication, both on the strategic and tactical side, have been outstanding!

Anna Meyer
Leadership Development

LSA Global has been a great partner in helping us move toward being “the leading developer of talent in the service performance management industry.”

I have engaged LSA to help develop best-in-class programs in the areas of: Executive On-boarding, Manager Training, Sales Training and Coaching, Employee Engagement, and Instructional Design.

They have consistently met or exceeded my (very) high expectations and are always responsive to my needs to increase performance, engagement, customer satisfaction, and sales growth.

Mike Normant
Senior Director, Training & Development

We reviewed the top Leadership Development offerings and selected LSA’s 12-month Leadership Program based upon the value and systemic approach.

The feedback on the program, approach, and results was phenomenal. While other programs may be better known, the other options were more theoretical and did not compare in terms of LSA’s practicality, quality, and results.

We could not be happier.

Stacey Porter
Senior Manager Learning and Development

Your team was amazing. Facilitative Leadership was one of the best leadership and change workshops my team has ever attended. Thank you!

Diane White
Executive Director, Head of Product Development

At a time of change in our marketplace, LSA Global did an exceptional job helping our executive team create strategic clarity by helping us to define, clarify, and prioritize our corporate vision, mission, values, differentiation, target clients, strategic priorities, success metrics and key roles.

They beautifully navigated a very difficult and fuzzy situation, respectfully cleared out all of the cultural elephants, and shared impactful insights and leadership development theories along the way. They have transformed our business.

Laurie Sewell
President & CEO

FAQs

A business strategy simulation is an experiential learning exercise where participants manage a virtual company and make strategic decisions in areas such as pricing, marketing, operations, finance, product development, and investment. As market conditions and competitors respond, participants experience the business consequences of their decisions in a realistic, risk-free environment. Unlike traditional classroom learning, simulations accelerate strategic thinking by allowing people to practice making complex business decisions under competitive pressure.

Business strategy simulations are ideal for executives, directors, managers, high-potential leaders, cross-functional teams, sales leaders, finance professionals, operations managers, and anyone responsible for making decisions that affect business performance. They are especially valuable for organizations seeking to strengthen strategic thinking, improve business and financial acumen, break down functional silos, and help leaders understand how decisions in one area affect results across the enterprise.

A business strategy simulation helps participants build the practical skills required to make better business decisions. Participants strengthen strategic thinking, financial and business acumen, competitive analysis, cross-functional collaboration, risk assessment, resource allocation, and data-driven decision making while experiencing the real-world consequences of their choices. Because they actively apply these skills in a realistic competitive marketplace rather than simply learning concepts in a classroom, participants retain the lessons longer and gain greater confidence in leading their organizations to stronger business results.

Traditional strategy training often focuses on concepts and frameworks. A business strategy simulation requires participants to apply those concepts by making real-time decisions in a competitive marketplace. Teams experience how changes in customer demand, competitor actions, operational constraints, and financial performance interact over multiple business cycles. This immersive approach helps participants connect strategy to execution while building confidence in making complex business decisions.

When aligned with business objectives, a business strategy simulation can help organizations improve strategic alignment, increase financial literacy, strengthen cross-functional collaboration, accelerate leadership development, increase accountability, and improve the quality and speed of business decisions. Participants leave with a broader enterprise perspective, a deeper understanding of value creation, and practical experience balancing growth, profitability, customer satisfaction, and long-term competitive advantage.