The Learning Impact of Simulations: How the Same Starting Point Produced a 55% Performance Difference
Organizations often assume that strategy is defined by a single breakthrough decision. In reality, sustainable success is built through hundreds of interconnected choices made over time.
A strategic decision making simulation can help leaders experience the consequences of those decisions before making them in the real world.
Strategic thinking matters.
We know from organizational culture assessment research that most leaders must make decisions under uncertainty. Choices about customers, talent, technology, capacity, and investment rarely exist in isolation. Each decision influences future opportunities, financial performance, and competitive position.
Research from McKinsey & Company has found that organizations with strong strategic capabilities consistently outperform peers because they make better resource allocation decisions and adapt more effectively to changing market conditions. Likewise, Harvard Business Review has shown that leaders who think beyond immediate operational demands are better equipped to make better decisions that create long-term organizational value.
Developing strategic thinking capabilities requires more than customized training programs. Leaders need opportunities to practice making complex business decisions where the consequences unfold over time.
Bringing Strategy to Life Through Simulation
To strengthen strategic thinking across its leadership team, Ursus Breweries (you may know them from brands such as Pilsner Urquell, Asahi, or Peroni) implemented a two-day customized business simulation with a focus on how how people decisions, team composition, and strategy execution drive both financial results and long-term market value.
The program brought together leaders from across the organization, including commercial, brewing, operations, planning, packaging, innovation, capability development, customer transformation, brand management, and key account management. This diverse mix encouraged participants to understand how decisions made in one function influence outcomes across the entire business.
Working in four teams, participants each inherited an identical company operating in the same competitive market with the same starting resources and valuation.
Over five simulated years, every team made decisions involving:
Each choice influenced revenue growth, profitability, organizational capability, brand image, and long-term company value.
Same Market. Same Company. Different Results
The simulation produced one striking outcome.
Although every team started with identical conditions, the highest-performing team finished 55% ahead of the lowest-performing team after five simulated years.
Nothing about the market changed.
Nothing about the starting company changed.
Only the quality of strategic decisions differed.
Participants quickly discovered that small decisions compounded over time. Some teams pursued demanding customers before developing the capabilities needed to serve them effectively, reducing profitability. Others delayed investments in employee development and lost valuable expertise to competitors. Teams that invested earlier in automation or organizational capability often achieved stronger financial performance later in the simulation.
These experiences reinforced an important lesson: strategy succeeds when leaders connect decisions about people, customers, operations, and investment instead of optimizing each independently.
Learning Beyond the Scoreboard
The greatest value came from the conversations that followed the simulation.
Rather than focusing only on which team won, participants analyzed why different strategies produced different outcomes. Teams compared assumptions, debated tradeoffs, and identified the decisions that either accelerated or limited long-term success.
Another valuable observation emerged during the exercise. Teams that established clear functional responsibilities collaborated more effectively, trusted one another, and adapted after setbacks. Teams without clearly defined roles appeared busy but frequently overlooked critical decisions and consistently underperformed.
The learning impact of simulations translated directly to the workplace because participants experienced the consequences themselves instead of simply hearing about best practices.
The Bottom Line
Strategic thinking develops through experience, reflection, and repeated decision-making — not through theory alone. By allowing leaders to experiment in a realistic, risk-free environment, business simulations demonstrate how choices about talent, customers, capability, capacity, and timing shape long-term organizational performance. In this case, identical starting conditions ultimately produced a 55% difference in results, proving that strategy is less about where organizations begin and more about the quality of the decisions leaders make along the way.
If you liked the learning impact of simulations, download How to Fast Track Your Leaders with Just-in-Time Action Learning to raise the capabilities of your key leaders.
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
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