Tabletop, Simulation, War Game: What's the Difference?
Advisors use these three words as if they mean the same thing. They don't, and the difference matters when you are deciding what to put in front of a board.
Tabletop: checking the process
A tabletop is a walkthrough. People sit around a table and work through a scenario at a civilised pace. The aim is accuracy. Are the call trees current. Does the escalation path still match the organisation. Does the impact assessment hold.
It is the right format for a new committee, or for proving a framework works on paper. What it rarely produces is pressure, because nothing is actually at stake inside the room.
Simulation: checking the team
A simulation adds time. Injects arrive by phone, by mock news alert, by a system warning. Someone has to triage, someone has to draft a holding statement that could plausibly be sent, and someone has to decide what the board is told and when.
This is where coordination breaks. Legal wants one thing, communications wants another, operations wants a third, and nobody has agreed who owns the sentence that goes to customers.
War game: checking the assumptions
A war game adds an opponent. A red team does not follow your script, it reacts to your decisions. Go public early and they leak something. Stay quiet and they brief a journalist. The scenario bends around what you do.
That unpredictability is the point. A scripted exercise confirms what you already believe. A live opponent finds the belief you did not know you were relying on.
Tabletop to check the process, simulation to check the team, war game to check the assumptions. Most programmes only ever do the first, then wonder why the other two fail when it counts.
Discuss this scenario with Mitali Thapar
Confidential executive discussions for C-suite leadership and audit committees.