Stress-test your startup: Building resilience with decision gaming
This session is part of our cONference online spin-off series: five events on the theme of resilience, each exploring it from a different angle.
For startups and scale-ups, resilience isn’t an abstract concept - it’s the difference between bouncing back stronger or being thrown off course. It’s also a skill you have to practice - and even have some fun doing it.
That’s where decision gaming comes in.
Borrowed from organisations like the UK Defence, NATO, and the NHS, this approach uses fictional scenarios and structured gameplay to simulate crises, stress-test your team’s responses, and reveal blind spots before they become real problems.
In this interactive workshop, Chris Lüttmann-White, Head of Business Development @ Vedette Consulting, will guide you through a pre-mortem game built around a fictional startup case study. You’ll collaborate with peers, rotate perspectives, and experience decision gaming firsthand.
By stepping into the scenario yourself, you’ll see how the method works in practice and leave with a repeatable blueprint to run resilience games in your own organisation. Think of it as levelling up your startup’s readiness while trying on a tool you can genuinely enjoy using.
By the end of this session, you’ll…
💡 Understand what decision gaming is, how it works, and why it’s more than just “fun and games.”
🔎 Take away insights from UK Defence, NATO, and the NHS, adapted into practical lessons for startups and scale-ups.
🛠️ Know how to design and run short decision games yourself, using a repeatable method you can apply with your own team.
🌱 See resilience differently - not as a one-off plan, but as a skill you can practise and strengthen over time.
🎮 Experience decision gaming firsthand by taking part in a rapid exercise, and see how gameplay can engage your team, uncover weaknesses, and build cross-functional confidence.
You should join us if you’re…
✅ An ops leader or functional head in a startup or scale-up navigating rapid growth, disruption, or organisational change.
✅ Working in a business from post-seed stage that’s looking to build resilience into its operations.
✅ Interested in trying out a practical, interactive approach to resilience and decision-making - not just hearing about frameworks.
✅ Keen to walk away with a repeatable tool you can run with your own team.
You’re unlikely to benefit if you’re…
🚫 A very early-stage founder or individual without an established team to test ideas with.
🚫 Focused only on short-term firefighting and not ready to allocate time to building resilience.
🚫 An individual contributor without responsibility for organisational resilience or cross-team decision-making.
Event details 📝
Agenda (75mins)
Welcome + intro | 5 min
Setting the scene | 15 min
Introduction to resilience gaming
Lessons from UK Defence, NATO, and the NHS
Mapping these lessons to the startup/scale-up context
Breakout exercise: Rapid pre-mortem game | 20 min
Group discussion | 10 min
Blueprint for running your own games | 5 min
Q&A | 15 min
Takeaways & Wrap up | 5 min
What resilience gaming can and can’t do
This session will be recorded - including the Q&A but excluding breakout discussions.
- If you’d like any part of your question or comment kept off the recording, just let us know during or right after the session and we’ll make sure it’s edited out.
Meet the host 👋
Chris is a Managing Consultant at Vedette Consulting, a specialist consultancy helping leaders make better decisions in complex, high-stakes environments. He has worked extensively with the UK Ministry of Defence and across government on projects focused on resilience, readiness, and systems thinking. His work on resilience centres on helping leaders recognise hidden fragilities, explore “what if” scenarios, and build adaptive capacity into the way they operate. Chris previously founded and ran an immersive entertainment startup whilst studying for an MBA, and started his career in financial services consultancy.