Simulate the adversary’s response to your move
Assign someone to genuinely think and plan as your competitor, not just describe them.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Assign someone to genuinely think and plan as your competitor, not just describe them.
- Why it works: Strategy is often planned against a passive competitor — a static snapshot of what they are doing now. Real competitors adapt: your move changes their optimal response. Simulating their response forces you to model their incentives, capabilities, and information, which reveals whether your strategy holds up against an active, intelligent opponent rather than against the idealized plan in a vacuum.
- Evidence: Established clinical or therapeutic practice.
- Avoid: Simulating a polite, slow, or irrational competitor that confirms the original plan rather than genuinely engaging with how a rational, well-resourced adversary would respond.
Why it works
Strategy is often planned against a passive competitor — a static snapshot of what they are doing now. Real competitors adapt: your move changes their optimal response. Simulating their response forces you to model their incentives, capabilities, and information, which reveals whether your strategy holds up against an active, intelligent opponent rather than against the idealized plan in a vacuum.
How to do it
- 1Assign one person or small group to represent the competitor with genuine commitment — they are the competitor for the session.
- 2Give them information about the competitor’s actual situation, capabilities, and incentives.
- 3Let them develop a real response to your announced strategy, without being constrained to polite or charitable interpretations.
- 4Use their response to identify which parts of your strategy are actually robust and which depend on the competitor doing nothing.
What the evidence says
Clinical practicePerspective-taking and simulation of other agents’ decisions is studied in negotiation and game theory. Red-teaming as an adversary simulation is standard practice in military planning, intelligence analysis, and increasingly in competitive business strategy, though controlled outcome evidence is limited.
Honest caveat: Evidence is mostly from domains where red teaming is mandatory practice (intelligence, security) rather than from controlled comparisons. Transfer to corporate strategy is principled but not empirically confirmed.
Common mistake
Simulating a polite, slow, or irrational competitor that confirms the original plan rather than genuinely engaging with how a rational, well-resourced adversary would respond.
IX Coach helps you construct the adversary’s perspective by asking structured questions about their incentives, capabilities, and information — ensuring the simulation is realistic rather than convenient.
Practice this with IX Coach →