Danone's secret weapon for agile decision-making: Wargaming

How can a global organization improve strategic decision-making, align all stakeholders around an action plan, and accelerate deployment? 

These were the exact questions Danone faced last year in its plant-based acceleration unit of the specialized nutrition division. 

As one of the top global food companies, adapting to changing consumer behavior is always a key challenge for Danone. And with their committment to both healthy people and a healthy planet, Danone needed to respond to the growing popularity of plant-based products. Danone wanted to continue to grow infant nutrition by leveraging plant-based assets from the company.

Danone’s global strategy and insights team saw an opportunity to use business wargaming, a data-driven, agile decision-making approach to enabling faster and more holistic decision, to help accelerate strategic decision-making and growth for its plant-based portfolio. 

Through the wargaming exercise, the Danone team was looking to share information about the plant-based opportunity in a memorable way, shift the thinking of key stakeholders, and align everyone on a data-driven, strategic decision. And they hoped to walk away with a specific action plan for the regional business units. 

Danone chose SKIM because of our sound process for conducting wargaming, extensive experience in the consumer health category, and our custom approach. 

The team invited key decision makers from the country business units and from global, including Marketing Directors, Sales Directors, Healthcare Directors, Legal counsel, the regional VP, and cross-functional stakeholders with the expertise to answer critical questions during the wargame. 

The participants were divided into teams: one team represented Danone and the others represented key competitors. In each session, the teams answered key questions and built scenarios of a competitor move, to guide their ultimate decision about the plant-based market strategy.  

Finally, the teams gathered to deliver their answers and react as a group to what they learned. 

The SKIM team led the conversation and helped challenge the teams. Following the exercise, SKIM helped prioritize the outcomes for Danone and evaluate the quality of the team’s decisions. 

The experience convinced the participants that they were missing out on something important happening in the market and it was time to act on this opportunity, when they learned how soon competitors were poised to act, the depth of their resources, and the unexpected strength of a smaller competitor. 

To date, many of the participants have already begun to move forward with the strategy and action plan decided upon in the wargaming sessions.   

The wargaming exercise also brought an unexpected benefit to Danone’s local and global leaders: an enjoyable team-building experience. 

In addition to making great strides toward their specific business goal, the strategy and insights team at Danone also initiated a trend at their company. As word spread about their success, other teams began to try out the wargaming approach to agile decision-making.  

The Danone team are now seen as innovators and are being asked to participate in other wargaming sessions.