The Power of Play Frameworks in Business Strategy

I’ll admit it: I used to dread strategy meetings. Endless slides, abstract goals, and a plan that felt set in stone the moment it was printed. Then I asked myself: What if strategy wasn’t a document, but a system? That’s when I introduced play frameworks into our process. Instead of a static roadmap, we created an interactive model where teams could “play” with different scenarios—adjusting resources, testing assumptions, and seeing the ripple effects of their decisions in real time. The change was immediate. Meetings became workshops. Debates turned into experiments. And our strategy stopped gathering dust on a shelf.

The magic of a play framework is that it turns strategy from a theoretical exercise into a tangible experience. For instance, we designed a simple board-game-style tool for our quarterly planning. Teams moved tokens representing budgets, timelines, and risks, and the rules, loops, and balance of the system revealed dependencies we’d never noticed before. One team realized their “safe” project was actually blocking two others. Another discovered a feedback loop where delays in one area compounded inefficiencies elsewhere. These insights didn’t come from a PowerPoint—they emerged from playing with the system.

The biggest win? Our strategy became adaptive. In the old model, a change in priorities meant scrapping the plan and starting over. With the play framework, we could tweak variables and see how the system responded. It wasn’t just about executing a plan—it was about evolving it. And because the team had “played” with the strategy, they owned it. They weren’t just following orders; they were actively shaping the direction. That’s the power of turning strategy into a system: it stops being something you have to do and starts being something you want to engage with.