Decisions that should never be taken without simulation.
Some decisions are settled by arithmetic. These are not. In each case below the numbers can be made to work, and the outcome is still determined by how people respond.
This is not a list of everything simulation can address. It is the set where the gap between the financial case and the realised outcome is widest.
Appointing a chief executive
No model tells you which directors begin briefing against the appointment, or which clients treat it as grounds to review the relationship.
Acquiring a company
Synergy cases assume the people delivering the synergies stay. What matters is who leaves in the first ninety days, and who they take with them.
Closing a site
The financial case is usually sound. The cost arrives through unions, local politics, regulators, and customers who read closure as a signal about commitment.
Entering a new market
Incumbents respond. The return is determined by how fast, how aggressively, and whether they coordinate.
Restructuring a workforce
The savings are calculable. Which high performers leave voluntarily, and which competitors move on your people, is not.
Divesting a subsidiary
Buyers, staff and customers all revalue the asset the moment the intention is known. The modelled price is rarely the realised one.
Negotiating with a regulator
Outcomes turn on institutional incentive, precedent, and the personal position of the officials involved. None of it appears in a spreadsheet.
Changing executive incentives
People optimise for what they are paid to do. The behaviour a scheme produces is frequently not the behaviour it was designed to produce.
Responding to a competitor’s move
Your response is an input to their next one. The sequence matters more than the opening step.
If one of these is now in front of you.
Describe the decision in one or two sentences. We will tell you whether simulation is the right instrument for it, and say so plainly where it is not.
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