“Building Strategic Capability” – usually a term in bold font, at the top of an agenda in yet another executive PowerPoint slide deck from hell. When projected on the boardroom screen, all heads turn to the learning and development consultant (yup, you guessed it, that’s ME!).

One only needs to Google the term to find the endless lists of business schools/ consultants/ coaches/ cockroaches offering a plethora of magical toolboxes that are able to transform your grey-suited director into the next Steve Jobs. And they aim to do this through “innovative” techniques. I am sorry, but there is nothing innovative about sitting in a classroom styled venue, reading bullet points on a screen which becomes blurry from all the stimulating chocolate and coffee that comes “free” with the programme.

So what is the deal here? If you are anything like me having out-Googled the term and in a push to answer, I start by reciting the wiki dictionary explanation of “Strategy” and hope that a good idea will simply burst out of my skull and do a tap-dance on the mahogany table. And here it is, fresh off the Wiki Press:

“A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a vision. It derives from the Greek “στρατηγία” (strategia), “office of general, command, generalship”.”

Suddenly, the conversation veers to Eastern Philosophy, with some clever academic consultant (in dire need of breath mints and a suntan if I may add), starts quoting from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. Having read this myself, to my utter dismay, my overall conclusion as I understood Mr Tzu is that in essence, every strategy is uniquely bound to the act of war before you and no two strategies can ever be alike and strategy A cannot be used to solve the challenge of problem B.

So yeah, now we are back at square one and if the above holds true, then all principle based learning/coaching initiatives fall flat, giving a need for a practiced mindset, as opposed to a capability being instructed.

Hold on… War… That reminds me of a war that has been waging for approximately a decade, generating billions of dollars and consuming even more lives (in a platonic sense of course). This is the World of Warcraft (if you have no idea what I am talking about then you probably also have no idea about the multi-billion dollar online phenominon that is erroding the productivity of a large demographic of your own employees) and could this virtual, mystical universe of Orcs, Mages and Dwarves house the answer to my very pressing dilemma?

So let’s take a look at a typical day in the life of a WOW player:

1. Logging into to WOW, the player is placed into the body of their online avator and after hours of game play and customisation, there is a thorough understanding of the strengths and weaknesses, skills and challenges unique to this character (“self” before “team” and “organisation” as the Executive Development Programmes tell it).

2. Scanning the landscape of Azeroth (the world of WOW), a new opportunity presents itself (aaaah, look at the big mountain with all that glittering treasure inside). On approaching the mountain, the earth trembles and a demonic sized fire-breathing dragon emerges from the caverns of our glittering mound. On initial analysis, it is clear that this is NOT a job for one warrior, despite the sheer size of the sword we are packing.

3. Time to strategise! In a flurry of instant messages, online voice chats, emails, skype calls, texts etc, our hero-to-be manages to round up the finest team in the land from their virtual (and if they actually see the light of day, even real life) network and brainstorm a plan of action that details:

What’s in it for everyone (context and a case for attack)
What we are trying to achieve (overall objective of the battle)
What makes us “awesome” (strengths) and where are we “lame” (weaknesses)
How much gold exactly are we talking here (opportunities), and what do we stand to lose (threats and costs)
How are we going to do this:
-Plan of attack (who, where, when, what, how) and logistics
-Team composition (based on skill/level/experience)

-What weapons and rations to pack (resourcing)

-Availability (Is Billy-Boy still grounded this week?)

-Other (do we have enough red bull, because this could be an all

nighter)

4. The raid begins and after hours of virtual blood, sweat and tears, the dragon is eventually defeated and the rewards are shared. The team celebrates in their success, but also counts their losses and makes provision for the repairing of their damaged armour and health.

The above process could take days, weeks, and sometimes months to analyse, design, develop, implement and evaluate and if you are not starting to smell the steaming hot strategic capability that World of Warcraft is developing in a demographic that spans at least 2 generations, then I don’t know what it is going to take to convince you.

Sure, online gaming doesn’t hit everybody’s sweet spot, and I am not saying that we now need to advise our clients/colleagues to buy a WOW account if they want to make this year’s competitive sales target. What I am saying is that simulated learning seems to be the key winning ingredient in developing strategic capability and if we can make a stronger link between real-life business scenarios and simulated experiences, we might have an excellent case for developing meaningful learning experiences that truly develop the mindset of strategy. Let’s not call them games but rather virtual (or even real life) simulations and start socialising them in the boardroom as an effective method for executive development.