By Shefaly M Yogendra, PhD
Board drills or simulations sharpen leadership’s ability to anticipate future challenges, react calmly to ‘black swan’ events and leverage opportunities to their full potential. How do they work?
In 2026, it should be an already established and widely understood fact in European boardrooms that board simulations are key to futureproofing one’s business.
Board simulations challenge existing mental models for organisational decision-making. They help stress-test assumptions, challenge normalcy bias and groupthink, stretch imaginations, identify potential breaking points, and critically, enable the building of organisational muscle for when unexpected scenarios come to pass.
They are, in effect, dress rehearsals for decision-making under duress. Like fire drills, they are not about predicting the next fire, but about ensuring that a fire alarm does not cause panic and everyone evacuate safely under the fire marshal’s directions.
The operating context for European businesses is being shaped by geopolitical gyrations, transformative technologies and climate challenges, often acting in concert. Using scenarios of plausible futures, both risks and opportunities, board simulations help boards and executive leadership test and develop their decision-making muscle for “what-when”, not just “what-if”.Some leading European boardrooms have been thinking ahead.
A.P. Møller – Mærsk A/S
The Danish shipping and logistics company, A.P. Møller – Mærsk A/S (Maersk) established Maersk Training in 1978. It delivers training globally using advanced simulators to create complex operational scenarios and real-world environments. Focusing on operations however, these simulations did not envisage enterprise-wide digital collapse.
When Maersk experienced the NotPetya cyber-attack in 2017, their entire global network went dark rapidly, wiping out port terminals, immobilising 17 of Maersk’s 76 international ports. All of the network’s domain controllers were knocked out too. This was not anticipated. Mobilising staff and external consultants, port operations were brought back online first and the rebuild of the entire global IT infrastructure took ten days, which is a marvel of human effort and quick thinking. Full recovery took two months, with an estimated cost of $250-300 million.
Speaking at World Economic Forum in 2018, Maersk’s Chairman Jim Hagemann Snabe admitted that Maersk was “basically average” in cybersecurity before the attack. The cyberattack and operational recovery experience changed Maersk board’s perspective of cybersecurity from a technology issue to a solvency issue. This also led to the embedding of analogue continuity into their business strategy. Maersk’s board now oversees annual “Black Swan” simulations, focusing on decision-making under ambiguity and financial escalation paths where manual overrides get initiated.
Schneider Electric
Since 2019, Schneider Electric has participated in and sponsored “Black Sky” simulations. EIS Council defines a “Black Sky” event as one that “disrupts the normal functioning of our critical infrastructures in multiple regions, for long durations”. An example would be a long-lasting subcontinent-wide power outage caused by a cyber-attack, high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, or extreme space weather.
Starting with a focus on systemic Interdependency, the challenges of a supply chain collapse became obvious quickly. Schneider Electric’s 2021 & 2022 Sustainability and Universal Registration documents highlight how these simulations shaped board-level governance and decisions.
The board recognised the vulnerability of a “smart” grid to a blackout, and initiated investment in analogue-digital hybrid capability and manual overrides. Noting the risks from just-in-time supply chains, the board also authorised a move towards the regionalisation of sourcing. Alert to the fact that a business cannot function if the community around it collapses, and hence the need for community resilience, the board decide to embed grid neutrality and microgrids into their ESG objectives.
Schneider Electric shifted its stance to enabling microgrid autonomy and to provisioning energy-as-a-service, allowing key services such as hospitals to operate fully off-grid using onsite solar and battery storage.
ASML
In a 2023 interview with NRC, a Dutch newspaper of record, former CEO Peter Wennink spoke of how the board was alert to the overuse of export controls impacting ASML’s innovation cycle. The board gamed a 5-year outlook where the loss of Chinese revenue would cause a slowdown in Next-Gen (Hyper-NA) development. The simulation led to the board adopting a more vocal public advocacy stance and regionalising their supply chain to guard against risks of over-reliance on one geopolitical corridor.
ASML’s 2024 Investor Day materials and strategic report detail how the board examined three distinct geopolitical stress scenarios for the 2025–2030 period. The simulation provided floor level perspectives and gave confidence to the board to approve a €36B–€40B revenue target for 2026.
As of 2025 ASML practices dynamic geopolitical monitoring and in 2026 following a simulation of a 3-player game, the board approved a review to evaluate de-Americanisation of certain non-critical supply chain components to reduce their exposure.
The final word
These are but three robust examples of how board simulations are already being used in European boardrooms to anticipate plausible futures. Their scope is vast covering complex cross-overs of geopolitics, technology and climate related challenges, demonstrating strategic imagination.
The simulations use and sharpen leadership’s ability to read big and small signals in the business environment, ignite their strategic foresight to anticipate future challenges and opportunities, and test their willingness and ability to “think the unthinkable”. Together these can enable organisational capacity and capability to adapt.
The real question in 2026 is: what will it take to make board simulations a non-negotiable part of boardroom discipline and hygiene across all European businesses?
Shefaly Yogendra, PhD
