Surprising lessons your business can learn from geopolitical risk drills

Some of the leading organizations we work with use regular geopolitical risk drills to learn, adapt and improve their response to fast-moving global events. What are these drills and what are some of the most surprising lessons we’ve seen businesses learn from recent exercises?

What is a geopolitical risk drill?

A geopolitical risk drill is a structured simulation that puts your organization into a realistic crisis scenario, then observes how people, processes and decisions hold up. The aim isn’t to work out whether you’re ready for a specific scenario you think may happen, but to test your plans and people to refine your response under possible real-life geopolitical uncertainty.

What do geopolitical drills typically involve?

The most effective geopolitical risk drills bring together people from across your organization, including risk, finance, legal, operations, HR, communications and regional representatives. That’s because global shocks rarely affect only some functions or one territory.

Most drills run as tabletop exercises. Facilitators establish a scenario, then introduce developments, such as conflict escalation, new sanctions, supply route disruption, government intervention or sudden regulatory change. Each new development leads people to make decisions, often with incomplete information and with unpredictable consequences.

What can you learn from geopolitical risk drills?

Your disaster response plans look good, but only on paper

Your crisis response plan may feature clearly defined roles and escalation routes, backup suppliers and insurance cover. Simulated crises quickly show whether your optimal response depends on a small number of individuals being in the right place at the right time, or whether you have shared capability. You may discover that critical knowledge about sanctions, supplier alternatives, insurance and more sits with a few people who may not be where they need to be when it counts.

Decision‑making can break down faster than expected without shared views

Functions may wait for direction rather than acting within agreed thresholds. In some cases, teams make parallel decisions that conflict because they interpret the same trigger in different ways.

This highlights the importance of having a shared understanding of the same events, clear pathways and vocabulary to talk about them. The bedrock of this could be geopolitical risk tolerance, with clear thresholds, triggers and responses.

Critical information can be trapped in pockets

Geopolitical risk information often sits in silos within an organization. Drills make this visible.

You may learn that sanctions or currency controls are monitored locally but not shared centrally. Backup supplier details may sit with one team while crisis response sits with another. Regional leaders may hold valuable insight that never reaches corporate decision‑makers. Drills reveal whether you have a shared view of risk or a collection of capabilities you need to connect.

Insurance knowledge gaps put financial protection at risk

Exercises often uncover confusion about what cover exists, when and how to notify insurers and which perils apply. Teams may assume business interruption applies when in most cases, it doesn't. Others may be unclear about who owns insurer relationships or how quickly claims information must be shared.

Drills show how your people really respond

The most important insight from a drill can be behavioral. Exercises reveal those individuals and teams who step forward quickly, which hesitate and which wait for information or clarity that may not be available. By observing these patterns, you can see where you need to provide extra support and training. By repeating drills twice a year, your people can build ‘muscle memory’, leading to better, faster responses if (or when) the next geopolitical event happens.

Want to know whether your organization is truly ready for geopolitical disruption? Fill out the form and download our webinar, From reactive to resilient – how to manage geopolitical risks or get in touch with our specialists to find out more.