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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 01/10/2026

Not every exercise needs to be a test. A team that has never worked through its plan together may need a few iterations to build confidence and competence before it is ready to have that plan pushed to breaking point. #BusinessContinuity #TabletopExercise

A team building exercise - people in business attire work together on a problem, using orange pencils to point to text on a clipboard and a phone

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 29/09/2026

What does good business continuity testing look like? Really effective testing is designed to stretch both plans and teams to improve both, focussed on resilience rather than just compliance. www.evocatus.co.uk/articles/bus... #BusinessContinuity

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 24/09/2026

Knowledge, Skills, Experience and Behaviours are the four things a Learning and Development team can target. Most of the budget goes on the first. Tabletop exercises build the other three, in a simulation where consequences are contained.

A clipboard with a ticked box containing the letter K, beside a hex game map with plain counters. Off the board, cards lettered E and B lie on the table while a hand draws away an orange card lettered S.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 22/09/2026

An exercise whose purpose is to be seen and logged is a performance. Three things mark a real rehearsal: somebody took an uncomfortable decision, the plan failed somewhere, and something changed as a result. www.evocatus.co.uk/articles/con...

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 17/09/2026

Hollnagel's four potentials of resilience: respond, monitor, anticipate, learn. Only one can be practised directly. An exercise practises a response; the other three develop inside it. Which does your team practise least? #Resilience

A diagram representing our reading of Hollnagel's four potentials of resilience, with Monitor and Anticipate blocks feeding into Respond, which in turn feeds Learn, with an orange cycle showing the iterative quality of learning from exercising a response.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 15/09/2026

The plan is current, the names are right, and nobody named has practised it since the first exercise. Nobody decided to let the capability go; it eroded, one postponement at a time. When did your team last rehearse? www.evocatus.co.uk/articles/con...

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 10/09/2026

Thank you to everyone who signed up this week. A small list, which is the point: defence, blue-light and resilience planners, wargamers both sides of the Atlantic, academics, consultancies, one gin distillery. Issue one next week: evocatus.co.uk/newsletter/ #Wargaming #BusinessContinuity

evocatus.co.uk

The Evocatus newsletter | Evocatus Consulting

Our monthly note on scenario work, decision-making under pressure and organisational learning, written by Ant Sharman. No cookies, no tracking, no sharing.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 08/09/2026

We've decided to start publishing a newsletter, rather than trusting the algorithms to get our thinking in front of people who might be interested. Monthly to start. First issue mid-September, on horizon scanning. Sign up: evocatus.co.uk/newsletter/ #Wargaming #HorizonScanning

evocatus.co.uk

The Evocatus newsletter | Evocatus Consulting

Our monthly note on scenario work, decision-making under pressure and organisational learning, written by Ant Sharman. No cookies, no tracking, no sharing.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 03/09/2026

1 September 1939: Britain began moving its children out of the cities. Pied Piper had been planned since 1938, rehearsed through August, and in three days moved 1.5 million people. What failed was what had been assumed, not rehearsed. Which assumptions in your contingency plan have never been run?

A black and white photograph of evacuees arriving in Shropshire from London in September 1939, with just two adult men supervising what looks like hundreds of children standing by the train they have just come in on.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 01/09/2026

Today is the first day of meteorological autumn. Armies have always marked the turn of the seasons; some of the finest generals were unpicked by the winter. Worth borrowing: half an hour with your team, plans on the table. What has changed over the summer to push them over their expiry date?

Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow, by Adolph Northen. The painting shows Napoleon on his white horse, huddling in his coat while his soldiers march, through the snow, past casualties and abandoned gun carriages, under a dark grey sky.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 27/08/2026

"Why can't we just do this over Teams?" A fair question. But our exercises are deeply human: communication, compromise, collaboration and coordination under pressure. Kolb's cycle needs reflection, not just experience, and a lot of that happens over coffee.

Kolb's experiential learning cycle diagram showing a clockwise loop of four stages: 1 Concrete Experience, 2 Reflective Observation, 3 Abstract Conceptualisation, 4 Active Experimentation, with a curved arrow indicating return to a new Concrete Experience for the next pass.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 25/08/2026

Last week we hosted the Bournemouth University Disaster Management Centre at our Dorset HQ, talking about gaming as a learning tool. Adults struggle to give themselves permission to roll dice. Get past that, and a map and some counters become a serious exercise. #Resilience #Dorset

3 Branded A5 notebooks, and branded six-sided dice (orange and black) beside a hex-map on a smart, stained-wood table.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 18/08/2026

Boyd's OODA loop is usually read as an argument about speed. The more useful reading is orientation: most organisations lose not because they decide slowly, but because they cannot make sense of too much at once. www.evocatus.co.uk/articles/hor...

evocatus.co.uk

Horizon scanning: the discipline of keeping watch | Evocatus Consulting

Horizon scanning is the discipline of spotting change early, while there is still room to act. What it is, why it fails, and how to build the habit.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 13/08/2026

For the sixth year running, Evocatus is registered as a supplier on JOSCAR. As a Micro SME, answering questions written for corporate HQs in the context of our little organisation is a brilliant illustration of Work as Imagined against the range of Work as Done. #Wargaming

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 11/08/2026

Stand-to is the least popular moment of a soldier's day. First and last light, everyone stands ready and looks outward. The raid is rarer now, but the routine endures. www.evocatus.co.uk/articles/hor... #HorizonScanning #StrategicForesight #ScenarioPlanning

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 06/08/2026

"I've made up my mind." At Arnhem in 1944, photos of German armour on the landing zones were explained away and the messenger sent home. Holmes's fifth disease of leadership: a mind closed by momentum. Exercises surface it while the cost is still rehearsal. #Leadership #Wargaming

A black and white photograph showing a StuG III surrounded by a resting crew, taken on the outskirts of Arnhem during Operation Market Garden.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 04/08/2026

Four months of human plus machine at Evocatus: 1.63m words of working memory, a website brought in-house, and now a new pillar article. "Horizon Scanning: The Discipline of Keeping Watch". Please do give it a read. www.evocatus.co.uk/articles/hor...

evocatus.co.uk

https://www.evocatus.co.uk/articles/horizon-scanning/

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 30/07/2026

The Government has added new risks to the National Risk Register and told us to prepare for power cuts and extreme weather. A register names the risk; a plan only builds confidence once exercised. Which should your team warm up against? #BusinessContinuity #Resilience #ContingencyPlanning

The cover of the 2026 UK National Risk Register, showing a flooded road, with traffic cones and a "Road Closed" sign in the water in the foreground and a presumably abandoned white van in the background.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 28/07/2026

There is always a gap between "Work-as-Imagined" and "Work-as-Done", and human psychology sits in it. Exercising turns the indifferent into advocates, then stress-tests the plan against reality. What plan do you wish you had wargamed first? #Wargaming #ExperientialLearning #ChangeManagement

A sign, with white capitals on a red background, reading "Please use the purpose-made paved path provided" in front of a desire path worn from a pavement across an area of grass to a car park

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 23/07/2026

New leaders mean new teams: forming, storming, norming before performing. Tuckman also saw two development tracks, interpersonal relationships and task activity. Scenario-based exercises build trust and shared mental models, moving a team along both. New team forming? Get in touch.

A photograph of Bruce Tuckman. A man in his late sixties wearing a suit, leaning back on his desk, with a reproduction Van Gogh print on the wall and a bookcase behind him.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 21/07/2026

The UK has a new PM. Whatever your politics, the incoming leader inherits titanic problems and genuine dilemmas from day one. What carries any organisation through a change at the top is rarely the person arriving, but the shared picture of where it is heading when the plan meets reality.

The door to No 10 Downing Street, highly polished and showing the upper stories of the building opposite reflected in it.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 16/07/2026

If a game as simple and abstract as Association Football can offer decision-making at speed, trust and composure under pressure, just imagine what a game designed specifically around the needs of your organisation can do. Get in touch to talk about where you'd like to start.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 14/07/2026

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Patton knew a decision has a shelf life. The 100% solution comes too late; the 70% call in good time wins. Wargames build the confidence to decide on an incomplete picture, where taking too long is just a lesson.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 09/07/2026

A quiet advantage of being based where the work clusters: this week the Defence BattleLab hosted the South West Regional Defence & Security Cluster's Summer Conference at Dorset Innovation Park. The weekly BattleLab Coffee is where it all connects. Where's the local network you draw strength from?

A busy room full of people, including an army officer, at an event for defence innovation, held at the UK Defence Battlelab.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 07/07/2026

Holmes's disease of leadership #7: equating the quality of advice with the rank of the person providing it. The people closest to the problem often have the most relevant insight, and the least chance of being heard. Exercises can build the habit of hearing them, before it matters for real.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 02/07/2026

When the money won't stretch, decisions stop being about the best option and become about the least-bad one: which priority is low enough to reject. Balancing competing priorities is harder than it looks. Rehearsing that trade-off, before it's real, is what we do.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 30/06/2026

Ten years ago, Evocatus was an idea, a logo and a conviction: that the skills of leading and training teams could be applied beyond defence. A decade on, that conviction still drives us, from cyber resilience to early life nutrition. Thank you to all who've come along. Here's to the next ten!

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 24/06/2026

Today is Reserves Day 2026. A reservist brings back leadership under real pressure and calm decisions on incomplete information; the gap they leave is repaid with interest. To the reservists who serve, and the employers who release them: thank you. The value flows both ways.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 23/06/2026

Bowling with the bumpers up: every ball hits, everyone feels like a champ, and nobody learns to bowl. A wargame where no decision can fail is the same thing. If nothing you decided could have failed, it was not a wargame. We're at DSET this week. Come and bowl without the bumpers.

An artificially generated image of a man celebrating successfully bowling a ball on a lane with the bumpers in place.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 18/06/2026

18 June is International Panic Day. Panic is a herd response to the unfamiliar. You keep your head by making sure the moment isn't unfamiliar when it lands. A crisis game lets your team meet the bad day while nothing's at stake. What crisis do you need to inoculate yours against?

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 16/06/2026

A plan you have not tested to destruction is one you do not yet understand; the rest is cheery optimism. Swinton's 1904 Defence of Duffer's Drift made the case for wargaming: fail fast, learn, go again, where failure costs nothing. Where is optimism doing the heavy lifting in your planning?

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 11/06/2026

This Saturday, over 1 300 soldiers make Trooping the Colour look effortless, to the minute. It looks easy only because every fault was found in rehearsal first. Most organisations write a plan and hope. What plan should you be rehearsing before the watching world sees it?

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 09/06/2026

Every plan has two versions: the one on PowerPoint, and the one that happens under pressure. The gap is where things break. Run live exercises long enough and you learn it the hard way. What plan of yours looked great on a slide but was never tested?

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 04/06/2026

86 years ago today, Operation Dynamo ended. 338,000 men came home. Almost nothing else did: 700 tanks, 64,000 vehicles, enough equipment for 10 divisions. Churchill warned the Commons not to mistake survival for victory. Real resilience is maintaining focus until the win is actually won.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 02/06/2026

Most teams don't run shakeouts. They go from PowerPoint to crisis. The first time you discover what you don't know shouldn't be the time when it matters. When did your team last spend a day finding out what doesn't quite work yet?

5 Superfine Black Lumocolours on an Ordnance Survey 1:50K map showing Tidworth, Wiltshire

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 29/05/2026

The British Army ran a NATO corps HQ from a disused tube station last week. The press got the photos. The value was in the notebooks: lessons you only get by actually doing it. What should your team be practising before the crisis?

theguardian.com

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/22/drone-shortage-london-underground-nato-british-military

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Reposted by Evocatus

Ant Sharman @zeroecho.uk · 16/05/2026

New @evocatusuk.bsky.social Gizzits for DSET ‘26 have arrived!

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 07/11/2025

Gaming through #scenarios, incorporating a little #redteaming, is a great way to test the assumptions underpinning your plans before exposing them to the real world. How confident are you that your planning assumptions will hold up when it matters?

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 04/11/2025

At Evocatus, we rarely work alone. We have plenty of skills and experience designing and delivering exercises and wargames, but we have also run enough events to understand the importance of getting the details right, and the value of real subject matter experts to keep our scenarios credible.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 02/11/2025

Socks and Spice take their responsibilities as the Greeting Team for Evocatus Hospitality very seriously. They know that they are responsible for making sure that our regulars keep coming back, whether they are the daily lunchtime walkers or just occasional visitors passing through.

Two Springadors (half lab, half Springer Spaniel) sat politely at the top of the stairs at Evocatus HQ.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 31/10/2025

The orange dice hanging in the cockpit of the Evocatus Hospitality tuk-tuk aren't just there as an excuse for more branding. They are there a reminder of how we approach our work. It's easy to reject dice and games as childish and unprofessional, but we find the reverse to be true.

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 06/10/2025

Our #coffee tuk, fuelling #innovation one cup at a time!

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 15/09/2025

Making exercises better, starting with understanding what good looks like

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 12/09/2025

Exciting, as a veteran owned business, to be included in the #ukinclusivesourcingsummit here in London.Two glorious days of I immersion in genuine diversity!

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 02/08/2025

Never off duty…spotted this on a book shelf in a boutique hotel in Andalusia…

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Evocatus @evocatus.co.uk · 16/06/2025

A big step up for a little company! We are delighted to have hear today that we have been recognised by Defence Relationship Management (DRM) with a Silver Award, building on last year's Bronze. #SilverERS25 #ERS25 #SupportThoseWhoServe #DefenceSupport

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