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Consortium: balancing collaboration with negotiation

Collaborating and negotiating in a safe space

Consortium is a high-stakes simulation that challenges participants to work across organisational boundaries. It’s ideal for building collaborative leadership, negotiation skills, and financial fluency in complex, multi-party environments. In this simulation, you will:

  • Develop practical negotiation skills through real-time trade-offs
  • Learn to collaborate while managing individual business interests
  • Deepen financial acumen in a complex business
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How Consortium can help your business

In Consortium, participants represent competing businesses that must work together to deliver a joint pilot project. The opportunity is too large for any single company to manage alone. Over four simulated weeks, teams will balance strategic alignment, operational execution, and shifting stakeholder needs, all while trying to ensure the long-term success of their own business.

Consortium develops key leadership skills across three domains:

Financial acumen

  • Working with a realistic P&L and tracking financial KPIs
  • Balancing cost and revenue decisions to protect business viability
  • Understanding financial consequences of operational decisions

Collaboration

  • Applying collaboration models to build shared goals
  • Knowing when to act independently and when to align
  • Navigating tensions between cooperation and competition

Negotiation

  • Aligning success criteria with the customer and other teams
  • Managing competing priorities within the consortium
  • Reaching mutually beneficial compromises under pressure

At a glance

  • Duration: Consortium is played over two to three hours
  • Scenario: Your business must join a consortium to deliver a complex pilot project. You’ll need to collaborate with rivals, negotiate with stakeholders, and deliver operational success under pressure. Your decisions will determine whether your consortium secures the long-term contract
  • Skillsets: Financial acumen, collaboration and negotiation

Who Consortium is for

Consortium suits teams and consultancies who need to build collaboration skills across organisational boundaries, particularly where success depends on aligning with parties who are also competitors. Its P&L mechanics also make it a strong fit for financial acumen work that has to hold commercial self-interest and shared goals in tension at the same time.

Talk to us about Consortium

See how Consortium builds collaboration and negotiation skills under real commercial tension.