SimDevGroup Database Upate Completed

Hello SimDev Community-

We have some great news to share and are excited to do so. SimDevGroup has successfully completed a lengthy transition to a more modern enterprise database system. You may be asking, "What the heck does this have to do with business simulations, business training simulations, leadership development, or leadership development simulations?" Our reply to that is "Everything!" Most people don't understand that these days, almost all computer systems run off of one sort of database or another. We made a significant investment over the last six months to bring this system beyond up to date. This really is built for the future. The goal is to keep driving down overhead costs to support our ongoing effort to deliver the world's finest business training simulations and leadership development simulations to any corporation in need. The better the systems flow, the more efficient we can be.

Have a great week!
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Leadership Development Simulations Part II

Hello SimDevGroup Community,

We hope your year is as exciting as ours so far. This will be a quick post. Its pretty funny how if we write a blog post about Leadership Development, business simulation enthusiasts want us to provide them information about leadership development. If we write about Business Simulations, Leadership Development professionals want more information about business simulations. After last week's post, we received a good number of requests to reference a 101 guide to leadership development. We do have a recommendation. Its very basic, but a good intro . Its ASTD Leadership Development Basics. This is a good book to introduce the basic needs, importance, and concepts of Leadership Development Training.

We hope this helps!

Leadership Development Simulations

Hello SimDev Community

In 2010, the focus from our customers on leadership development simulations jumped significantly. Thus, we developed a lot of leadership development simulations throughout the year. Needless to say, we gained a lot more experience. By partnering so closely with our customers, we collaboratively built some incredibly exciting leadership development simulation solutions. It was a wonderful year of innovation and experimentation.

Since SimDevGroup is in the business of transferring knowledge, we are going to make a strong effort to share what we learned. This includes what worked and didn't work. Thus, stay tuned and watch for more posts about leadership development and leadership development simulations. If you have any ideas of topics you'd like us to write about, please share them with us and we'll be glad to try and assist.

Have a great week!
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Designing a Program For Training and Development Simulations

Hello SimDev Community-

We hope your new year is starting well. The topic this week: What to keep in mind when designing a training program that utilizes a business training simulation.

The most important thing to remember when thinking about a program that includes a training and development simulation is: Content first, business simulation second. We can't emphasize this enough. There is a tendency in the industry to build a training and development program around a flashy component (the business simulation). We urge you, please resist the temptation and try to recognize it if it creeps into your design thinking.

There tends to be pressure to excite and engage. This is good, but needs to be recognized and controlled. There is a saying by pilots: recognize and avoid "get there-itis. This suggests to avoid hurting yourself in an effort to get to what you think is your end goal. This can cause a loss of fuel and the rest is self explanatory. Build your rock solid and digestible training and development content first, and then build a simulation around that.

The training and development simulation should take your training content and let people apply it. This is a substantial pedagogical difference from assuming the simulation will do the training. To be clear here: Simulation Development companies should not and are usually not very good at making simulations that deliver YOUR training content. You are the expert at developing training content. You are the expert at what your organization needs. You are the expert of modern training and development trends. Why let a software company give you training content? This simply doesn't make sense.

To effectively create a program with a training and development simulation, there should be a highly integrated partnership. When you write a training and development simulation (or hire someone), you should be ready to work very closely at integrating your content with the delivery method of a business simulation.

In summary, it is best to create a training and development business simulation with content that is provided by you. You are the expert in this field and its up to the business simulation developers to effectively apply that content to reinforce and enable participants to apply your content to real world scenarios. This requires an effective and trusting partnership.

Have a great new year and we hope to hear from you soon.
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