Why A Business Simulation for Training and Development

Hello SimDev Community-

We have covered this topic one way or another, but not directly. Why use a business simulation for learning and development? There are many answers, but the easiest is: A Business Simulation helps change things quicker. When we say things, we really mean behavior. The whole goal of training is to create positive change. The best way to create change is to let people try a theory and learn themselves. The learning then becomes natural. Simply telling a manager, "these leadership competencies are good" is rarely enough. They need to try applying the competencies to experience how it positively impacts their business.

This brings us to a second important point. A business simulation is best when it applies to their business. A generic business simulation helps, but isn't optimal. A custom business simulation that is not just tailored, but completely customized around a business works best. This way, the participants are given the opportunity to try the learning content theory on their own business. Thus, the solution is far more applicable. This accomplishes a few important aspects of learning:

1. A business simulation enables participants to try your training and development content
2. A custom business simulation enables participants to try your training and development content on their business
3. A custom business simulation quickly changes behavior which helps a company quickly move in the direction needed

We're going to continue to talk about this in the future, but thought this would be a good place to start.

Have a great weekend!

Self Facilitated Leadership Development Simulations Made Easier

Hello SimDevGroup Community-

Considering the clear upward trend of self facilitated leadership development business simulations, we have been conducting some extensive R&D into how to make the process even easier for the facilitator(s). We have succeeded.

As we have mentioned in many other posts regarding business training simulation self facilitation, its not always an easy task. Thus, we set out a little over a year ago to make it easier. We were so serious about this, we devoted 35% of our entire R&D budget towards making facilitation of a business training simulation easier. We're happy to say that it has paid off.

Its difficult to explain the process in text, but we have the process down to 3 easy steps that takes under 1 minute. Of course, facilitating a business training simulation for leadership development (or any development) is a bit trickier than this. But managing the simulation itself is a lot easier. You already have the expertise to facilitate, now you'll have the confidence to manage the business training simulation on your own.

We plan on integrating this process in April. All self facilitated business training simulations or leadership development simulations will now have this new process.

Many hours went into developing this process and we'd like to thank our engineers for thinking like a user. You have made leadership development simulations and business simulations even more accessible.

Have a great remainder for the week.

250K Calculations Business Simulation

Hello SimDev Community!

By no stretch of the imagination is this a mini business simulation. We are in the midst of building one of our biggest business simulations yet. So far, we've past the 250K simultaneous calculations threshold. Wow! That's a lot. This solution is built in Obj-C so its Mac based only (or iPhone, but that's a bit much of the iPhone). This particular sim took us about a month to create. We're are estimating this particular business training simulation will land at around 300K calculations in total. The amazing thing is that it runs without breaking a sweat on a 3 year old laptop. This just goes to show the power of running modern business training simulations. The computing power is there no problem.

I know what you're saying, "But you guys are always talking about the advantages of smaller business training simulations for leadership development or organizational development." We know. But when a customer has specific needs, we do the big stuff too. As we've stated before: A business training simulation or leadership development simulation needs to work from the training objectives backwards. Thus, in this case, a larger business simulation was necessary. Its actually a lot of fun to write.

Have a great week!