Attention: Facilitating a Business Simulation

Hello SimDev Community

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and a nice time off. As we're rapidly heading towards year end, we thought we'd provide something to think about for 2010. We get more and more calls regarding the possibility of self facilitation of a business simulation for training and development. We are avid supporters of self facilitation. But we are also cautious in your defense.

Most people don't understand the complexity of facilitating a business training simulation. It's an unparalleled tool for modern training and development. With the wonderful applicability and rewards comes complexity. We aren't trying to scare you away because we're quite sure you'll do great. We just want to correctly set expectations and prevent the flash of overwhelming warmth that often comes at the beginning of a new program that has a business simulation.

Keep in mind, you and your team will have to keep track of: Setup, content, facilitation, support, technology setup, technology support, calculations, applications, and presentations. It's all very doable. We just don't want you to underestimate what goes into these. Remember, you'll also probably be trying to manage the rest of your program. A custom business simulation is just another new layer.

Takeaway from this: Take the time to be challenged, learn, and grow with your business simulation. We strongly recommend a pilot program. We've seen a trend to move straight into production level programs and skip the pilot. This is not recommended.

Final Thoughts: Facilitating a business training simulation is incredibly rewarding, applicable, and exciting. It also ads a layer of complexity you should prepare for. It's our job to make sure you're comfortable, confident, and prepared to be a business simulation facilitation rock star. Be comforted in the fact that we take our job seriously.

Have a great week!

Leadership Development And Business Simulations

BUSINESS AND LEADERSHIP- What comes first? Effective leadership or effective business management? There is no right answer.

Pure leadership training programs seem to assume that business management doesn't have to be taken into account. It's either this, or there simply is very little business know-how. We often see this and unfortunately, executives get very frustrated with this.

At the end of any of our work days, almost everything comes down to how effectively we manage our business. Each person’s business may be different from the other’s but we all eventually roll into ensuring that the business we work for is run as a business(aka: effectively). Some people have to worry about profit and loss while other don’t. When it comes to leadership within an organization, leaders have to demonstrate both effective leadership and effective business management. At some point, the two become one. Business relies and leadership and leadership relies on business.

In theory, organization’s that have highly effective leadership are usually business’s that are very successful. Of course, there are exceptions. Thus, we believe if you’re utilizing a business training simulation for leadership development, it’s important to have a business management component. Should it dominate the solution? Nope. It really doesn’t need to be big. But it needs to include a component that demonstrates the relation between effective leadership and business success.

Having the business component also ads a critical component: The business part of the leadership simulation ties your leadership content to tangible and applicable business results. Executives and leaders find this critical and appreciate the connection. Additionally, this helps engage executives around real world outcomes and organically demonstrates the importance of your leadership content.

Question to think about: Does your existing leadership development or executive development content have real world and applicable components that relate to real world business challenges (applicable to the company)? If not, why? These days, people expect an exceptionally high level of applicability. What do you need to do to get to this new level?

Have a super holiday weekend (here in the states).

Training Simulations to Teach Partners

Hello SimDev Community

A trend that has begun to take shape over the last year is using a training simulation to train partner companies. The idea is that in many cases, changing a strategy requires partner companies to be included. Whether the partner is a supplier, a customer, a sales agency, or a contractor. No matter the case, ensuring that the partner company is on board with your requirements is often essential. How does this work?

The training simulation doesn't need to be multi-day, it just needs to focus on what's important: Teaching the importance and advantages of your strategy. This is best accomplished by enabling the participants to experience the advantage of the new strategy (whether it's financial, market share, or position). When participants have the ability to experience the 'why' behind the strategy, this increase comfort and buy-in.

Using a customer business training simulation is also exceptionally engaging. Participants will listen to you, experience the strategy, and get in line with your mutual goals and objectives. This is a quick, easy, and engaging solution that will have immediate impact on your overall business goals.

If you have a partner, contractor, agency, or outside company that is critical to executing your new strategy, think about running them through your business to help increase buy-in and understanding.

Have a nice weekend.

Training To Reduce Business Silos

Hello SimDev Community-

We are now headed towards a new year. Nicely nestled into the Fall season is when companies are traditionally well within their next year's planning process. Let us give you something to think about in the form of a question: "Is it possible to reduce business silos through corporate training and development?" The answer is, "Yes, it's possible." This doesn't mean that it's easy to do.

In our research, business silos are traditionally created due to a lack of communication and a lack of position appreciation. This leads to another question: "How can business training help people to communication more effectively. Even tougher, how can business training teach someone to appreciate another person's role?" There are many many business training solutions to increase communication within a company. We're not going to pretend we are experts at this. We're not.

SimDevGroup is experts at training people to appreciate, understand, and utilize other's roles within the company. How? We do this by utilizing a custom business training simulation. The simulation enables participants to be in charge of another department for a day within the business training simulation. Giving people time in another role without the risk or time commitment to job swapping is invaluable. It's also a lot of fun and highly engaging.

Let's look at an example: How about a simulation where a marketing manager has to be an engineer. At the same time, how about letting an engineer manage marketing. While we do this, how about the business training simulation empowers someone in finance to run a sales group. You probably get the point.

The outcome is traditionally a new culture of appreciation and empathy for other's roles within the organization. It also traditionally increases communication because participants now understand how to better work with other divisions.

All this happens within a single days work. That's a good investment of time.

Have a nice weekend.
.

Learning Corporate Strategy Through Experience

Hello SimDevGroup Community-

Has anyone ever told you their strategy? If so, you've probably said, "Oh great, I see. But why this strategy and how do I fit into it?" This is a very common reaction. How about the other side of the equation... Have you ever told someone your company's strategy and all you see is a slightly tilted head with squinted eyes? Probably. The best way to learn about the 'why' behind a corporate strategy is to experience it. Experience will help your employees learn why you've chosen the strategy and why its the best solution.

The only problem is experience takes a long time and can be risky. This is where a business learning simulation comes in. In a very short amount of time, your employees can quickly learn about your corporate strategy, how they fit in, and how their division can contribute. Best of all, there's next to no risk and its very quick. In one full day, your employees can experience a day in your shoes. This will help answer the questions: Why this strategy, how can I help, and when is this going to happen. These are critical components to a successful strategic execution. Effective strategic leadership requires your employees to learn about your strategy. A custom business simulation is a key and effective solution.

Adaptive Learning Simulations

Hello SimDev Community-

How great would it be if a competitive business learning simulation could learn? Traditionally, competitive simulations have an organic adaptability because we as humans are driving the forces naturally. But what if an additional layer was added at a global level. That would be intense. You may be asking, "What does this mean? And how does this relate to learning simulations for training and development?" Let us explain a little....

Say everyone is making decisions within the simulation as usual. What the simulation would do is dynamically look for trends, patterns, or habits. The sim would then compare this to a standard range. If participants as a whole fell into a new range, the learning simulation would dynamically adjust the entire experience.

In a sense, what this accomplishes is adding linear intelligence. This isn't artificial intelligence by any means. But this changes the rules of the game on the fly. This is similar to what happens in the real world. As crowds congregate, crowd dynamics change organically. The difference here is that the learning simulation would set the new changes based on crowd movement.

We thought a learning simulation that watches, learns, and reacts is the next logic step in the evolution of business learning and training simulations.

Thoughts?
.

Software vs. Business Acumen vs. Leadership Development Simulations

Hello Simdev Community-

We apologize for a tardy post. It's been a little hectic lately, but we're back with a post about Simulation Software vs. Business Acumen, vs. Leadership Development. Here goes:

What is the different between Custom Business Training Simulation Software, Business Acumen Simulation, and Leadership Development Simulations? Answer: TONS! It feels like we have two camps of people who call us: Those that want leadership development training simulation and those that are looking for more of a business acumen simulation. Remember, we are a software development firm that specializes in developing custom business simulations for corporate development. So thus, software would be called a 'Global Parameter' when coding. This means that all of our business simulations are software based (aka: we aren't a consulting firm). But, do to the nature of this job, we have a very very firm understanding of corporate development practices and the needs of effective leadership development.

On to business acumen vs. leadership development. Without going into too much detail: Business acumen could be viewed as a technical skill. This often helps answer questions such as, "How does the business work? How do I manage and income statement? How do I effectively grow the business while managing cash flow?" In comparison, leadership development might answer questions such as, "How do I become an effective leader? How do utilize the internal leadership competencies? How do I effectively manage and grow diverse global organizations?"

Here's the catch: To be an effective Senior Manager: You need both business acumen and leadership development. A custom business training simulation should have both of these qualities. This will help develop your bench for tomorrow.

Ok, in summary: Business Acumen is having a solid foundation of effective business management skills and Leadership Development has a solid foundation of effective people and business leadership management. From our perspective, they are all developed in software to enable your leaders to practice business acumen and apply your internal leadership models.

Have a great week!
.