Business Training Simulation Facilitation- Give Yourself Some Time!

Hello SimDev Community!

We are entering the tail end of the mass business training simulation facilitation season. This includes business simulations, leadership development simulation, or just the generic business training simulation types. We have noticed a trend that is worrying us. People new to facilitation are giving themselves very little time to facilitate the simulation. This is not a good idea. We very highly urgently recommend you give yourself plenty of time to facilitate a business training simulation. Think we feel strongly about this :) ? We certainly do.

If you give yourself just a little bit of time to facilitate a business training simulation, you will make mistakes and your prep work will be just adequate at absolute best. Net Net: Give yourself more time than you think you need. We can promise you, its more stressful than we make it look. Why? Because we have been facilitating business training and leadership training simulations for a long time. Thus, we can do it in our sleep.

Please, please... give yourself plenty of time to work with the simulation, look at the results, and build a learning story around the simulation. You will be much happier with your results and your participants will learn a lot more.

We hope this helps!

Mobile Site for Business Simulations

Hello SimDev Community-

Last week, Simulation Development Group launched it's mobile site. We're pretty excited. You can now view business training simulations and leadership development simulation related information on the go. The site is optimized for most any mobile device and adjusts on its own. Thus, if you're looking to get information on business training simulation, learning simulations, or leadership development simulations from a desktop or any type of mobile device, the site will automagically adjust.

This is something that is long overdue and we just simply fell behind. But, its up and running. By no means is this final. Its just a starting point. We're going to continue to work on this and refine it over the the next couple of weeks.

To view the site, just to go simdevgroup.com with a mobile device and it will automatically adjust for you.

Enjoy!
SimDevGroup Team

Leadership Development Simulations and "Business"

Hello SimDev Community-

We have written extensively on utilizing a business simulation for leadership development. This is a fantastic solution for your leadership development program. Interestingly, over the past few months, we have had an unusually high number of inquireries regarding the business side of the leadership development simulation. Remember, when we say business, we are speaking generally. Every organization, from education to not for profits has a "business" side to it somewhere. Maybe your "business" is measured in the number of people you make smile. Great! We love it. But then you're in the business of smile development.

We post this note because you shouldn't feel like your organization (or sub-organization) needs to be in "business" because it doesn't. It just needs to have some sort of organization to it where somebody can learn something to better it's desired outcomes.

So, when you think of a business simulation, don't think briefcase, big glass building, and cubes. Think "me!".

Have a great weekend!

April Fools Day Simulation

Hello SimDev Community-

We love pranks, fun, and laughing. Thus, we had to post something on April Fools Day. Did you know that April Fools Day has been traced back to the 1300s. WOW! People have enjoyed pranks and fun for many many years. Wikipedia has an interesting write up about April fools day here: About April Fools Day. What does this have to do with a business simulation, business training simulation, leadership development simulation, business silo simulation, or custom business simulation? Absolutely nothing. We just wanted to wish everyone a happy April Fools Day!

Have fun!
- SimDevGroup Team

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!