Have a great week!
.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
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!
.
Have a great week!
.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
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!
We hope this helps!
Thursday, January 13, 2011
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!
.
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!
.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
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.
.
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.
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.
.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Top 5 Trends of 2010
Hello SimDevGroup Community-
Wrapping up a great year for business training simulations, we thought it would be appropriate to review the top trends we saw for 2010. Ten is too many, so we capped it to five. Easier to digest and in general more informative. Here goes from 5 to 1:
Trends in Business Training Simulations and Corporate Training and Development:
5. Simplicity- We clearly saw the training and development community wise up and we are ecstatic! Simulations don't need to be monstorous and shouldn't be! You need to focus on what's important: your training and development content. A business training simulation is simply a tool to support your corporate training content. Stay focused!
4. Leadership Development- From our perspective, it looks like companies have decided to invest heavily in their top talent. With the background and demographics of top talent changing, it was very clear that the training and development community decided it was important to engage people in the utilization of the internal leadership competencies. We're doing back flips over this and participants love it. People really seem to resonate with applying leadership competencies to the business. It was an exciting year for leadership development.
3. Very Focused, Very Efficient- This has to be the results of a tough economy and in our humble opinions, this is fantastic. Corporate Training and Development managers seemed to have focused brilliantly on what is most important: Apply the critical corporate training and development objectives. Focus is a great thing and corporations usually wind up stronger in the long run.
2. Challenging Participants (and themselves)- We're talking corporate training and development managers going well beyond powerpoint. Corporate Training and Development managers sat around tables and said, "We really need to push participants out of their comfort zone and challenge them." From our perspective, you did a sensational job at achieving this. We watched participants, squirm, sweat, and really think hard about applying your content. Well done!
1. Self Facilitation- It seems as though times have clearly changed in this decade. As a quick statistic, we saw a 47% rise in self facilitation in 2010 alone. WOW! This is fantastic and we applaud your bravery. As many learned, facilitating a custom business training simulation is not for the faint at heart. Most performed very very well, but learned its not as easy as it appears. Keep it up!
This is it. The top five trends we saw for 2010. We think that in general, these are trends in the right direction. Well done and please keep up the good work, focus, and bravery.
Cheers to 2011! Its going to be a terrific year.
.
Wrapping up a great year for business training simulations, we thought it would be appropriate to review the top trends we saw for 2010. Ten is too many, so we capped it to five. Easier to digest and in general more informative. Here goes from 5 to 1:
Trends in Business Training Simulations and Corporate Training and Development:
5. Simplicity- We clearly saw the training and development community wise up and we are ecstatic! Simulations don't need to be monstorous and shouldn't be! You need to focus on what's important: your training and development content. A business training simulation is simply a tool to support your corporate training content. Stay focused!
4. Leadership Development- From our perspective, it looks like companies have decided to invest heavily in their top talent. With the background and demographics of top talent changing, it was very clear that the training and development community decided it was important to engage people in the utilization of the internal leadership competencies. We're doing back flips over this and participants love it. People really seem to resonate with applying leadership competencies to the business. It was an exciting year for leadership development.
3. Very Focused, Very Efficient- This has to be the results of a tough economy and in our humble opinions, this is fantastic. Corporate Training and Development managers seemed to have focused brilliantly on what is most important: Apply the critical corporate training and development objectives. Focus is a great thing and corporations usually wind up stronger in the long run.
2. Challenging Participants (and themselves)- We're talking corporate training and development managers going well beyond powerpoint. Corporate Training and Development managers sat around tables and said, "We really need to push participants out of their comfort zone and challenge them." From our perspective, you did a sensational job at achieving this. We watched participants, squirm, sweat, and really think hard about applying your content. Well done!
1. Self Facilitation- It seems as though times have clearly changed in this decade. As a quick statistic, we saw a 47% rise in self facilitation in 2010 alone. WOW! This is fantastic and we applaud your bravery. As many learned, facilitating a custom business training simulation is not for the faint at heart. Most performed very very well, but learned its not as easy as it appears. Keep it up!
This is it. The top five trends we saw for 2010. We think that in general, these are trends in the right direction. Well done and please keep up the good work, focus, and bravery.
Cheers to 2011! Its going to be a terrific year.
.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Happy Holidays!
The holidays have snuck up on us as it seems to have everyone. We've been very busy developing customer business training simulations for the new year. Looks like many people have big training plans for Q1 and Q2. Thus, we're almost at full capacity. Feels like training and development activity seems to be climbing and we're happy to see everyone very busy.
We'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you. We feel very lucky to have worked with the wonderfully smart and devoted training and development managers this year. We have felt the pressure you have felt and from our perspective, its been a great year of interesting and well thought out business training simulations. We applaud you and your dedication to your profession.
Our holiday hours will be here and there. We have a lot of work to do for Q1 so we'll probably still be floating around the office. Feel free to give us a call or drop us a note. We'd be happy to talk.
Happy Holidays and cheers to new business simulations in the new year!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Its A Cloudy Day
Hello SimDev Community-
Its a cloudy day here. Its raining outside and inside for us. Yes, of course we're talking about the weather. We're also talking about cloud computing. It's been awhile since we've mentioned this. Instead, we've been focusing on Business Silos, Business Simulation Facilitation, Business Training Simulations, and Leadership Development Simulations. But this doesn't mean we forgot about cloud based computing. Of course we haven't. Cloud based computing is really the future of computing.
Some day, the internet will be as common as electricity. No matter where we go, we will be electrified by the internet. Think about it: Cars have electricity, boats have electricity, airplanes have electricity. Heck, even submarines have electricity. Lets apply that to the internet. Some day, no matter where we are, we will have the internet. We're in the early stages of this with devices such as Android or iOS. Much of our lives are connected in one way or another.
Thus, we're developing solution for the future that are entirely cloud based. We're hoping to begin to roll out a cloud based business training simulation in the first half of 2011. Of course, we're going to take baby steps to ensure quality and usability. SimDevGroup actually already uses various cloud solutions. We just keep it invisible and call it "Magic". Our cloud based business training simulations are part of the reason we can offer such world class solutions at canned prices. This is because we don't own or manage much infrastructure. Most of our customers like this even though they don't say, "Hey, thanks for utilizing the distributed redundant live syncing and app services." In any case, we're happy to make business training simulations and leadership development simulations accessible to everyone.
Have a great week.
Some day, the internet will be as common as electricity. No matter where we go, we will be electrified by the internet. Think about it: Cars have electricity, boats have electricity, airplanes have electricity. Heck, even submarines have electricity. Lets apply that to the internet. Some day, no matter where we are, we will have the internet. We're in the early stages of this with devices such as Android or iOS. Much of our lives are connected in one way or another.
Thus, we're developing solution for the future that are entirely cloud based. We're hoping to begin to roll out a cloud based business training simulation in the first half of 2011. Of course, we're going to take baby steps to ensure quality and usability. SimDevGroup actually already uses various cloud solutions. We just keep it invisible and call it "Magic". Our cloud based business training simulations are part of the reason we can offer such world class solutions at canned prices. This is because we don't own or manage much infrastructure. Most of our customers like this even though they don't say, "Hey, thanks for utilizing the distributed redundant live syncing and app services." In any case, we're happy to make business training simulations and leadership development simulations accessible to everyone.
Have a great week.
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