Management games and business simulations

One thing for sure, they’re great fun! Choosing a management game or simulation for a team event or, for that matter, any event whatsoever, will doubtless get positive reactions.  A game wakes up the competitive spirit and most people quickly get absorbed in the simulation.  An experience you don’t forget in a hurry. However that isn’t to say that the management game or business simulation actually contributes to an improvement in a process, the implementation of change or achieving the learning goals of the participants.

In short, do they deliver? The answer to the question as to whether management games or business simulations genuinely produce results is a resounding yes, providing that....!  There are three important conditions in the design of a management game or simulation which determine if the use of a game for a specific target group will or will not be effective.

Here they are:

1. Recognizable: the degree to which a management game or simulation reflects the actual organization.

A good game or simulation is built on the basis of the reality within an organization. Of course, the designer of the simulation makes well founded choices about which specific part of reality is to be simulated. The best simulations simplify reality until the essence remains, without however, losing the dynamic. In order to retain this combination of simplicity and dynamic, it’s usually necessary to make choices that restrict the simulation to only a few aspects of the organization, such as leadership, communication, change management, logistic processes, co-operation or commerce.

The need for recognition generally means that good management games and business simulations should be built to order for an organization. However, there can be exceptions when certain processes or aspects are the same across many kinds of organizations. Linkxs (co-operation within and between teams), Pygmalion (diversity) and Bizzbuilder (commerce and consumer impact for service providers) are examples of generic management games, which can be used extremely successfully in many different organizations.

2. Relevance: the degree to which the management game or business simulation focuses on the participants own most significant learning goals. 

When the right system for the management game or business simulation has been replicated, the fine-tuning can take place.  During the management game or simulation participants have to be placed in critical situations which challenge them to take difficult decisions, solve predicaments or dilemmas or to demonstrate their competencies in other ways. To make the game relevant, not only the right challenges have to be offered, but also the choices and the behavior of the players must be registered in such a way that the game can make use of them. The game must also be realistic and react in line with the chosen learning goals. The players then get positive results from the game when they make good decisions and show the desired behavior. The intelligent development of a management game or business simulation ensures that the fine tuning can easily be altered. In this way the same game, with a convincing game system (recognition) can be adapted to various target groups and learning goals (relevance).

3. Freedom: the opportunity to try out various approaches

A good game has to provide players with opportunities for extensive experimentation. This means that space must be offered to the players to behave differently and to make other decisions than those that would otherwise be regarded as desirable. As a player it is not motivational to bump up against the boundaries of the simulated world too quickly, Further-more, a simulation should not obviously reward desirable behavior and punish the undesirable. The best simulations are not too normative in the sense that they don’t stimulate ‘one best way’. It is much better to challenge the players to deal with the consequences of their own earlier decisions. A nuanced and elegant link between cause (the choices and behavior of the participants) and the effects players experience in the rest of the game, is an important differentiation between a good and a brilliant simulation.

InContext Consultancy Group designs and guides management games and business simulations for learning, change and the improvement of organizations.

In the next blog I will focus on the guidance and the embedding of a management game or a business simulation in the organization.