The Business Case Study re-imagined…and becomes a source of competitive advantage

Drive amazing changes in employee capability by letting your learners loose to play and succeed in a realistic, simulation that is a metaphoric representation of your own organisation. The approach works equally well in virtual or face to face training sessions.

You can create truly exception learning opportunities for your employees by utilising our special, custom written business case studies. We work with you to create a metaphoric case study (uniquely designed to allow your learners to “grapple” with the opportunities, challenges and culture found in your organisation). Because the case study organisation is fictitious, but highly realistic – it provides the ultimate safe place to learn and develop a range of organisational capabilities / skills. Typically, our case studies have been used develop the following: -

?Organisational capabilities?

Strategy development, Managing Change, Project Management, Business Improvement, Leadership Development, New product or service development, Cultural Development, Employee Engagement, Financial Awareness, Commercial Thinking, Customer Journeys and Service Design

?Business Skills

Internal Consulting Skills, Business Analysis, Problem Solving, Teamwork, Decision Making Techniques, Analytical Thinking, Presentation Skills, Influencing Skills, Negotiation Skills, Assertiveness, Agile Thinking and Facilitation

Our recommended delivery style maximises the immersive nature of the learning; many of our learners will naturally say these two types of comments: -

?"This organisation just feels like our place!"

"These characters and problems all feel real – why haven’t I heard of this company?"

?The background to our case study service

1.0??????Why are traditional business case studies ineffective?

Business case studies have a patchy position within the ecosystem of employee development. Firstly, in my experience many training organisations and in-house training teams simply don’t consider using them; and in the infrequent examples when they do – traditionally they choose either a) a prewritten academic style business case (about a real organisation) or b) a simplistic fictional representations of an organisation. Both types of traditional business cases provide some support to learning, but come with significant drawbacks: –

?Academic style business cases - drawbacks

• The scenario (in the business case) covered rarely relates directly to the client organisation
• The outcome of the business case is often already known
• There is little focus on individual leaders/stakeholders (and little scope for role plays)
• Operational data is absent or limited
• The business case represents a single point in time

?Simplistic, fictional business cases – drawbacks

• ?The business case scenario lacks detail and therefore appear shallow and unrealistic
• Decision-making appears simple – unrepresentative of the complex, multi-factor situations of real-life
• Superficial character development fails to support exploration of organisational “politics”?
• Trainers avoid role-plays – and therefore do not maximise learning

?2.0??????What’s different and significantly BETTER about our approach

Shifting Minds has developed a way of designing and using business case studies that revolutionises the quality and effectiveness of learning. We call our approach “Metaphoric business case studies.” The benefits of our approach are: -

?Targeted and highly relevant learning – more learning per training hour

• Complex scenarios that mirror own organisation – learning is transferable and facilitates improvement in own organisation
• Learning includes all Learning styles – learners become highly engaged
• Scenarios can evolve over multiple time periods – showing how business improvement develops overtime
• Our designs and training are multi-layered – resulting in more broadly developed learners

3.0??????How would we work with you...

We work with client organisations or training providers to fully understand the specific learning needs of employees. This is a very precise process – we are looking to understand what knowledge, skills, behaviours, and mindsets need to be instilled during the learning process. We are interested in specific organisational / process challenges and local cultural realities. We then look to create a metaphoric organisation – often based in a structurally similar context, albeit in another sector. We then get to work creating an artificial “world” that learners can immerse themselves in over typically two or three iterations. These metaphoric business case “worlds” come complete with the following elements: -

1. A detailed briefing scenario - which often includes background information on the organisation, current specific challenges, and email exchanges leaders to the learners. The briefing scenario also explains the role of the learners e.g. part-time management consultants or part-time project managers?
2. Detailed operational data; again, mimicking the kinds of information used by the learners in their own organisation. This data is normally spreadsheet and can be “modelled” ahead of any decision-making
3. Biographical portraits of key leaders and stakeholders; including, organisational charts
4. Physical layouts of locations, and detailed information on products and services
5. ?Temporal development; team see how the scenarios develop over time; often set against the organisation’s project management frameworks

?It is worth stressing that all the above information will have resonance with the learners – it is quite common to hear individuals say – “this is a lot like our place!”

?4.0??????How we deliver our case studies (or coach you do deliver them)

?Many years of experience has fine-tuned our recommended approach: -

?·????????Create teams of 4 to 6 participants

·????????Teams in competition with each other

·????????Set specific and demanding tasks for completion

·????????We encourage to use the skills, tools and techniques taught on the broader programme

·????????Keep the pressure on – using time constrained deadlines

·????????Role play meetings with senior stakeholders (Course Leaders in roles)

·????????Role play interim / final meetings – with other team(s) playing case study characters

·????????We expect the development of options (for the way forward)

·????????We insist on the seeing the financial analysis – Benefits vs Costs of options

·????????Ensure reflection on individual / team performance, and provide high quality feedback

?We also provide a Train-the-Trainer option to coach your in-house trainers to deliver the case studies effectively; thus, building your own capability?

5.0??????Sample client assignments

?Global FMCG Business

Case study written to support the delivery of a pan-European “Improving Business Performance Programme” of hi-potentials. We developed and used the GHPA Supermarket Case study depicting a business facing simultaneous, twin challenges of “Transformative and Business as usual” changes

?UK Health Charity

Case study written to support the development of change management skills within the charityWe developed and used the “Rescue Group” Case study; an organisation challenged with developing a more effective management approach to its revenue and services?

?Global Insurance Company

Case study written to support the accelerated development hi-potentials from the global operation. We developed and used the “Sports world” case study; and let the learners work through the strategic options for the next 3 years for x3 levels of the organisation

Next steps

If you think your organisation would benefit from our unique service – then contact Paul Wahlhaus - Director Shifting Minds on 07956 290 127 (+44 7956 290 127 if outside the UK). Alternatively contact Paul on [email protected]