Would you like sprinkles with that?

We are increasingly finding the opportunity to delight our clients by offering them more from our bespoke business simulations.

What does this look like?

The commercial justification for a business simulation is typically around strategic execution and leadership (at all levels) alignment. These are extraordinarily important issues which directly determine the success of an organisation. So how can you get more out of a business simulation workshop without diluting? these important goals? I guess the clue is with the word “workshop”. When you physically get your people together, you open up a world of opportunities for more added value. Let me give you a current example from one of our clients, who is raising the bar for return on their investment in a bespoke business simulation.

Their initial business justification was based on supporting and developing the next generation of leaders/top talent. This is extremely important for them as they are growing very quickly and they have identified the availability of future leadership talent as a potential limiting factor.? A bespoke business simulation is great approach for this as it shows participants how the business creates value and allows participants to practise the commercial behaviours behind this value creation.

So how can you add extra value to this already key activity?

Here is what this customer is doing:

1.?????? Participants will work on the business simulation as part of a team (this is part of the fun, as there will be 4 teams competing against each other and who does not like a bit of healthy competition?). Whilst they are working on the simulation, discussing different decisions and their potential impact on their simulated business, each team will be observed by a member of the L&D team. Their observations will help in developing a personal development plan for each participant, identifying areas where additional development and training would have value. For example, how well does the individual participate in the team? Are they collaborative in their approach? How do they go about building consensus for their ideas?

2.?????? Each participant team will have embedded within it a mentor. The mentor’s role is not to lead the team, but rather to help the team to overcome impasses by practising their coaching skills. The mentors will be part of the existing next generation leadership community. This creates an opportunity to observe the next generation leaders in action and again to identify where their coaching and mentoring skills could be further enhanced.

3.?????? Members of the Executive Team will join at the end of the workshop to “check in” with the participants. This creates a brilliant opportunity for both participants and current leaders to understand each other and their relative agendas. For the past two days the participants have been taking the role of the Executive Team in leading their simulated companies, so the level of empathy between these two groups will be very high!

We are excited by how this client is finding additional ways of creating extra value from our work. Given the challenges that 2024 will be placing on budgets and development ambition, we will be working hard to offer extra sprinkles to everyone.

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