Simulation game as a diagnosis of a company?
You are here:
Simulation game as a diagnosis of a company?
- Joanna Czerska
Is a simulation game just a training tool? Or is it something more? Our oldest game is now 17 years old and has allowed us to discover the power of simulation. Read on to discover what we found . . .
The goal of the game
For over a dozen years, we have been conducting a training game called “The Factory of Complicated Equipment ®”. Its goal is to introduce participants to Lean Management tools, give them a first-hand Lean experience and engage them in building solutions on their own. Afterwards, participants are encouraged to bring the proposed solutions to their work environment by participating in an improvement project – implementing Lean Thinking.
But there is something more . . .
The goal of the game seems simple, and indeed it is easy to achieve. Still, years of experience of introducing people from different companies to Lean ways of working gave us food for thought. As it turns out, even though the conditions and design of the game are the same, and it provides the same learnings for each team, the problems that each team encounters when they play it are different! Consequently, teams come up with their own solutions and achieve unique results.
Discoveries . . .
After just 3 years of running “the game” we began to wonder what was behind this. Why do different teams “create” different problems, introducing additional scenarios into our training? We accepted this, and started to carefully observe the participants to prepare for further cooperation with the team, having already made these first “discoveries” even without entering the company.
It turned out that the early “discoveries” made during the game were confirmed in reality when we started analyzing company data and observing processes. And the problems we had solved together with the participants during the game come later back in the form of real problems and real cooperation.
In addition, we discovered that the game helps identify natural leaders who, given leadership positions in the “real world” will do great! Unfortunately, we could also see the opposite – leaders who don’t do well in the game also don’t do well in the real world.
What is our conclusion?
The best summary came from an owner, who was a “silent” observer of the game we conducted at his company:
What have you guys done to us?! Have you arranged some kind of assessment center? I was struggling with problems but I couldn't see in the daily flurry of information what I saw during this game: the source of these issues. I was watching the simulation and felt that I could see our problems clearly -- your game showed me their source. Damn! There's a lot of work ahead of us! And it's not quite where I had expected it would be . . . .
These experiences motivated us to develop games, which today we use at every possible opportunity. They help people see new possibilities and reduce fears and anxieties. They also help managers find “diamonds in the rough” which, properly “polished”, lead to real results.
