Using business simulations for real organisational success

Turning points in an organisation’s history can pivot on any number of conundrums:

• Tackling the different challenges
• Identifying the future markets that represent the best investment opportunities
• Decided whether to centralise or localise cross-group functions
• Knowing how to best respond to changing trading environments with shifting consumer demands
• Judging levels of R&D investment that illuminate future options without jeopardising current or short-term performance
• Managing marketing or distribution strategies across disparate product ranges and customer bases that require different approaches
• Targeting of training investments for maximum short-term impact and long-term sustainability

To succeed when an organisation stands at such a complex junction, its leaders and managers must be able to work together in a pressured environment, collaborating to make sense of complex data, develop innovative solutions and build consensus around a detailed plan of action.

Business simulations are a powerful means to develop this vital ability quickly and safely, and our LEPP (Leading Edge Paper Products Ltd) is a very powerful example. Taking the roles of the senior management team of the company’s three divisions, participants have six hours to agree a course of action that will secure a brighter, more profitable future. Just as in the real world, opportunities are plentiful, data is incomplete and frequently ambiguous, and financial resources are limited.

Close observation and filming allows our facilitators to amass behavioural data to integrate with psychometric and 360 degree reports. And LEPP participants also receive coaching to explore the simulation’s outcomes and help them integrate their learning with ‘real world’ situations.