Information Explains, Experience Persuades

“…They behaved terribly.

They didn’t take time to understand our business, our strengths as a management team or anything else. They just started imposing their plans and their will. It was horrible.”

The words from a participant describing how she felt as her (simulated) company had been taken over by a competitor and they had been forced to integrate. We could all feel her anger, pain and frustration.

The response from the senior manager co-facilitating the review was incisive:

“Hold that thought. This is only a simulation. Imagine if your livelihood, your home, your career depended on this. You can multiply those feelings by ten...”

The simulation had done its job.

It had created the emotional understanding and provided a bridge to the important discussions that followed.

This was a graduate training programme where our simulation was used as the core of a commercial awareness module. Having run their businesses over a number of rounds, the stronger teams took over the weaker ones.

The combined teams then presented on their vision, the synergies and how they would address the issues of cultural and strategic alignment. We then discussed how the process felt. And then what it meant for their business.

As a simulation developer, I start with two questions. What business issues does the client want to explore? And what do we want participants to experience and feel if they're to truly understand them?

Information explains. If I read about integration or see and hear a presentation, I can learn and develop an understanding. But a simulation gives people the experience of what an integration feels like. And that emotional understanding changes the quality of the discussion.

…and if you were wondering about our unhappy participant. No-one was harmed in the running of the programme. This was one moment in a much bigger learning experience. A programme designed to help participants experience and feel the consequences of behaviour and apply those insights to their working world.