A few days ago, I received a call from Adil Malia, Ex-Group President HR of the Essar Group. He shared pleasantries and then proceeded to congratulate me on the business simulation work that I had been doing with various corporates. (Leaders like Adil exemplify greatness because they have a way of raising our self-esteem to great heights.)
A few minutes into the call, he asked me this question: “Solomon, which is that game you conduct, where people wear cowboy hats and bandanas? Can you also tell me, what does that game focus on?”
I was a bit surprised to hear this question from Adil, considering the fact that I’ve known him for almost a decade now. I have met him many times in various conferences and in his erstwhile office, when I was invited by Dr. Sujaya Banerjee, the Chief Talent Officer of Essar Group, to conduct one of our workshops called “Organizational Alignment using Square wheel and Round wheel tools”.
I always thought he knew about the game with the cowboy hats and bandanas, which has now been conducted in over 40 countries and experienced by over 4,00,000 professionals worldwide. As a facilitator of the business simulation myself, I have had the opportunity to train thousands of participants in multiple organizations.
I think that just like Adil, many of you reading this article may be curious to know more about our flagship program for leaders. Here is more information about it:
A Business Simulation, as a concept, is learning by doing, learning by practicing, learning from failing and learning from others’ failures. In a simulated environment, an individual is immersed in an experience that triggers their natural behaviours – the same behaviors that they display in their professional and personal lives. Over the course of the workshop, they come to some very important realizations of themselves, which I will explain as we go ahead.
The business simulation which Adil was enquiring about is called: “The Search for the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine”, created by Dr. Scott Simmerman of the Performance Management Company, USA.
“The Search for the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine” is a 4-hour simulation, where participants, in a simulated environment, will have to travel to the mountains of Arizona, and mine as much gold as they can in a 20-day journey.
Through the simulation experience, individuals display their natural levels of key competencies and behaviors like Strategy, Execution, Risk- taking, Decision making, Trust on leadership, Resource maximization and most important of all Collaboration.
They are given responsibilities and offered great opportunities to mine more gold but in many cases, their behaviors or lack of the competencies mentioned, become their biggest roadblocks in achieving success.
The focus of the debriefing session is for the facilitator to help participants reflect and realize the behaviors displayed by them and the impact they created on the goal of the organization. ‘What Was Possible vis-a-vis What Was Achieved’ is the essence of the dialogue process during debrief or ‘The Intangibles Moving the Tangibles’.
The simulation is conducted for 20 to over 300 + participants in one conference setting. To exemplify a large format, a workshop was conducted for approximately 850 participants in a single session by Capt. Shantanu Chakravorty for IT conglomerates’ Sales & Program Management Conferences in Colombo/ New York / Goa and multiple times for 350 + participants. He has also had the honour to facilitate a workshop where the current Indian Prime Minister (Ex- CM of Gujarat) and also the Ex – CM of Delhi were active participants, along with a host of other luminaries from the International Sports and Corporate Arena.
In India, most of the Top 10 organizations in IT / ITES, Pharma, FMCG, Banking, Financial services, Manufacturing and other domains have experienced this simulation. Here is the list of some of the organizations we have experienced this simulation with:
| Infosys | TCS | Wipro | Capgemini |
| Cognizant | WNS | Colgate | Hindustan Unilever |
| Asian Paints | Ultratech | Reliance | Mahindra & Mahindra |
| BNP Paribas | Deutsche Bank | Citibank | DBS Bank |
| State Bank of India | Bank of Baroda | JP Morgan | BCCL |
| Abbott | Glenmark | UFO Movies | EY |
Construct of the simulation: There are four parts to the simulation i.e. Briefing, Strategy, Simulation and Debriefing.
Briefing: During the briefing, participants are informed about the various rules of engagement and the roles that the members need to take. Energy is built in by the teams through war cries and team name allocation drills.
Time: 45 – 50 minutes
Strategy time: During strategy time, teams have to choose a route to travel to the mine and take a different route back within the 20-day journey. They will also strategize how much gold to mine, how much of resources will be required, what the resource mix would be, anticipating the different weather conditions and lastly, what additional tools and resources they can use to maximize the gold mined.
Time – 15 minutes Table Top
Simulation Execution: During the business simulation, participants will execute the strategy and start their journey to go to the mine, then mine as much gold as they decided and return safely to the base camp. During this time the teams exhibit natural behaviors and there is very little interference by the Lead facilitator as that is the intent. Moreover, teams shout out their cheer cries and do their high fives and the mood is Electric!!
Time – 50 – 60 minutes
Debriefing: The debriefing is purely focused on the behaviors demonstrated by the teams.
Some of the questions the facilitators ask are:
- Did the teams strategize to maximize the amount of gold they mined for the organization?
- Were they able to execute their strategy successfully?
- Did they take risks?
- Did they make decisions in a short period of time?
- Did they trust the leaders?
- Did the leaders trust their teams?
- Did they collaborate internally and externally to maximize the gold? (This is also the ‘Penny Drop Moment’)
The debrief session creates an environment where the participants realize how they could have performed certain things differently and in a much better way, to achieve successful outcomes. The transformation is so tangible that they enjoy sharing their experiences with everyone in the session and commit to changes that they would make going forward.
Time – 60 minutes to Half-day (Varies Based on Client Need)
I hope this would have given you an abstract view of our flagship simulation.
To conduct this world-class business simulation for your teams or to know more, please feel free to write to us:
Solomon Salvis: solomons@simurise.com
Capt. Shantanu: captshantanu@simurise.com
Jyoti Kulkarni: jyoti@simurise.com
Sanjeev Somanath : sanjeev@simurise.com
Or visit our website www.simurise.com to know more.
