Some large companies have regular situations where they want an effective experiential learning event for large groups of employees or managers. A large Canadian retailer purchased our Professional Version of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine so that they could regularly run sessions of 50 to 100 people in their stores and in their regions.
There are few programs that work with groups this big, that are this dependable and effective, and which are as downright inexpensive as Lost Dutchman (or Square Wheels)!
Here are Kyla’s comments in their entirety:
I led the Search for The Lost Dutchman’s gold mine for our Store Manager development as part of their annual store manager’s conference. One of the areas the company wanted to focus on was collaboration. Our Store Managers do a good job collaborating within their teams; however, they viewed the other teams as competitors and didn’t share best practices to help the organization achieve better results. Since the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine was about collaborating both among and between teams, I thought this exercise would be perfect.
The feedback from the participants was fabulous. Comments included:
- Very effective activity. It made all of us take a different look at the way we currently do business and realize how much better we could all be.
- Certainly changed my thinking of collaboration. Pushed the “big picture” home. Was entertaining and fast paced-so much more enjoyable than a download of info.
- Best morning that I have ever spent at a conference. It was enlightening and enjoyable…perfect way to learn.
- I think everyone in our session learned a valuable lesson, in that we could have earned more gold with better co-operation among teams …everyone would win was the lesson.
- Shows we still have a ways to go, we need to learn where to focus our competitive tendencies (on our competitors not between ourselves)
- It really makes you stop and think of the importance of teamwork, not just at store level, but between stores, offices and warehouses.
- Very impactful in relating to looking at our business but in a different way, but in the end it’s all about TEAM.
During the game, there were a few “aha” moments but what really brought the point home was the debriefing. There was a lot of great debriefing material to use and I focused on how the game paralleled our business and how much better the results could be if we collaborated better as an organization.
Scott was extremely supportive and was always available to answer my questions or give me suggestions. I would recommend this game to anyone that wanted to build collaboration among and between teams. It is fun and effective!
After renting the game to initially test it with two large groups, we bought the Professional Edition to run this company-wide.
Kyla, Director, Learning and Development with a large retailing organization
In the words of George Peppard in the old TV show, The A-Team,
I love it when a plan comes together!
Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com
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Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Testimonials on Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine 