Business leaders, mangers of people and processes, and HR Business Partners have heard all the
excuses millions of times about how employees in need of critical skills like Business Acumen can’t make it to the stand-up training session:
- “I’m too busy”
- “It’s going to be boring”
- “How can they teach business acumen in a couple of days when it takes years in a university program?
- “Finance is too complicated”
- “What do I need to know that stuff for, I’m just a {fill in the blank}, I don’t make business decisions”
- “I can’t be away from home”
Whether you care to admit it or not, the hard truth is that training and development is more important than ever. Not only is training employees a great retention tool, but in these highly volatile times, having new skills can help create strategic advantage and drive business results.
Up until the pandemic, self-paced learning was mainly libraries of eLearning that was generally hit or miss. But now, as we come out of the pandemic (hopefully), there are new tools and applications that go far beyond traditional eLearning.
One of those tools is asynchronous, self-paced, digital business simulations. I recently was the executive in charge of the design, development, and deployment of a new, state-of-the art simulation that was built in partnership with one of the world’s leading Business Acumen board game companies, Paradigm Learning. Paradigm’s Zodiak business game has been used by over a million people and they have learned about strategy, finance, and business operations. The digital simulation picks up where the board game ends, and participants in the simulation run the digital Zodiak Pro business simulation for three simulated years setting and executing the strategy of the company. It’s an amazing experience because:
- It is interactive. The simulation is a case study that comes to life and let’s participants learn about business by doing and gaining experiences rather than listen to a talking head babble to participants who have lost interest.
- It’s self-paced. Participants can go through the simulation at their own pace. If they want to spend 30 minutes a day for a couple of weeks, that’s great. If they want to do it in one sitting that’s great as well.
- It works. We recently ran a session for a group of high potential leaders and the feedback scores and comments were tremendous.
- It can be used over and over. Read a book, you are one and done. Go to a class, you are one and done. Go through a simulation? Participants want more and more. We’ve had participants go through our most popular simulations multiple times and our early all-time record is one person went through it 9 times (and yes, each time their financial performance increased, and they got better and better with their strategy and financial performance).
- It provides data analytics. Want to see how your high potentials in R&D did versus the high potentials in Marketing in the digital simulation? Just review the data analytics for insights around the Business Acumen competencies including Strategic Mindset and Financial Literacy. By assessing the data, the Talent Development organization can quickly look for opportunities to close the skill gaps. Traditional methods will take forever as these cloud-based simulations are able to process and provide data and reporting within seconds.
- It’s good for the business. The most important element of using self-paced interactive simulations are the business results. By truly learning the dynamics of business and understanding how all the functions must operate together to drive revenues, profits, and shareholder value, it helps your business.
In summary, things have truly changed forever. Self-paced virtual Business Acumen simulations are incredibly effective and efficient. Participants love them and most importantly, the skills being developed will support the execution of your strategy and the achievement of your business goals and objectives.
