General Management - our computer-aided simulated business game

Benefits of a fascinating learning tool

• Our computer-aided simulated business game "General Management" proves highly dynamic, with participants becoming oblivious to time and space and "voluntarily" working late into the night.

• The complexity created in the simulated business game makes processes, problems and conduct appear especially realistic. Strengths and weaknesses in communications processes, differences of opinion, etc. appear real, are played out as real and can then be reflected on in depth using video clips.

• General Management has a high "lock-in effect": The desire to complete the simulated business game successfully means the participants become engrossed in the underlying seminar topic, which can be conveyed extremely intensively but almost incidentally.

• The simulated business game directly mimics business processes known to the seminar group. Even if a participant's actual departmental set-up differs from that portrayed in General Management, it is still easy to form analogies.

What happens with "General Management"?

The simulated business game "General Management" uses computer simulation to map the core sections of a company and the business processes occurring within these sections. The participants are grouped into teams and each team is given responsibility for certain areas (marketing; development; production; manufacturing) within the company. Participants are also nominated for the position of General Manager and Controller.

In the simulated game sequences, successful corporate control depends on the interplay between the various sub-teams and individual people. Decisions have to be taken within the various sections and interdepartmental cooperation is required. After each financial year an annual report is issued reviewing overall business performance and analyzing the efficiency of the set-up within the individual departments / sections.

Areas of application

Just as in real business life, decision-making processes can be analyzed from various viewpoints:

• To what extent are the upstream discussion processes characterized by causal / strategic / networked thinking?

• How do communication processes pan out within the individual departments / sections?

• How do the interdepartmental consultation and understanding processes pan out?

• How much importance is attached to the creation of an organizational substructure?

Based on the above, the training objectives and subject focuses can be formulated from the following different viewpoints:

1. Successful teamwork:
   The training objectives and subject focuses can concentrate on teamwork: Knowing how 'successful team leadership' or 'effective cooperation within a team' should look can be worked out very realistically with this simulated game.

2. Interdepartmental cooperation:
   Similarly, the focus can also be switched to analyzing 'interdepartmental cooperation' and/or 'cooperation across the various hierarchical levels'.

3. Networked thinking:
   Training objectives can be formulated at the management level of 'corporate thinking' and/or the closely related subject of 'networked thinking'. General Management requires plans to be made where a number of things relate to many other things and any decision affects a number of other related factors. Just as in the real world of business. Decisions and the associated consequences can be monitored in the simulated game and made transparent in the analysis phases.

4. Organizing work processes:
   General Management can also be used to focus on 'structuring and organizing work processes' as the profile company can't be successfully managed without creating an effective organizational substructure.

Please contact us if you are interested in organizing our simulated business game "General Management" at your company.