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| Can The Workplace Teach Experience? |
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| Nation - Workplace | |||
| TS-Si News Service | |||
| Sunday, 24 August 2008 17:30 | |||
Minnetonka, MN, USA. The notion of experience can be problematic to us as individuals. Broadly stated, we participate in events or activities that permit the accumulation of knowledge or skill. At worst, our memories of prior opinions are applied uncritically to new situations. But at its best, the possession of experience can inform creative problem solving.
Can we pass on experience to others in a way that prevents the inevitable mistakes and dead-ends that accompany our progress through life.
The good and bad of our individual ability to acquire and disseminate experience can find their way into collective behavior. Many veterans of business operations claim you cannot teach experience. Just consider how many job applicants face Human Resource (HR) departments that impose extensive — and often conflicting — criteria on the applicant that demand certain experiences for what otherwise might be easily aquirable skills (based on processes learned in prior experiences).
Learning change from collective experience
At an even higher level, the interaction of organizations depends on the collective behavior of separate groups with differing aggegations of skills and experience. However, researchers report in ICT Results that you can learn from the experience of others to improve decision making. [N1]
A research team has developed software that helps players acquire real-life skills and realistic experiences through game playing. The interactive software has caught the imagination of world-class business colleges in the USA and elsewhere, prompting enormous interest in leading corporations. The game, called ChangeMasters®, promises "Rapid change with pragmatic results" and represents an emerging shift in business education, based on realistic computer games. [N2,4]
 Colleges and companies believe it gives students real-world skills through experience, which "… is the best and simplest way to learn anything … that is why it is so valued in the business world,” explains Professor Albert A. Angehrn. [N3] ChangeMasters focused on change management, one of the most important elements of modern business.
Change is essential to responding to dynamic markets, consumers, competitors and innovation, and change is one of the most important themes in corporation history.
Protectionism was replaced by globalization, in-house departments to outsourcing, functional to process-oriented organisation. Change is constant. Even housekeeping tasks, like moving to new computer systems, or daily business activities like new product development require changes to the way an organization works.
Serious executive games
Sponsors of the new product claim that an indivdual can use gaming software to become a master in the martial art of business. But change is hard, rarely goes smoothly and often courts disaster. The idea gere is to make the process easier by equipping executives with real-life skills and realistic project management experience using a serious game in an attempt to achieve real-world results through videogame technology.  The game contains hundreds of parameters to define the corporation, its people and the project. “It defines the corporation’s character and culture, formal and informal networks, all the elements that compose the dynamics of an organisation,” says Angehrn. It attempts an accurate representation of Asian, Latin American, and Western cultural attitudes. Angehrn notes that “In China, for example, etiquette and attitudes are very different, so a successful strategy in Europe might fail in China. ChangeMasters can reflect these cultural differences.”
It also uses the informal aspects of corporate life. Informal networks, like the water cooler or coffee room, the psychological attitude of individuals, like openness or resistance to change, and even the status of individuals within the organisation.
“Some people have enormous influence in a corporation or department through their reputation, or their informal networks of co-workers.” Typically, teams of managers work together to play a game for 90 minutes. “It is not aimed at individuals,” says Angehrn, “And we recommend that it is run as a seminar, with a large number of staff forming teams to run through the change scenario, but some companies, like Ikea, run the game in small workshops.”
Compulsion has limits
The game allows teams to employ
 theory through various strategies, including compulsion, but each strategy chosen affects other parameters that can blow up later. “Compulsion is not very effective,” warns Angehrn, “Because it can increase resistance.” Just like in real life. Afterwards, the game players are debriefed on their strategy and the lessons of the exercise are driven home.
The game is very difficult. “Nobody wins, nobody manages a painless project. I think this is the way it should be, it should be challenging and it should reflect real life. It tests the limits of managers’ confidence. The idea is for people to learn lessons and acquire new skills before carrying out a task in a realistic scenario,” Angehrn explains. But for all its difficulty, the game is not insincere. “People wouldn’t play the game, or would complain about it loudly if they thought it was ‘fixed’,” reveals Angehrn. In fact the opposite is the case, and players rave about the impact of learning sessions, commenting that it has changed their way of approaching a project. They say it gives them new tools, and a new understanding of the issues involved in change management.
Not a Second Life
The game does not look like many modern games. “We initially produced an interface like the online game, Second Life. It had a 3D, richly visual environment. But executives spent too much time exploring the environment rather than playing through the games,” he says.
Instead, the screen uses graphs, text and buttons to offer an overview of the game status, track emerging developments and offer players a choice of actions. The game incorporates the familiar tools of corporate communication, including newsletters, emails, memos, executive information systems (EIS) and formal networks like personnel in a specific department.
ChangeMasters refined the technical platform and launched offices throughout Europe under the brand AlphaExperiences. Initially, it is offering change management as the primary product, but the game engine itself could be adapted to other scenarios, like product development, and the partners will work on expanding that content.
Ultimately, however, the organizers have an even larger vision, where it will offer a channel for other high-quality business education software to one day, perhaps, become the Amazon of executive education.
 The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 24 August 2008 19:11 |
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The TS-Si News Service
and the TS-Si Research Service are collaborations of TS-Si officials, staff, contributors, and corresponding institutions. The contents do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si or its owners, participants, partners, or affiliates.