What is a Serious Game?
The Financial Times defines serious games as “games designed for a purpose beyond pure entertainment. They use the motivation levers of game design – such as competition, curiosity, collaboration, individual challenge – and game media, including board games through physical representation or video games, through avatars and 3D immersion, to enhance the motivation of participants to engage in complex or boring tasks.
Serious games are therefore used in a variety of professional situations such as education, training, assessment, recruitment, knowledge management, innovation and scientific research. The increased involvement of participants offers new stimulating possibilities.”
For those interested in additional information, check out A Brief History of Serious Games or more more detail Study on the Use of Serious Games in Business Education.
Why Cross Culture?
We live in a global business environment. Even small organizations must deal with international clients as well as employees and partners or suppliers.
Generally, most think of cross culture as communication across international borders and/or ethnicity. We now realize that human engagement is much more complex.
For example, many Critical Infrastructure sectors have initiated Safety Culture mantras. Often referred in the singular, the reality is that sectors do not have one safety culture, every organization imprints safety culture on to their own unique culture.
For example, the oil company, drilling contractor, manufacturers and energy services companies all have different Safety Cultures that must collaborate to successfully and safely complete complex sets of tasks.
“Walk a Mile in My Shoes”
Who Should Play this Game?
This game has its roots in international cross cultural negotiations. One premise that individuals/teams/organizations Relationships’ are determined by Behaviors in specific circumstances or Conditions. This R B C model is useful when training individuals for cross cultural engagements.
This game has been used for over two decades in its paper based format. Individuals with responsibilities in the following areas can find value from this serious game training.
- International Negotiations
- Contractor Management
- Multi-Cultural Teams
- Global Sales
- Operational Excellence
- General Sales
- Inter Department Initiatives
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Safety Culture
- Process Stress Testing
- Collaboration
- Emergency Response & Business Continuity
Almost every senior executive, managers at all levels and project team members will find value playing this game which generally takes less than one hour.
Value Proposition
For a variety of reason, people misunderstand each other constantly. However, most businesses need to collaborate within departments, with partner and suppliers as well as other constituents such as regulatory agencies and the general public.
Miscommunication and poor understanding of the others ‘values’ and Key Performance Indicators can and often does lead to sub-optimal performance and even catastrophic failures.
Often value is ‘soft’ such as increased efficiency or safety. In many ways this makes the value proposition even more important.
Major incidents can lead to loss of the license to operator or other equity failures!
What You Can Expect from this Game
After you login, you will be directed to complete a series of questions designed to identify demographics and various behaviors about you as the individual (or team) and your organization. Then each player will be provided with a scenario and set of rewards. While the intent is to collaborate to solve a problem, the reward system builds in a level of tension. After the personal interaction, a post game questionnaire is to be completed and finally, an analysis will be provided both sides.
Privacy and Confidentiality
You will be asked information that is private by nature. This information will not be shared, but will be assessed and presented as a “roll-up” that does not divulge specifics. See our Privacy Policy for more information.
Goals and Learning Experiences
While we are using technology to facilitate this game, in reality this game is between people. Whether your playing this game with another player or part of a team collaborating with your counter part team, the goal is the same.
You can expect to gain:
- A greater understanding of cross cultural interaction
- Empathy for your counterpart(s)
- Specific expertise you can use immediately solving business problems
All of us need to collaborate with diverse individuals on a daily basis