The Business Game - PLP Review

So, I am just back to my flat, it's crazily hot, I have been travelling for 6 hours (visiting home) and had no IPod. It's been a long day. But not an entirely bad one. The fact that I had no IPod gave me some time to think about things. This and the fact that my flight was delayed for an hour. But I'll not complain! No Sir! I did bring some high quality DVD's and books from home, so the number of distractions in my room have increased. But, rest assured I have unfinished business with the PLP. And there I wanted to review and comment on the business game we completed last Wednesday.

I deliberately left this a few days as I wanted to have enough time to reflect on the impact the business game had on me. The obvious trade off is that the game is not quite as fresh in my mind, but we'll see how this goes...

1. The Set Up: We all knew the game was coming, however, unlike previous PLP's, there was no pre-course material to complete. This in itself surprised me in hindsight. Not only did this section turn out to be the most detailed of the three modules, it was also the most intellectually demanding one. I understand the benefit of "being thrown in at the deep end" and working under pressure, but a total lack of preparation on my part probably impacted my expectations of what I would achieve on the day.

A success full day for me would have been continued personal development within the context of my own leadership skills. As I had no explicit goals before hand, I found it difficult to set specific personal objectives. This may not necessarily be a bad thing in the context, but given the set up of the previous PLP modules, it felt different.

2. Make your choice... Once the introduction and welcome was completed, we were encouraged to throw ourselves into the game and see how we get on. We were each asked to pick a particular business area to work in. I looked down the list and picked the area that I was least comfortable with. To be honest, I am not so sure what made me do it...I guess it was just one of those things where i thought it'd be interesting to go against my intuition.

That and I didn't really know the details of the game. It was not really an informed decision I was making, but at that point that was not necessarily a bad thing. If I had more details about what each of the different areas entailed (in terms of the game), it would have been very tempting to pick my favourite / one that I would feel that I would excel at. Hey, everyone likes to look and feel good, especially in front of your peers.

3. Devil is in the detail: Next up, we got the detail. This came in the form of 8 - 10 page booklets. Now, I loved this! There was a hell of a lot of material to digest, some really interesting concepts, some really interesting 'facts' and some interesting business concepts. Once I got the booklet, I was really looking forward to getting my teeth into it. At first glance, there seemed to be a lot of really interesting stuff, and given that our groups were pretty much randomly selected, I was really looking forward to the game.


Then the time scale came down... we had 15 minutes to digest and understand the information. This gave us 1 minute and 30 seconds per page. For me, this was not enough. It took me 5 minutes to read through the booklet once, giving me only 1 minute per page look at the details. By the end of the 15 minutes, I had only an incomplete understanding of the material. It was going to be an interesting afternoon...

4. The Games Begin: Once we got settled into the game itself, the group interactions were really interesting. At other points during the PLP I always felt like I had the opportunity to reflect on my own behaviours, but here I had a lot of stuff going on, all at once. Not only had we to work on our own understanding of the material, but we were to lead our groups as well as preparing how we would defend our particular groups interests later on in the day.

Bits of this worked really well - we all felt pressurised. Part of this pressure may have come from the set up - we were reminded that we would be judged on our performance in the activity. And you know - the grads can be a competitive bunch. So, for me the pressure translated well - and so did the intellectual demands of the job / scenario. There was a lot of information to be assimilated - normally I love the full range of detail and the depth of information - it is what gets me going in my day to day job. However, at no point did I have my focus...why?

5. Distraction.... Well, the reason was quite simple. I felt distracted. There was so much going on I found it difficult to focus. Given that some of my feedback previously was to "take off my blinkers " (thanks TE), every time I did take off my blinkers, I saw disarray, lack of organisation, and people struggling to understand the game. These were people I have seen work really effectively before - but now it was like being back to square one. So, I guess what I am saying here is throw a couple of mathematic challenges at grads, put them in a time critical situation and ramp up the pressure and we crumble? Well, not exactly...

6. End Game: The game taught me a hell of a lot about how interact when I am uncomfortable. So, in terms of me being able to understand how I react when I am out of my comfort zone, it was interesting. And I would say that irrespective of whether or not you were red, blue or green, you would be out of your comfort zone in the game..

To summarise, there was not enough time for detail, space for people or organisation for effective leadership. The various situations in the game felt like a struggle. The final of the game, after the presentations was the Q&A and announcement of the winner.

7. Drum Roll: The winners were announced and the game wound up. My group won, and, no discredit to the guys in my team, but I felt like we were the "best of a bad bunch" as opposed to being outstanding. And I don't mean this to bring down the other groups, merely that no one group stood out as being great. Additionally, the feedback that I heard was that other groups had similar problems with the game.

It was certainly a challenging day, probably for both the grads and the facilitators.

To conclude....

The business game was a great learning experience, but it was harder to learn from it than other aspects of the course. I felt that it was very challenging, but often not just a challenging exercise, rather a challenge to learn.

I really enjoyed the concept of the game - I thought that it was definitely workable and there was a lot you could pick up from (and about) other people in the game. Some of the feedback that came out of it was very interesting too. I also think that there was a lot that you could learn about yourself on this module, but that it required more time and effort to get the same level of learning out.

Specifically, I would have liked more direction from the facilitators - on a number of occasions throughout the PLP they have been there to provide immediate hands on direction and feedback and for me that was not present. i also felt like the time frame was a bit skewed towards discussion rather than understanding. We had a full hour to discuss in our groups our own interpretations of the information, but (it felt like) we had little direction of what sort of end product we were to produce. I understand that vagueness brings its own challenges and benefits, but for an exercise coordinating 6 groups, more direction for output would have been beneficial.

I may of course be wrong - maybe some people thought there was too much detail!

So I will sign off this post (2 of 3) with a quick note about the business game.... I have the option to go for an interview for "The Apprentice" soon....I am sorely tempted by it. It would be really interesting to do, and you can guarantee that it would be tough, but rewarding. I guess though, if I did make it through (ha!) the business games the PLP gave me would probably give me a bit of perspective on what to expect - if not on how others would behave, at the very least how I would come across.

So was it a successfull day? Yes and No. I learned a lot from the activity, learned a lot about myself, but without clear objectives, I struggled to really assess the impact it had on me. Still, since the PLP is all about potential, I dont feel bad in saying that this set up definately has the potential to be successfull.

Its all good stuff.....

Kindest,

DD