Lessons Learned from the strategy simulation
Our group communication started slowly. We had very little interaction prior to our first meeting for the simulation. Therefore we didn’t start our team building until that day. I believe getting started sooner through email or other means could have improved our performance. Half of the first day was spent opening up communication, which affected productivity during the first 25% of the game. It would have been wise to start communicating with one another as soon as possible, especially since a tight timeline was involved.
Nobody on my team expressed strong opinions which led to a very passive decision making process. We walked through the decision making screens as a group throwing out ideas and changing numbers then observing the effect on the forecast. We then analyzed the forecast and repeated the process in an attempt to increase the values that didn’t meet expectation. Our decisions turned out to be more reactive then based on a well thought out strategy.
We didn’t have anyone taking the lead and really pushing towards a defined strategy. As a team we talked about our strategy, but with the group all saying yes to every idea a clearly defined approach never emerged. Because we didn’t have a clear strategy to guide our decisions or a strong opinion from an individual towards a strategy the business model became diluted and our numbers showed it. Compared to other teams Chucks was right in the middle. We didn’t make any mistakes, but we also did not define ourselves in order to capture a targeted piece of the market.
This really illustrated some of the points made during debrief. Because of our lack of strategy the improvements we made were followed by ...