|
Sponsered links:
|
|
The militaries of several countries use computer games and simulations to both educate and train soldiers and officers in tasks and thought processes related to their missions and specializations; this has gone on since the 1960s, with Avalon Hill and SPI boardgames, and continues today with both commercial games like Close Action and TACOPS and with assorted military simulations such as Core Battle Simulation, JSIM and TACSIMs.
This technique is moving (slowly) into the business world as well, and one of the places where it’s making the greatest inroads is in the realm of executive training. Allen Varney, the designer of several board and computer games, was commissioned to make a board and role-playing game about business ethics by the University of Texas-Austin School of Business, and in his own words, "They paid me more for that one project than I’d made in the last four years as a video game developer." His game focused on the decision making matrices of management decision cycles, presenting players with choices based on games theory, where there may be some payout for unethical behavior, including very subtle failure modes, where the fact that what’s being done is unethical is less than obvious.
From the perspective of training up new managers in your own business, computer games and board games can be used to great effect, however, there are some pitfalls. First, make sure that you’re aware of what goal you’re aiming for – education or training?
Educational games focus on one nested set of decisions and tend to remain fairly abstract. A good educational game should allow the players to explore the decision space reflected by that kind of game. A training simulation is designed to measure how well a student is absorbing and re-enacting doctrines and training techniques. While a first person shooting game, like Doom or CounterStrike is no substitute for rifle training for a soldier, it’s an excellent tool to see if soldiers have learned about movement, communications, and coordinated actions in a hostile environment, as the same things that will keep you alive in the field will keep you alive in the game – moving from cover to concealment, mobilized overwatch, and similar concepts. Allen Varney’s business ethics simulation is a subtler version of this kind of tool. It’s designed to give an outside observer a metric for determining how well lessons have been absorbed and applied.
For executives (and officers in the armed forces) there needs to be an emphasis on education as well as training. Education isn’t just regurgitation of doctrine and training, it’s an understanding of decision making processes. A good officer should be familiar with the decision making process of the layer of management that reports to him, and for two levels above him. The same applies to a manager in most businesses. Furthermore, an officer (or manager) should be able to assess challenges to his course of actions, be aware of assets available to him, and with initiative, be able to deploy those assets without compromising the plans of those above him. Thus, educational games should focus on concepts and decision loops.
A good example of an educational game is Calhammer’s Diplomacy, published by Avalon Hill. In Diplomacy, each player takes on the role of one of the European Great Powers prior to World War I, and all of them are contesting for resource centers placed on a stylized map of Europe. In addition to teaching some geography and elements of how these powers interacted with each other, Diplomacy is an excellent game for learning project management, and general business making decision skills.
First, no player in Diplomacy can "go it alone". Every player must make some accommodations with his neighbors on the map. It forces players to break down long term objectives into substeps, and bargain for resources. Those deals need to be made mutually beneficial to have any chance of other players accepting them, which is good for learning how to handle inter-departmental cooperation in the workplace.
Second, each player has to contend with finite resources. This is important for any businessman, or any manager, who has to contend with shifting office supplies, labor budgets, and project delivery dates. One of the finite resources that must be contended with is, interestingly enough, attention. There’s only 15 minutes to negotiate in a Diplomacy turn, and only a finite period of time to write your orders. Furthermore, you can never be certain of just how firm your alliances are. Each player needs to have contingency plans in place just in case an ally falls through on needed support…or turns on them to try and win the game. The general play attitude of Diplomacy can be described as "genial paranoia."
If you’re looking to reinforce these lessons in a computer game, consider StarCraft or multiplayer Civilization IV. Both games allow you to build forces from limited resources, and force you to manage when things will appear for utilization. This is the bread and butter skill of project management. Both games also force you to blend operational and grand strategic thinking, which is the essence of being aware of what you need to accomplish now, and how it meshes with the long term organizational goals of the company. Both games are excellent project management training tools.
So you can justify playing games as professional project management training development
When taking lessons from computer games, focus on the decision making loops, and focus on concepts. When trying to turn computer games into structured education for your employees, remember that games are supposed to be fun. Games that aren’t fun tend to get negative feedback from the players, and the lessons imparted by them don’t stick. Focus on how the core concepts of the game will help your new managers work in your organization, but let them enjoy what they’re doing – people learn more, and absorb the lessons better, when they’re fun.
So, the next time you’re caught playing a computer game in the office, perhaps you can justify it as professional development…
Look here for More project management training articles or for an extensive directory on related sites on: project management training.
|