Interactive Simulations
Expectations rarely survive first contact with an experience. People learn much better by doing, and decision-making can be practiced just like any other skill.
DESIGN AND LOGISTICS
- My simulations are designed within a 6 week period, and facilitated at client offices. Participants assume their real roles, while I assume the role of Control or Red Cell, with additional Subject Matter Experts participating as needed.
- Teams typically consist of members of Policy, Legal, PR/Marketing/Communications, Developers/Designers/Programmers, and Information Security personnel.
- Simulation narratives are based on situations that the client faced and dealt with poorly in the past, or questions that the client is seeking to answer.
- Injects, or pieces of information that drive the simulation narrative, are designed to look as authentic as possible, to resemble the pieces of information that participants work with on a daily basis. Subject matter experts design technical injects.
RETURN ON EXPERIENCE
The goal of every simulation is to gain return on experience- helping siloed team see situations through each other’s lenses, encourage collaboration, and spark new ideas to address challenges or capitalize on opportunities more effectively.
EXAMPLES OF PAST SIMULATIONS
- Navigating the complexities for a tech firm, with politically active employees, operating in Turkey following the coup attempt
- Exploring the elements involved in investment in telecomm/tech in Cuba following the restoration of diplomatic relations
- Streamlining crisis response protocols across a tech firm's teams following terrorist attacks in a European capital
Business Continuity
Incident/Disaster Response
Crisis Management
If your firm is dealing with issues such as poor communication, disjointed collaboration, ineffective crisis response, confusion regarding the chain of command, or other internal issues, a simulation constructed around one of these core themes can identify the points of failure and provide an opportunity for staff members to experience breakdowns in processes from the perspective of their colleagues. This type of diagnostic simulation allows team members to understand how their actions affect their colleagues' ability to do their jobs, and vice versa, and helps educate them in ways that they can contribute to improving communication, collaboration, and crisis management protocols.
Exploratory
Executive Support
Decision Support
If your firm is struggling to make a decision, such as how to take a position on a major political issue, which new market to enter, where to open a new office, how to navigate a particularly complex business or security environment, or if you want to explore the potential consequences of a particular decision, an analytic simulation can allow decision-makers to see the decision from multiple perspectives and to practice different decisions, in a way that allows them to observe their likely consequences. This type of simulation is best suited for executives and strategists willing to consider a spectrum of possible viewpoints and potential actions before making a decision.
Training
New Employee Orientation
Pre-Assessment
Once you’ve identified points of failure and ineffective procedures, a training simulation can allow for a team to practice newly designed procedures in order to make them feel confident in their ability to execute the new procedures and help them feel more empowered to act when a crisis, problem, or opportunity arises. This type of simulation can be scheduled to run once, or can be scheduled to repeat every quarter, to help on-board new employees or train for events that might occur on a regular basis. This is best suited for teams that have already taken part in a diagnostic-style simulation and addressed any problems identified during that experience. When run before an assessment or audit, a pre-evaluation sim can give executives confidence that the business is running smoothly.