November 21st, 2008 eliza
n’entrepreneur: a person to whom status is more important than business results
This is my own word; I coined it to describe a person who had great social skills and, it turned out, very poor business skills.
An entrepreneur is a person who undertakes to do something; in our usage today, we usually mean a person with a new idea who undertakes to build that idea into a business. Entrepreneurs do not always immediately have great business skills, but if they are going to succeed, they will have to develop their own business acumen.
In a sense, all people in business are entrepreneurs - they are all undertaking to use their ideas to help build the business. So business acumen is a high priority in leadership development.
And watch out for someone who would rather have a bigger desk than attend a business acumen seminar.
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October 10th, 2008 eliza
I think we have been saying it since 1996: Finance is the language of business, and if you want to talk to other people in your company, you need to be fluent in Finance. (I used to advocate finance training workshops which would be titled ‘Finance as a Second Language’… the same business acumen workshops we offer now, but with a broader purpose.)
A few weeks ago I was in Mexico; I picked up a pamphlet that claims ‘Golf - The language of Business’. While I do not play golf, I understand that it provides and atmosphere conducive to business conversation… but it is not the language.
A few years ago, I heard a certain n’entrepreneur say ‘Powerpoint is the language of Business’ . In fact, it can be a great tool for one-way communication, but I do not count it as a language.
The more obvious choice is ‘English is the language of business’. English is widely spoken in business around the world, but it is an inexact language, and business often requires precision.
I will stay with our selection of Finance.
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August 19th, 2008 eliza
Income/Outcome is a competitive business simulation, and that competition is an important element of the learning environment. Competition creates engagement - people like playing games so they are attentive to the learning environment.
Additionally, competition provides the ‘hook’ for the learning; individuals/teams want to win, and in order to take control of the situation, they need to master some foundational business concepts. The financial planning and analysis tools which are used in the game, are immediately transferable to the real world (and for the same purpose - beating the competition!)
But competition can actually add more. Income/Outcome uses inter-related competition where the ‘best decision’ depends on and is unique to the situation (rather than independent competition where the ‘best decision’ is predetermined by the algorithm); this kind of competition creates diversity of strategies and results. Again, this is useful in connecting the learning back to the real world.
And because there is no ‘correct’ strategy in the inter-related competition, Income/Outcome generates extensive discussion of which way to drive the game board business. Persons/teams use real-world situations to illustrate their game board discussion… so the competition creates discussion, drives cross functional thinking (e.g. examination of inter-departmental views and priorities), and constantly links the classroom back to the workplace.
Learning and development people often select games and simulations because they create engagement. Competitive games and simulations actually have a lot more to offer!
Posted in Business Simulations, Idle Musings, Training and Development | 1 Comment »
July 29th, 2008 Robin
An engaging little conversation between Barack Obama and British Opposition leader David Cameron was caught on tape and distributed by the Associated Press:
Obama-Cameron conversation
I think there are actually two kinds of “taking time to think”, at least in our Income/Outcome business simulation. One is demonstrated by looking at the difference between doing four decision-making rounds in Entrepreneurial Challenge in 4 hours, versus doing those same rounds spread out over 8 hours in Finance For Everyone but with planning and analysis interspersed. Obviously the longer format offers the opportunity to ‘take time to think’.
The second kind of ‘thinking time’ is demonstrated by considering the differences in running a business simulation for 8 hours straight (i.e. 8-5 with lunch) or by running the same game for an afternoon (1-5 pm) and the following morning (8-noon) with the night in between to clear your head and then process while sleeping. This ‘time to think’ allows for active (or passive) reflection and absorption.
The Obama-Cameron conversation is almost about using the first-type structure to do the second-type review. What do you think?
(Also, I think I understand Cameron more as a result of this conversation - he’s clear and crisp, businesslike, friendly enough, competent, but not particularly deep, wide-ranging or speculative.)
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July 11th, 2008 eliza
We advocate our board game business simulation as being the ideal instrument for developing business acumen. The experiential learning component is strong, and employees become emotionally invested in mastering the finance tools we provide. Here is another possibility - go to Hollywood! BusinessPundit.com offers their list of 50 Best Business Movies, with the premise that you can watch other people’s experiences to “amp up your business acumen”.
Which is the better solution? Board game business simulation or Netflix? Here is how they stack up:
Travel: With the simulation, we need everyone in one location. With the movie solution, you gather everyone together in a movie theatre OR you can do Netflix (but you will lose some of the ‘common’ experience).
Run-Time: This varies for the simulation, but our finance for non-finance managers workshop is often called a 2-day MBA. Fifty is a lot of movies, you will probably spread them out over 6 months.
Opportunity for future learning: This fall we will be introducing Income/Outcome Rematch! bringing teams back together in the classroom to reinforce the learning. With the movie solution, the next step is to go to a film festival, and in fact a professor at Alfred University takes students to Cannes for a marketing class assignment which they term a 5-day MBA!
Yes movies are fun, and popcorn is great, but we think the interactivity of Income/Outcome is a more effective, and more enjoyable, approach to learning business finance.
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June 12th, 2008 eliza
These are a couple of games I/we have recommended heavily in the last few months, and a couple of people have suggested I post them here. Both are free.
Free Rice is offers an opportunity for focused engagement (while letting your unconscious brain process all the bits and pieces of your current projects). It also happens to be a great tool for students in search of vocab words! It starts out with 4 words to assess your level, so don’t be intimidated. (Or you can set some starting options, which I just discovered). BTW, the ‘free rice’ name means that every time you answer correctly, the sponsors (at the bottom of the page) will donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program to help end hunger.
Squiggly Sudoku is a lot more fun than the regular kind. This site offers a new puzzle each day, they come in 4 levels (just like our business simulation… coincidence?). You can print the puzzle (preferably on the back of junk mail) or play online.
Posted in Board (and Card) Games, Idle Musings | Please Leave A Comment »
June 4th, 2008 eliza
At Income/Outcome University we distributed pedometers to the international consultants and challenged them to track their steps in a workshop.
Leon Grandy of McCallum Petterson in New Zealand reports that he just ran a 2-Day Finance for Managers and Sales Professionals workshop. He reports, “I had 16,000 steps on day 1 and 13,000 steps on day 2″. The heart health goal is 10,000 steps per day, so facilitation of Income/Outcome workshops is definitely good for your health.
Leon also reported the team standings, “The winning team had total shareholders funds (opening Equity and retained earnings) of 134. The other results were: 131, 127, 121 and 108″, all of them ‘healthy’ results. Presumably, the participants all walked around a lot (looking at each other’s game boards).
Posted in Idle Musings, Income/Outcome Experiences, Income/Outcome University | 1 Comment »
May 23rd, 2008 eliza
Income/Outcome University 2008: The Business Acumen Award for best performance in the Entrepreneurial Challenge business simulation was promptly renamed to Business Acupeople Award.
This year’s winners with the highest retained earnings were Team “M and M” - congratulations to team members Jeannie Ramsey, Andromeda Training; Jose Maria Zamoro of Teneo Consulting in Spain; Helmut Hergeth, College of Textiles, North Carolina State University; and Sandy M., Fortune Brands.
Entrepreneurial Challenge is the newest Income/Outcome business simulation - it is designed to run as a whole business experience in under four hours. Purely experiential learning, it has no formal finance lessons or financial analysis. It relies instead on ’stealth learning’, as teams still work with a business finance model, use financial statements to report financial results, and have to think through all the issues of profit, cash flow, cost structure, pricing, operational improvements, supply and demand, and competitor analysis… just as they do in a regular Income/Outcome workshop.
IOU 2008 marked the global release of Entrepreneurial Challenge. It will soon be available from many of the international distributors.
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January 15th, 2008 eliza
We think Income/Outcome is the series of best-in-the-world business simulations for building finance acumen (and more). But what else does it mean? This is a variation on googling yourself…. googling your moniker to see who/what else is using the phrase. Here is what I have found so far:
- ING has an income/outcome annuity,
- A paper addressing job satisfaction for general practitioners in the UK (I think… I cannot actually read the paper),
- A band? A song? A genre? you tell me,
- A new mother,
- An episode for a tv show: The Wacky World of Tex Avery,
- A poem by Andrew S Adams,
- An oddity noted by a ’sponge buddy’,
- The story of a security guard helping youth in the community,
- A take on the generation gap,
- A GDP ranking (vs. Human Development Index outcome).
Posted in Idle Musings | 5 Comments »
January 5th, 2008 Robin
Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo believes that dreams have a primary function of allowing extensive safe training in escaping dangerous situations. His research (as reported in Psychology Today, Nov-Dec 2007), shows that two-thirds of all dreams are threat dreams, totaling 300 to 1000 per year.
Studies of humans in a primitive environment, such as the Mehinaku hunter-gatherers of the Amazon, show that they dream extensively of common dangerous threats, and ways of escaping them.
Sleep research at Harvard Medical School shows that people learning a new skill in the morning do not have improved results later the same day without practice, but do have improved results without practice after sleeping.
This may not be the only function of dreaming, but simulation-based training appears to be a massively important, genetically-established way for humans to learn.
But we knew that all along, didn’t we?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20071029-000003&print=1
Posted in Idle Musings | 4 Comments »
