Taste Experiential Learning (You Can't Get Full By Reading the Menu)

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‍Behind the scenes at Income/OutcomeI

I read an adage in an airline magazine some years ago - You can't get full by reading a menu.

I kept it in my head because it perfectly captures why you can't 'sell' experiential learning by asking people to read about it—they need to experience it.

I’ve been teaching Income|Outcome workshops since 1997. Even when I wasn’t working full-time for Andromeda Training, makers of Income|Outcome business simulations, I always found a way to deliver a few programs a year in my free time.

Why?

Because it's a blast to teach.

Because I’ve never had a class that wasn't filled with energy and laughter—where people weren't fully engaged with one of the most important topics around.

Good Times

Delivering an Income|Outcome program was always a pick-me-up:

• Happy clients
• Happy bosses
• Lots of learning
• Getting paid
• Good times all around

Well... almost all around.

Part of the job has always been the tricky art of 'selling' Income|Outcome.

Turns out I have to sell it before I can teach it. 😞

Initiations

Selling our business simulations means finding a way to describe the power of experiential learning to:

• A training department
• A CFO
• A consultant

Usually the problem isn’t us trying to convince the training department.

Often, it's the training department trying to convince their decision-makers.

It seems that:

"You can't get full by reading the menu"

... is in full effect here.

If you haven’t experienced experiential learning, you won’t get there by:

• Reading about it
• Talking about it
• Watching YouTube videos about it

You Have to Taste It to Believe It

The airline magazine provided a simple phrasing that offered a solution:

"You want to know if it's good? Then you got to taste the cooking!"

We took that to heart.

We designed a 2-hour demo of the simulation for small audiences—the reviewers and decision-makers.

We made it:

• Competitive
• Informative
• Demonstrative (of all Income|Outcome can do—from one-off sessions to full-company rollouts)
• Fun!

Experience Tells Me…

Training departments often win the budget when they:

• Secure the attendance of the decision-maker
• Include a sample of the audience to be trained
• Invite a finance person (to validate the model)

When you add to the demo:

• Our client list
• Testimonials
• Our multi-level approach
• The ability to represent the company's actual financials on the game board

... decision-makers from all functions get excited.

Then the training department gets to:

• Break paradigms
• Install a program that earns top marks
• Deliver any financial or business acumen objective you throw at it

Thank you, Midwest Express.

Rest in peace.

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