Creating Learning Processes

Learning through Business games or experiential learning is growing in importance and appeal for many organisations. Developing people is a far more complex process than just taking people out of the business for two days or more and subjecting them to the latest panacea, quick fix or workshop. Effective development requires equal emphasis being placed on the content and the process of development or learning. With this in mind, an increasing number of organisations are committing to designing specific development events around the particular circumstances in which they operate.

Ideally, the business process or gaming event needs to address the 'gap' between the way the organisation currently operates and how it should ideally do so. The faster the transition from 'current' to 'desired' state, the more effective the event in achieving its core objectives. Like all designers o such events, we believe that we have to 'start with the end in mind' and then plan the process back through time working on core attitudes that drive behaviours.

The design of any event requires:

• Agreeing objectives and end states defined in behavioural terms
• Focusing energies to create and design a learning process to illicit and illustrate these behaviours
• A strong business case communicated prior to any learning or development event, illustrating the importance and the benefits of these behaviours in thrusting the organisation forward
• The gaming activity or process to be designed so that it requires participants to practice the repetition of these behaviours
• Immerse people in the process demonstrating the benefits to the people and the organisation of the new approach
• Structures and processes being designed to support these new behaviours after the event
• Setting up a culture of continuous improvement based upon the new behaviours and attitudes

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