Exploring Business using Alternate Reality Learning (ARL)
ARL creates a fictional scenario in which learners interact with people and information to play out a story in the form of a simulation. The participants don’t have to pretend to be anyone else, it’s the world around them that changes. For learners immersed in ARL, it becomes increasingly difficult to define what is actually real and what is not. For example, your participants will research something online and find real websites, Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds that are part of the simulation. They will meet real characters who they will interact with. Participants in ARL can take actions and approaches they might be too afraid to pursue in the real world, but ARL is an environment for safe failure, experimentation and learning.
Building the experience
The aim of ARL is for participants to learn what they need to learn to create better businesses. This could include marketing, finance, operations, customer service, strategy, politics, leadership and human resources. The learning is supported through short learning seminars interwoven into the simulation at strategic points of decision.
Initially the basis of the simulation’s narrative was formed around a case study scenario; a failing water cooler company in need of rescue. We took this premise and made it epic; jobs would be lost, lives ruined, and a town left destitute if the participants failed to save the company during the course of the simulation.
The simulation is played over the course of three days. While the case study acts as a foundation for the exercise, the implementation is flexible enough to change the environment as needed to move participants in a certain direction.
The ARL is based in a ‘fully realized world’, the company in question has a website that works, with links to other websites that really exist. Employees have emails that work and that are responded to ’in character’. Employees also have exposure elsewhere on the internet; Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and personal blogs are all included. All of this online work is augmented with real life actors brought in to play company roles in the face-to-face environment.
Running ARL
On the first day participants are shown a flash forward video that shows the potential future of the company: bankruptcy and disaster. Split into groups, the participants are then issued a brown paper envelope with a USB thumb drive inside. The thumb drive has a range of materials on it, including a briefing from the chairman of the company, detailed company information, and a range of additional services that they could purchase, should they need a helping hand to piece the story together.
The teams then have three days to put together a rescue plan in time for a big presentation to the Chairman. They need to research, to question, and to analyze their findings to come up with a coherent plan of action. As they research and probe, further new clues are unveiled that help participants to piece the story together.
Learning
Learning is reviewed at the end of each day. Prior to the daily learning review, the teams are pitted against each other in a game designed to expose elements of each team’s knowledge to the rest of the group. This is a fun way to make a clean break between the ARL and the learning review. There is a big learning review following the final presentation. The aim is that participants will have learned what they don’t know as well as learned new approaches and skills.
Summary
All of this amounts to a hugely immersive experience. Running the experience is busy, fast moving, and fun but the format really excels because it is both exciting and capable of being flexed in real-time. Participant feedback was stunning, with participants commenting that they really enjoyed “discovery through doing,” which helped to highlight things not always seen in traditional style courses. Others commented that the experience was “very refreshing;” that they “really learned a tremendous amount,” found exercise “extremely enjoyable” and “very realistic,” and that the whole experience “challenged you to think in different ways”.
When is ARL a useful learning vehicle?
ARL is a useful learning vehicle at almost any level of management as it is flexible enough to meet the needs of even the most senior management groups. For a senior group it could be an opportunity to explore senior level decision making. For a more junior group it could be an opportunity to broaden their horizons and gain understanding of the bigger picture, what it’s like to lead an organization. The exercise could be used as a development centre or at the beginning of a development programme where participants are helped to recognise what they ‘don’t know that they don’t know’ and therefore set learning objectives.
Case Study
Valpak Ltd. put all of their 20 Key Account Managers (KAMs) through the ARL exercise. The aim was to get them to recognise the complexity of running a business so that they would be more effective in managing Valpak’s key clients through understanding their client’s business at a new level. The exercise was so successful that Valpak took the concept and set-up strategy workshops where they asked competing teams to solve real business issues and present their findings to the Chief Executive. New business ideas were generated that have been implemented successfully.
Credits
This ARL was developed with HT2 and Warwick Business School where it is run each year on the immersion week of the Graduate Diploma in Applied Management.
Posted by Mark Procter