“Finland 2008” Group Reports: Management Game

We talked about the German form of the Award Officers Course: A management game with the participants “playing” certain groups or persons instrumental for building up a local Award network, e.g. the Award Group, local newspaper, the mayor of town, the local bank, etc.

The game is divided into four stages designed after the “six pathways” to build up an Award Unit with corresponding infrastructure. The game lasts one and a half days. Some (hidden) key tasks are set in each stage. Not all of them can or have to be fulfilled, but a certain percentage has to before the game can move on to the next stage. There is a game master coordinating the game. Groups should act upon themselves, but the game master can interfere and change the course, either as game master or by playing a new group, e.g. the head of parents’ association.

Formally, all game operations by the teams and the game master have to be announced with game step forms; all contacts (like phone calls or mails) are documented and all meetings between groups are documented in forms for meetings.

We also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of such a system: as participants are really playing certain roles instead of just discussing how to do it, they get a deeper understanding of the whole process of building up Award Units and infrastructure. On the other hand, their view has always to be limited during the game, as they don’t know what all other groups are doing. But as everything is documented, this information is not lost and can be studied and discussed afterwards.

Still, right after the game has finished, participants tend to be very exhausted. Sometimes, they seem to be unsatisfied with the management game. Frank brought up that one reason could be the fact that the game course can bring participants to a point where they don’t know what to do, especially if they have to do things they never did before in real life, like writing an articles series, trying to get sponsors, trying to persuade unwilling headmasters to run the Award at their school etc. However, this is in fact one of the advantages of the game as it means that real practical learning takes place. The game master has to make it clear that there is nothing bad about the participants getting into new and uncomfortable situations but part of the learning process.