Business Simulation Games for Leadership: What Happens in the Room

A business simulation game for leadership lets a small team run a pretend company for a few rounds.

They make calls on money, people and timing, then watch the consequences land.

And then they talk about it, which, for me, is where the learning actually happens.

The game warms the room up. The debrief does the real work.

I make learning games, so I am hardly a neutral witness here.

But, I have played and run enough of them to know what one feels like from the inside.

So this is the walk-through I wish someone had handed me, round by round.

For the wider case on why simulations train leaders at all, have a look at how business simulations train leaders.

What is a business simulation game for leadership?

The term covers a lot of ground, and I think that is fair enough.

Some are computer models with a market, a spreadsheet and a quarterly report.

Some are board or card games on a table, with tokens standing in for budget.

Same idea, different clothes.

For me, four parts make one work: real decisions, visible consequences, more than one round, and a proper debrief.

Take away any one of those and something goes missing, something you can feel in the room.

I have built that version myself. It was a quiz with props.

What happens in the first round?

The first round is usually a lovely mess.

People read the rules, half-understand them, and start making decisions anyway.

Honestly, that is the point. I never got the full rulebook at work either.

I keep my rules short on purpose, so the game gets out of the way quickly.

Fewer rules, faster mistakes.

In The Potter from Belagavi, the whole tension sits in one question: when do you buy the wheel?

That is a business decision small enough to hold in your head, and big enough to argue about.

What happens in the middle rounds?

By the second or third round, patterns start to show, and they are rarely the ones people expected.

Someone hoards resources. Someone else explains everything twice and decides nothing.

Someone goes quiet, and I think quiet is data too.

And the team starts to notice the gap between what they planned and what they did.

That gap is the gold.

In Ripple Effect, five leaders run one company, so every choice lands on someone else's desk.

People feel that quickly. Slightly uncomfortable, in a useful way.

I try very hard not to rescue anyone mid-round. It is harder than it sounds, for me at least.

What happens in the debrief?

The debrief is where I spend most of my attention, and most of the clock.

I ask what happened first, then what people felt, then what it looks like back at work.

I never tell the room what the lesson was. They find it, or they find a better one.

If you want the exact shape I use, it is written up as the EPPA debrief loop.

One small thing I learned the hard way: the first answer in a debrief is usually the polite one.

So I wait. Then I ask again, slightly differently.

Computer simulation or tabletop game?

Both are good, honestly, and I would happily play either.

They just suit different rooms, so here is how I would weigh them up.

For me, the tabletop wins when the behaviour matters more than the maths.

The computer wins when the maths is the behaviour.

There is a longer comparison in live facilitated vs digital simulations.

Which leadership skills does a business simulation build?

I think it is best at the skills that only show up under pressure.

• Deciding with incomplete information, and living with it.
• Trading a quick win against the long game.
• Sharing scarce resources across teams that all need them.
• Saying the uncomfortable thing to a peer, early.
• Changing your mind in public without losing face.

If deciding under pressure is the one you care about most, have a look at decision making under uncertainty.

How would I pick one for a leadership team?

I would start with the behaviour, and only then look at the game.

1. Name the one behaviour you want to see more of on Monday.
2. Ask whether the game makes that behaviour necessary to win.
3. Check that the debrief gets more time than the rules.
4. Play it yourself first, badly, before your team does.

I wrote more on this in how to choose a serious games vendor, and it applies to my own games too.

And if you would like to see a set side by side, have a look at the leadership simulation games I designed.

Questions people ask me

How long does a business simulation game take?

It depends on the game, plainly.

Sticky Fingers is a 1-hour team heist. Others run for a half day or longer.

Do you need a computer?

You can do without one. Plenty of good ones run on cards, tokens and a table.

Is a business simulation the same as gamification?

They are cousins, and I like both.

Gamification adds points and badges to real work. A simulation gives you a separate world to practise in.

The full comparison is in serious games vs gamification.

Does it work for senior leaders?

For me, senior leaders often play hardest of all, once the first round is over.

They are used to being right at work, so an afternoon of being wrong is oddly freeing.

Where I land

For me, a business simulation game is a safe place to be wrong in front of the people you lead.

And if your team already learns well from a good conversation and a whiteboard, honestly, you may not need a game at all.

With love from Bengaluru, this is Arvindh saying over and out.