How Business Simulations Can Cure Your Organizational Health Index

    

How Business Simulations Can Cure Your Organizational Health Indexhealth-index.jpg

In today’s day and age of texting and voice-to-text notifications, it’s very unusual for a real human to call another real human three times within 15 minutes, so I knew something had to be wrong.  At my first break from a business acumen program I was conducting, I called the number back and my dear client and friend picked up on the first ring.

“I’m so glad you called back; listen, I have a situation and need some help ASAP…”

It turns out that that my client – the VP, of Leadership Development - has been asked to join a cross-functional committee led by the President & Chief Executive Officer of a large, global technology-based company.  The committee is called the “Organizational Health Index Committee” and they are charged with reviewing the findings of a comprehensive survey and then making recommendations for Talent Development initiatives to close the gaps identified in the survey report.

The survey, conducted by a premiere consulting firm left the leadership team upset and in quite a panic.  They ended up being in the fourth quadrant with a below-average overall score and the CEO wanted to take action immediately.  The consulting firm offered the CEO the choice of four “recipes for success” to close the gaps and the one that they chose was to become a “Leadership Factory.”  A Leadership Factory is defined as “Developing and deploying strong leaders at all levels.”

The CEO gave the committee a lengthy list of directives and priorities and one stood out for my client; “Whatever you come up with must utilize the most innovative and technology driven solutions so we can demonstrate to the organization and our competitors that we mean business when it comes to acquiring, retaining, and developing our leaders.”

Which is why my client called me…

After several meetings to understand the results of the Organizational Health Index and the priorities of the committee, it became clear to me what the roadmap to success had to look like.  Although this was the first time I can recall being involved directly with this sort of engagement, I was able to leverage years of research and experience to help create the plan to close the gaps. What was really nice was that the roadmap integrated powerful technology-based solutions to accelerate the success of the initiative.

The rest of this blog will share at a high level the roadmap my client is currently implementing.

Track One – Foundational Leadership Skills

The first step of the process was the design, development, and delivery of a Foundational Leadership program. Because this is a global company, they created a core program and then translated it into different languages.  The solution included a portfolio of micro-learning modules in the areas of Understanding Personality Styles, Leading Change, Leading Innovation, and Coaching.  After the content, participants went through a web-based leadership business simulation that was a capstone to the content and enabled them to learn-by-doing.  The process was followed up by online reinforcement exercises and artificial intelligent (AI) SimBots that are providing the opportunity to learn more about Coaching and having hard conversations.

Track Two – High Potential Leader Program

Concurrently, the committee authorized and we are developing a state-of-the-art High Potential program that places participants in the role of a future executive within a leadership simulation.  They are responsible for setting a strategy and then executing that strategy through operational decisions.  They learn how to measure financial performance from the simulation outputs and they run their simulated company for five simulated years. At the end, participants are required to make an intense presentation to their board of directors which is evaluated by real executives and feedback for growth is provided.

Track Three – Transformative Strategic Business Selling

The third priority is to transform the entire Commercial Organization through a transformative process called Strategic Business Selling. Again, by going through different simulations – one to walk a mile in the shoes of customers and another to manage strategic accounts – and customer-based AI SimBots, the commercial organization is learning to sell and position the value of new, innovative, and more expensive products in a new way that will generate higher revenues and profits.

In summary, this was all new to my client and me, but it’s been a rewarding journey to see how something as powerful as the Organizational Health Index can become the catalyst for even more powerful skill development to close leadership gaps and improve the organization’s health.

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Robert Brodo

About The Author

Robert Brodo is co-founder of Advantexe. He has more than 20 years of training and business simulation experience.