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People Should Know (Some) of What the CFO Knows
Believe it or not, scientific research has shown that Chief Financial Officers tend to be people who like numbers. Unfortunately, it’s likely that not all of the other people at their companies do. HBR found that 93% of Americans have “math anxiety”, typically caused by “math trauma” in childhood. And check out the results of…
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Even AC/DC Can’t Buy an Electric Truck
Imagine driving down the road in a fully-electric Ford Maverick truck, sipping on a carton of Oatly oat-milk. Well, forget about it – because Ford has stopped taking Maverick orders until 2023, and Oatly’s oat-milk production efforts have been an udder disaster. The problem isn’t that no one likes electric trucks and oat-milk – it’s…
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“Intentional” Tips & Tricks – Chunking and the Segmenting Principle
Going through a business simulation can be overwhelming. There is a lot of content to be covered in a limited amount of time. An experience like this can overload participants’ working memory[1] making it difficult to retain and understand all the information. At PriSim, we have applied the Segmenting Principle[1] to help participants better digest…
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In the Queue for Better EQ (Emotional Intelligence)
It’s common knowledge that soft skills are important for business leaders and managers, but do they really create results? Like better decision-making and improved business outcomes? A BBC article reports that soft skills were the most valued qualifications for 91% of management job listings, 86% of business-operations jobs, and 81% of engineering jobs. That’s a…
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Hard, Valuable, Fun (HVF) Business Simulations
I recently listened to a How I Built This podcast featuring Max Levchin (founder of Paypal and Affirm). In the podcast Max discusses the acronym HVF. An interview with Eric Scott, one of Levchin’s colleagues, provides us with the following background/description of HVF: Max was working on an incredibly technically hard problem (at PayPal) and…
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When the Going Gets Tough, Tough Companies Get Investing
What’s scarier than investing in your company in the midst of an economic downturn? Not investing in your company in the midst of an economic downturn. An HBR article describes how well thought-out investments (while biting your nails) during an economic pullback can actually position a company better for the future. But that takes courage…
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The First Business Simulation
I’m guessing you will be as surprised as I am to learn that one of the first text games with “back-and-forth natural language interaction between a human and computer” was Top Management Decision Simulation[1], the first business simulation. Top Management Decision Simulation was developed in 1957 by the American Management Association (AMA). Its goal was…
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You Know the Game! Actually, You Might Not…
Leaders sometimes feel they need to go “to infinity and beyond” to win at the game of business (all due respect to Buzz Lightyear). But best-selling author Simon Sinek says that most leaders actually think they’re playing a “finite” game when they really are playing an “infinite” game”. Finite games have specific players, defined rules,…
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Spiraling Out of Control – Wages and Prices
Unless you’ve been hiding in your basement for the last couple of months (understandable if you were), you’ve probably heard about the dreaded Wage-Price Spiral (WPS) that many economists are predicting. A WPS can occur when prices rise, causing workers to demand higher wages. Companies then raise prices again to cover their now-higher wage expense…
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Decision (and Consequence)
There are many types of business simulations: behavioral, board games, computer-based. At PriSim, we focus on computer-based “whole-business” simulations. Frequently, we will augment the core learning experience with board game style simulations (to better drive detailed financial acumen). There are pros and cons of each style of “business simulation”. One of the benefits of computer-based…