Are you encouraging Collaboration to improve recession profits?

Inspire valuable collaborative efforts with The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine -- a proven team building exercise, used worldwide -- that:

• Models best practices of collaboration
• Clearly links profitability and results to teamwork and planning and differentially rewards collaboration over competition
• Closely parallels the organization's collaborative style and demonstrates that improving work across departments/teams benefits innovation, service, retention and profitability.

Dutchman is a fun, experiential exercise that is really about workplace issues and creating an awareness of how our behaviors directly influence our outcomes.

1. Results obtained through play by every team and all teams can be accurately measured in terms of resource management, collaboration and the amount of Gold that is mined. Measurable results are a unique feature of the exercise.
2. One can readily calculate a return on investment (ROI), calculate wasted inventory and, most importantly, accurately measure and describe the Opportunity Costs for teams failing to collaborate and share resources and information.
3. "The Optimizing Profit Performance" is a new option that can be added to the delivery and allows for even more collaboration and profitability improvement opportunities.

Your debriefing gives you the opportunity to make direct links between the choices people have made and their results and allows you to talk about options and alternatives that would have improved game results and that would improve results within the organization. The parallels are straightforward and easy to generate.

1. Teams are introduced to the play of the game with the Expedition Leader explaining, "The role of the Expedition Leader is to help teams be successful. The Goal is to mine as much Gold as We can." They will have a total of 20 days (2 minutes each) to get to the mine, mine for gold and return.
2. Teams start with a grubstake of Resource Cards worth $750. (There are a variety of different cards, some more useful than others but Supplies, Fuel and Shelter card decisions are most critical since changing weather patterns affect the consumption of these more essential cards.)
3. They must decide which of the 3 routes they will take to and from the Mine and then make their plan accordingly.
4. There is more information available to them if they are willing to delay the start of their journey for one or two days depending on how much information they would like to obtain. Once obtained, this information can be kept secret by the team or shared with other teams, depending on the choices that the team makes.
5. For each day they spend in the Mine, they will acquire 10 ounces of gold (worth $2500). Thus, if a team mines for 5 days, they acquire 50 ounces. On average, the range is from 4 to 9 gold per team. (What we generally find is that the teams that ask for assistance, that get the additional information and then collaborate with other teams will commonly mine as many as 9 or 10 days, or even 11 under optimal collaboration. It is possible for three teams, working together, to mine 31 days of gold.)
6. Teams return to Apache Junction (where the game begins and ends) and complete their Final Inventory Forms, showing their results and resources.
7. The essential Debriefing takes place, which can cover many themes and ideas, with links to communications, leadership, motivation as well as the balance of collaboration and competition needed to maximize organizational performance.

Interestingly, we generally find that teams actually average about 6.5 days of mining instead of the 10 or 11 that could be managed. The cause of this becomes obvious to the group during the debriefing:

• Poor Planning
• Failure to clarify information
• Failure to acquire available information
• Competition between tables rather than collaboration
• Failure to involve leadership in planning
• Desire to "go it alone" rather than to share ideas with other teams
• Limited perspective or bad assumptions
• Operating in a "race to the finish" mode

In the "Optimizing Profit Performance" delivery option, teams can get access to information and resources of benefit to them as well as to the group.

Simply put, they substitute free Cave Cards for the $10 Tent Cards to meet the requirement for having shelter each day they are mining. Using Caves instead of Tents also allows them to mine an additional ounce of gold per day -- and we provide them with extra Cave Cards that could be shared with another team, thus enabling the other team to also mine one additional ounce of gold each day. We track when this collaboration actually begins as well as the cost of them not having shared these resources.

As illustrated below, the change from 10 to 11 indicates that the team now understands that using a Cave Card generates an extra ounce of gold, and you can see the timing of that shift. Also, the teams managing resources more effectively can stay more days in the Mine. With a Turbocharger, they can leave as late as Day 17 and still arrive back on time.

If the team acquiring this information shares it with other teams, our overall Expedition is more successful. If they choose not to share, retaining a competitive advantage for themselves, they measurably sub-optimize results. Sometimes, there is just a simple failure to simply share "best practices" - just an error of omission with no negative intent. Like most businesses, these add-on ounces of gold represent added profit, since there is no additional cost incurred for the teams or for the group. Not sharing is just sub-optimizing.

The basic Dutchman game plays exceptionally well in focusing groups on the issues of inter-team collaboration and the choices teams make about optimizing performance results. This "Optimizing Profit Performance" module represents a very easy and flexible way to add an additional aspect to the performance improvement focus of the exercise.

Pricing

Dutchman is available in several versions based on the number of people playing or there is the Professional Edition for unlimited numbers of participants. All versions are a one-time cost for unlimited use. There is also a rental option available if you choose not to purchase the game.

LD-3 is for 2 or 3 teams (up to 18 people) --- $995

LD-4 is a CD edition for 2 to 4 teams (up to 24 people) --- $1695

LD-6 is a CD edition for 2 to 6 teams (up to 36 people) --- $2895

LD-Professional Edition --- $6,995

To purchase please visit our products page.