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Neha Kaushik

NEW DELHI, April 13

THE objective is to get as much gold as possible, in a limited timeframe with limited resources such as fuel, food, tents, etc. In the process, you also have provisioners who provide the gold and from whom you buy/exchange your resources. You also have the option of using videotapes to help guide you in your task.

Confused? Well, applied to the real corporate world, the above exercise helps to attain organisational improvement by emulating a dynamic setting. In an organisational set-up, the provisioner would represent the internal/external customer, the gold the objective, the videotapes represent best practices/expertise, which are hardly ever tapped and so on. That's reality learning for you!

`The Search for the Lost Dutchman's Goldmine', as it is called, is one of the latest corporate training tools introduced by NIS Sparta. And the programme has generated a good response with several leading corporates such as NTPC, Microsoft, Hughes, and DHL having sent their employees for the programme.

The high-energy business simulation is run like a board game with each team identifying an appropriate route to take to the mine and selecting the right resources to mine the gold. Teams have 20 days (of two minutes each) to manage their journey to the mine and back home. They can choose from three paths with varying risks planning for weather and planning for optimal use of resources. Each team member plays a key role and predetermined role. The results focus not on the "winning" team but on the overall success of the group, with the teams analysing and evaluating their performance at the end of the exercise.

"We focus on different aspects during the game, depending on what the client has asked for. For instance, while for one corporate the focus was on optimisation of resources, for another the focal point was improving collaboration/sharing between the teams," Mr Gautam Bhushan, Associate Vice-President, NIS Sparta said.

Various aspects, which the corporate "game" focuses on includes increasing interdepartmental collaborations and linking it to quality, leadership, systems, best practices, customer needs and a variety of other organisational issues.

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