Seven Seas Quest / Buccaneer

Quest and Buccaneer are great programs that are fun, engaging, and easily accessorized with themes of sailing and the islands. They play fast and furious and allow a great deal of collaboration between teams in a theme of optimization.

Their look and feel is intentionally similar to our flagship exercise, The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine. They were designed by Mike Robinson and Scott Simmerman to be a follow-on exercise to Dutchman but have evolved to stand on their own as great programs with nautical themes.

What is valuable is how effective the exercises are in generating insights and discussions about the choices that people make and the issues surrounding leadership. Their simplicity makes the issues of systems and processes for communication and information sharing very obvious. Thus, they link well to organizational change issues, TQM or Six Sigma, etc. As in Dutchman, they have a strong shared vision and demonstrate the benefits of planning and collaboration.

For accessorizing, they are wonderful. You can have team members outfit themselves in paper Pirate Hats that they construct (instructions included!) or you can assemble a wide variety of accessories such as seashells, leis, and other colorful island flourishes.

Both are designed with strong debriefing possibilities. They are excellent for demonstrating learning principles of leadership, motivation, collaboration and communications.

If you have delivered Dutchman to a group and need a good follow up activity, Quest or Buccaneer work extremely well. While they are similar, it has been our experience that repeating the messages of leadership, collaboration and communications has a high impact. When players use some of the strategies they learned from Dutchman, they can clearly see the benefits of collaboration and the need for having solid systems and processes for moving information amongst the teams as essential to the strategy of optimization.

Bundled together on one cd for either transparency or multimedia presentation, including instructions and files for printing colored forms and other resources, you pay a one-time only cost of $895. The theme of Saving The World works well for hospitals, for example, and sales groups enjoy the aggressive pirating theme. Overall, these are SOLID simulations, easily accessorized that work beautifully around issues of systems and processes for organizational improvement.