We’re supporting an ever increasing variety of impactful team building games these days and I am working on a few more to add to the mix. And it is getting complicated…

The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine uses 20 “Days” for play and Seven Seas Quest uses “Months” and the Innovate & Implement exercise uses “Minutes” and the Military Might program uses “hours,” so just getting the right word for the timing is a challenge! Play of the games, though, is pretty straightforward and the designs solid, based on a lot of feedback.

To help explain the different products, our website has a  “Team Building Games Comparison Chart” that tries to outline the basic keys such as number of players, desired outcomes and applications, benefits and similar. We have games that work for 4 people and most games can scale up for hundreds.

And we even show the actual price (it’s interesting that so few of our competitors will actually post the prices of their games; they seem to be almost embarrassed by the costs) as we feel we have the best cost to benefit ratio in the world for the kinds of products we design, sell and support. Plus, we sell “unemcumbered,” without the per-participant or annual licensing fees so common in the industry for full-blown simulations.

AND, we’ll often customize for free if we think that work will result in a better team building product that we can distribute…

You can see the full Comparison Chart on the PMC website by clicking here – a version is added below but I am guessing that it will not be readable because of its size.

Matrix of our team building and leadership development exercises

We think the current products carry forward into a lot of different kinds of organizational development initiatives and also have some new things in development.

For executive development and strategy implementation, we are rebuilding and reframing a game built around planning and executing a climb of Everest. The challenge is to carefully plan an expedition that will take at least some of the players to the top; there is also the reality that some players can simply support the others to generate a success and that not everyone can always summit. Collaboration and planning is the main focus. We will link Everest to our strategy communications and implementation materials with Square Wheels.

For a great followup to Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, we will be rebuilding our Seven Seas Quest game into different bundles and a full-day integrated program on teamwork and communications.

I am reframing the Military Might! strategy and tactics exercise into an oil exploration game, one that will involve a great deal of upfront analysis of the situation and opportunities and will have serious risk / reward consequences to impact decision-making.

The Temple Game is built around a storied search for treasures in Asia to construct a Temple. Ships will sail to different ports to acquire the treasures of those countries in order to raise funds for the Shogun to construct an elegant temple near Kyoto. It is a great story line and will result in an exercise that blends planning and adventure with coordination and collaboration among the ships and the leaders.

More fun is in store for all and I love it that we can design and offer these games that link so well to workplace issues at a low cost and as a great value.  If you have any issues that you might like to see addressed with an interactive and engaging exercise, please drop me a note. My friend Brad wants to build a game on corporate sustainability for an executive development program he conducts at Furman University. And we have also played with the design of an emergency preparedness exercise.

Comments and suggestions are always appreciated!

For the FUN of It!