A variety of recent emails and phone calls have gotten me re-energized. It seems as though a whole new bunch of people have gotten interested in doing our Lost Dutchman teambuilding exercise with their managers and staff to help them focus on overall organizational improvement and alignment. I say that because these are people who seem to be new at doing this, not the usual crowd that I hear from who have, “been there and done that” and who are just looking for a better tool.

And, we are seeing more companies in Asia using The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine” as a major part of their strategy implementation efforts. Based on the work of Robin Speculand in Singapore, we know that most strategy implementation efforts fail, and that is often because of low levels of organizational alignment, interdepartmental conflicts and a lack of overall collaboration to work through the risky stages. Dutchman works exceptionally  well for those kinds of change initiatives.

So, I’ve been able to put my Coaching Hat on my head and talk about the different kinds of things that they can do. Three of these contacts were going to be doing large events (250, 100-200-500, and 1100 (really!) and thus I shared my Best Practice of getting all of the Most Senior Managers into one room for a full day to deliver The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, debrief the game based on the kinds of collaboration and teamwork shown by these leaders, and then to discuss how these senior managers would like their people to play together.

Sure has been fun, being in this business of helping people have lots of positive impacts on other people!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant. 
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott atscott@squarewheels.com

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