The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s simulation is seen as the world’s best teambuilding exercise to strengthen a corporate culture of optimizing results by working together.

Is this how teamwork looks in your organization? They choose not to make it easy for other teams to succeed.

The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine game effectively demonstrates how collaboration is a far better strategy than competition, obvious during play and clearly evident during debriefing discussions. Discussion directly reinforces key lessons about teamwork, collaboration and organizational success within the culture.

The actual goal of why teams are playing Dutchman, and teams should choose to collaborate.

Here’s how the game applies this message:

• Emphasizing Shared Goals over teams winning

The game’s primary objective is for teams to “mine as much gold as we can” and “maximize our Return on Investment”. Nothing in the facilitation of the game even mentions the word “winning” and the behavior of the Expedition Leader is to help any team, any time, to be more successful. The focus is on sharing resources and information and on collaboration across the room.

During debriefing, facilitators highlight that while individual teams may have competed, the overall goal was collective success. Oftentimes, teams will start out competing but will eventually realize the need to collaborate to gain beneficial resources. Getting a Turbocharger from another team midway in play, for example, allows them to use that resource and knowledge to gain THREE more gold (on top of the 5 they would get without collaboration).

And unlike most teambuilding games, we MEASURE performance and can actually see when the competition between teams changes to collaboration. If your considered game or activity mentions winning as a key outcome, truly consider how that outcome may influence your workgroup.

Dutchman mirrors real-world organizational objectives, where departments or teams working together achieve better results than those competing. We have 300 debriefing slides; playing the game is an “excuse to do a debriefing” and a stage for the manager to use to follow up on implementing ideas for improvement. You can develop a very solid, interactive debriefing targeted to impacting your key desired outcomes.

(Here is a blog on using the exercise: https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2024/07/31/lost-dutchmans-gold-mine-the-perfect-team-building-game/  )

• Measuring and Revealing the Benefits of Collaboration between Teams

As teams reflect on their strategies and choices in the debriefing, teams which chose to collaborate clearly discover they performed better than those who competed, almost without exception. This is due to the elegant and flawless game design that rewards information gathering and planning and sharing resources to optimize results. Competition clearly sub-optimizes the gold mined.

The debriefing process and Results Summary reveals measurable impacts and clearly shows that collaboration leads to higher overall gold production and more efficient use of limited supplies. This tangible demonstration of collaboration’s superiority over competition provides a powerful learning moment for change.

• Analyzing Missed Opportunities and making things REAL

The debriefing allows teams to discuss missed opportunities for collaboration and optimizing results. By examining scenarios where teams could have shared resources or information but didn’t, participants gain insights into how competition can hinder overall success. This analysis helps translate game experiences into real-world applications.

NO game in the global marketplace allows for a better analysis of the actual results. You can read about how to analyze play here. We will be automating this in Version 2 that is in current development.

Alignment toward shared goals and objectives is one common debriefing theme where people discuss what they can do differently to collaborate

• Linking to Teamwork and Workplace Realities

Facilitators and supervisors use the game’s metaphors to draw parallels with “real play” in their various workplace situations. They encourage participants to identify how silos, mud, spectator sheep, a lack of communication, and competitive mindsets in their organizations mirror the challenges faced in the game. And we have debriefing illustrations and quotes to support this discussion:

How teams find themselves, stuck in the mud with spectator sheep voicing their opinions. We also add silos and other metaphors to help generate ideas for action.

This connection of play to ideas to impact the workplace helps participants see the relevance of collaboration in their daily work lives and generate some cognitive dissonance around what they can choose to do differently. Players and their manager/facilitators  have the opportunity to discuss, with their peers, about what they can choose to do differently, what measurement systems need to be changed, how they can clarify the vision and goals, etc.

• Fostering a Collaborative Mindset

Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration. Everything is designed to focus on the benefits of collaborating during play versus the focus on, “which team won and which teams lost.” (Framing teams as “losers,” is really not helpful for learning or motivation, nor for generating ideas for performance improvement.) 

The debriefing process itself is designed to be collaborative. Teams share their experiences, strategies, and insights, learning from each other’s successes and failures about the play of the game and then transferring those same ideas to the workplaces. Tabletops share their insights into how they might have behaved differently and what that means going forward.

This collaborative reflection reinforces the game’s message and models the behavior participants are encouraged to adopt in their workplaces. Having the Expedition Leader / manager actively involved in the delivery and debriefing sends even more powerful messages.

• Highlighting Long-term Benefits

Discussions during debriefing often reveal that collaborative approaches not only lead to better immediate results but also create a more positive and sustainable work environment. This aligns with research showing that collaboration increases engagement, productivity, and employee loyalty.

The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine Game was designed to be, “an excuse to do a debriefing.” Unlike so many team building exercises, the power of our debriefing allows it to be the best game in the world to focus players on collaboration between teams and to drive organizational changes.

Some of our hundreds of Debriefing Slides:

• Addressing Competitive Instincts and Driving Collaboration

The game acknowledges that competitive instincts exist but demonstrates how redirecting them towards collective goals is more beneficial. Debriefing discussions can explore how healthy competition can coexist with collaboration when focused on self-improvement rather than outperforming others.

By applying these principles in the debriefing of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, the game effectively conveys the message that collaboration trumps competition, providing participants with valuable insights they can apply to enhance teamwork and overall performance in their organizations.

We currently sell the game in a box, making it easy to use. If you want to run an “unencumbered” game that involves no per-participant fees, repetitive costs, nor certification costs, consider buying the game NOW. We are soon to be changing the distribution process, building online training and certifications along with a Dutchman Delivery Network for marketing and collaborating, worldwide.

Special Offer:

What if your teams could experience the ultimate business simulation that drives collaboration, strategic resource management, and trust in leadership—all while having fun? In collaboration with our global partner, SimuRise, in Mumbai, India, we make a special offer, valid until March 31, 2025

For over 30 years, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine has been the gold standard in team-building and leadership development. Used by organizations in 40+ countries and experienced by over 500,000 corporate professionals, this world-class simulation has consistently delivered dramatic improvements in:

✅ Cross-functional Collaboration & Communication

✅ Strategic Thinking & Resource Optimization

✅ Trust in Leadership & Decision-Making Under Pressure

Exclusive Offer – Unlock More Value! When you purchase The Lost Dutchman’s Teambuilding Kit (LD6 or LD PRO), you also get:

🌟 50% OFF on the FreshBiz Business Simulation – A powerful game designed to develop entrepreneurial thinking, proactivity, creativity, and multidimensional problem-solving. (Special Price: USD $1000)

🌟 A Complimentary 2-hour Virtual Collaborative Leadership Skills Program for up to 20 Leaders – Equip your teams with the mindset and skills to lead with impact.

📌 Act Now! Don’t Miss This Opportunity to Elevate Your Leadership & Team Performance.

🔗 Learn More about The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine by Clicking Here

🔗 Learn More about FreshBiz by Clicking Here

Take advantage of this special offer by writing to sales@performancemanagementcompany.com or contact Annie at +9190 8238 1193 (India). And you can also contact me directly through the information below.

Let’s create more high-performing, collaborating teams together!