Exploring new strategies with SD games

[Kjeld Jensen]

Since this is our first posting to the System Dynamics list, let us begin by
introducing ourselves. We both work in the Business Modelling Group at BT
Laboratories (that is British Telecommunications) in the UK. Our group uses
systems dynamics both as part of our research and in supporting other business
units within the company.

At the moment we are in the process of designing an interactive system
dynamics business war-game to support teams of managers in exploring new
strategies. As part of this work, we are also trying to find out what is
available in terms of business war/management games in general and what people
have done in this area in the past. So far we have come across many games that
are used for management training, either in business schools or as part of
customised training programmes within organisations. These uses all seem to be
about consolidating change or teaching already established practices. However,
we have found little documented use of interactive games in the earlier stages
of the change process where you are exploring the possibilities and raising
the awareness of the need for change.

Although what we do may not be the most common way of using business games, we
doubt that we are exploring completely new territory. We would therefore like
to ask the subscribers to the SD mailing list whether they know of any games
that are used in other than training contexts. Maybe we are just not looking
in the right places? Anybody got experiences themselves in doing this sort of
thing?

This question is of course part of a wider debate about what are the possible
uses and benefits of not only interactive games (where several teams play
against each other) but also flight simulators. Does anyone know of any
sources (papers, URLs, contacts...) where we might find analsyses of these
issues?

If we get this debate going we would of course be happy to share some of our
experiences in developing and using games.

Thank you.

Kjeld and Syed
Business Modelling Group
BT Laboratories, UK

Kjeld Jensen (Tel: +44 1473 643902), email: kjeld.jensen@bt-sys.bt.co.uk
Syed Hussain (Tel: +44 1473 645511), email: syed.hussain@bt-sys.bt.co.uk

[Jay Forrest]

I have a paper I wrote on The Outlook for Simulation and Gaming in Management
Training on my home page http://neosoft.com/~pteragen. It may have some
information you will find valuable.

Good Luck!
Jay Forrest



Pteragenesis
Chaos, Complexity, System Dynamics, Studies of the Future
pteragen@neosoft.com
http://www.neosoft.com/~pteragen
(713)493-5022 (voice) (713)493-6715 (fax)

[Jay Forrest]

>What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of interactive games vs.
>flight simulators? The common wisdom is that flight simulators are better
>because any difference in outcome between teams is due to how the team was
>managed, since all teams face the same "competitor". What do you guys think?

I am solidly in the conventional wisdom corner for the following reason:
Flight simulators are not reality and as such bear the imitations,
compromises, and inaccuracies inherent with models. Limited controls are
IMO most effective for learning and limited controls work best when one is
focusing upon a relatively "clean" relationship/learning goal. The good old
7 +/- 2 rule implies the concept that "unlimited" controls limit learning
because the user will be unable to keep track of the controls and thereby
internalize the relationships. Competition increases the number of items to
be "followed" (controls plus your results plus indicator results for the
competition) and thus reduces the ability of the player to follow controls
and results and thus reduces learning ability.

Interactive games may be more fun and may increase involvement. They may
also work well in team environments that better mimic reality. The controls
that each individual has should be minimized to provide a manageable number
of variables.

Jay Forrest

Pteragenesis
Chaos, Complexity, System Dynamics, Studies of the Future
pteragen@neosoft.com
http://www.neosoft.com/~pteragen
(713)493-5022 (voice) (713)493-6715 (fax)

["Ulli H. Koenig"]

Jim wrote:
> What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of interactive games vs.
> flight simulators? The common wisdom is that flight simulators are better
> because any difference in outcome between teams is due to how the team was
> managed, since all teams face the same "competitor". What do you guys think?

I agree with you about the "difference-in-outcome-thing". To score
the quality of a simulator or planning game it is essential to have a
goal. If just want to show the dynamics of business (or better the
world) the "simple" beer-game is suffucient. If you want to compare
the outcomes to measure the quality of decission making or learning a
flight simulator with a "fixed" structure should be better. The great
thing about planning games is the unpredictability of human decission
making.

So my conclusion is that you can not say flight simulators are better
than planning games or vice versa. It all depends on your goal.

Regards,
Ulli H. Koenig
(ukoenig@is.bwl.uni-mannheim.de)

Industrieseminar der Universitaet Mannheim
Lehrstuhl fuer ABWL und Industrie I
Prof. Dr. Peter Milling
Schloss
68131 Mannheim
Tel. 0621-292-2805
Fax. 0621-292-5259
WWW: http://iswww.bwl.uni-mannheim.de/

[marco@idsia.ch (Marco Wiering)]

Hi there,

I think playing against different teams is important, when
the policy space is quite large. In this sense, the flight
simulator is unable to catch all important exceptions, and
therefore it constrains itself to the most important trajectories
through policy space. Playing against different teams enables
a team to face different problems. This makes it possible to
see how teams can solve the most difficult exceptions (which
is like playing a chess-game against a very strong opponent).


Marco Wiering
marco@idsia.ch

[Jim Hines]

Will Glass-Husain wrote:
> These (multi-player) simulations are powerful highly
> engaging experiences, raising many general systems/strategy issues as well
> as industry-specific ones.

Will,

Could you list some of the issues? (I dont want to put you on the spot. Im
genuinely interested).

Jim Hines
jimhines@interserv.com

[saeed@ait.ac.th (Professor Khali]

I agree, bells and whistles may do little to enhance the usefulness of a
computer-based game. The way such a game is moderated might, however,
greatly increase its impact. I have tried running People Express - a one
person game - in a group mode with very positive results.

This was with a group of business executives in Australia last August.
Using a projection system, I ran the game as a collective exercise in which
each decision was extensively discussed by the group and entered when there
was a consensus. The reference mode and the individual linear relationships
in the game were explained before the play (feedbacks were not revealed).
The data generated by the game was then used in a following session to
develop a dynamic hypothesis and a simple model structure. As in the case
of a TV cooking demonstration, the half-baked model structure developed
through group discussion was then replaced by a pre-tested, but simplified,
model of the game with a similar structure (to save time) and experimented
with interactively.

The interest in the two sessions was much greater than the cases when I
used one-person plays run in parallel. Group discussion, both during the
game play and model development sessions, was very rich and informative.
The process appeared to sink in well. It should be added, however, that the
two sessions were a bit long and facilitation process demanding.

Khalid

Khalid Saeed
Professor and Program Coordinator
Infrastructure Planning & Management Program
School of Civil Engineering
ASIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
P.O. Box 4, Klongluang, Pathumthani, THAILAND 12120
phones: (66-2) 524-5681, (66-2) 524-5785; fax: (66-2) 524-5776
email saeed@ait.ac.th
Visit our program website at: http://www.ipm.ait.ac.th/

["Jose J. Gonzalez"]

>From Normal Marshall:
> > All of these games and others that Ive heard of are single player games. Is
> > anyone aware of games where the players are directly interacting with each
> > other (SD business games that is)?


Magne Myrtveit (Powersim AS, Norway, magmy@powersim.no) and prof. Paal
Davidsen, Univ. of Bergen created a multiuser simulation (the Ruetli
model) in 1993. For this purpose Powersim has enhanced with a game
module that allows you to create games/MFS on a network for up to 4
competitors. I.e. up to 4 PCs participate, each representing a
different enterprise or department.

Prof. Jose J. Gonzalez
Dept. of Computer Science, Agder College
Groosvn. 36
N-4890 GRIMSTAD, Norway
Phone: +47 37 25 32 40 (office) Fax: +47 37 25 30 01 (office)
+47 37 04 70 29 (home) +47 37 04 70 74 (home)
+47 92 09 09 39 (cellular)
Email: Jose.J.Gonzalez@hia.no

[Jim Hines]

On the side of even fewer bells and whistles:

I lead a management team through a pricing excercise in Vensims gaming
mode -- no interface, just the model where decisions can be entered
every so often. The model and output were projected for all to see; the
game was played twice -- once with an aggressive approach to pricing and
once with a conservative approach. Everyone was on the same "team".
The lessons learned during the game resolved an argument between the
pricing hawks and pricing doves; the lessons have determined the
pricing policy followed today.

In this situation there were
(1) almost no bells and whistles, but there was
(2) a complete analysis of why the results turned out the way they did
(3) a group playing the game (as in Khalids posting)
(4) roll-playing, so that participants could try different strategic
styles in an exploratory mode
(5) the "game" was targeted on a current policy that was under debate
(6) the game was a "converted" version of a good system dynamics model.

Regards,
Jim Hines
jimhines@interserv.com
LeapTec and M.I.T.

[Kim Warren]

Interesting to see the conversation on exploring strategies with SD
games. Experience at London Business School suggests a set of principles
that may set such games slightly apart from other kinds.
First, we only teach with these (People Express, Beefeater etc.) as team
exercises, never as learning for individuals. Conventional class
discussion of cases is pretty useless in getting teams to have any
genuine negotiation of agreed policies - theres nothing much at stake
if you go along with others erroneous (you think) decisions. With a
microworld, a mistake comes back and hits the teams performance.
Although such products can be used by individuals (indeed we are
packaging them deliberately to be accessible to individuals)
team-learning is a major benefit - as with many management games.
Second, the model should communicate a specific teaching purpose, beyond
merely the ubiquitous feedback-and-delay message. To get really hard
about it, a good microworld should be designed to illustrate the dynamic
implications of a specific piece of management theory - the
resource-view, competitor-groups, related diversification etc. etc. If
not, users are inclined to conclude great fun, but so what. We SDers
of course know that there is a lot in the system dynamics content alone,
but if we are to persuade others, we have to connect with their
frameworks.
Third, if this is all to work, there must be a well-written case-study,
plus the solid piece of theory, plus the simulation and user guide that
explicitly ties these together - all wrapped up in a highly teachable
package. People Express is a good example of this - not our product, so
I can flatter it unashamedly . Generic simulation games just dont
seem to work so well (making widgets or exploiting a number of
unspecified markets) - the case-method does have benefits, and
simulation can build on those.
Finally, simplicity seems to be vital. We know that dynamic feedback
makes life difficult, so if you try to put too much in the model, users
simply cant see the structure-behaviour connection, and struggle to
identify with their own situations. This means, for example, not
including exogenous uncertainties, limiting the range of decision
options, and stripping the model of all sexy but unnecessary frills.
This has some down-sides: the resulting model can look very
simplistic, but its the teams experience of dynamic complexity that
breaks that impression.
Multi-team games look likely to add a further level of complexity to
these observations - a clear learning purpose should remain, it will be
hard to get the game to simulate closely a real case situation, and
there are serious issues of reliable and easy teachability. We will not
let this deter us however

Kim Warren
kim@farthing.stargate.co.uk

[Will Glass]

>From Jim Hines:
> Could you list some of the issues? [re: multi-player games]

Jim,

Sorry for the delayed response-- first had to catch up on
the excellent discussion in the last few days since Ive
read this list.

Most of the issues that multi-player games are especially
suited for highlighting are competitive related. Some
common examples include resource competition, price/promotion
wars, relative investments in quality, capacity, performance.
Ive seen these simulations also be used to bring out industry-
wide issues such as market saturation that are accentuated by competition.

On a separate note, Id like to agree with the (apparent)
consensus on the low return on bells and whistles. People
are drawn into the simulation experience as the computer gives
realistic feedback to their decisions-- creating a virtual world
for them to explore. Seeing other teams operating competiting
companies across the room creates a friendly rivalry that
enhances this effect.

The level of detail issue is a tough one. In general, I think
a rich case study but lower level of detail in the simulation
helps the learning process. This seems a difficult idea for
non-SD (or at least non-academic) people to buy into, at least
on the first simulation project they are in involved in. The
temptation is to include operations-oriented processes at the
same time as more longer-term, strategic-oriented information,
creating some potential inconsistency. (Does this match other
perceptions?).


Regards,

Will Glass-Husain
wglass@gka.com

[jsterman@MIT.EDU (John Sterman)]

the manufacturing game developed originally by winston ledet and folks
at du pont is a terrific example of the type of game Kjeld and Syed are
looking for. its been successfully used to initiate significant change
in a number of firms. Its based on an SD model but is a board game
(there is now a computer version as well). You can reach Winston at
713/360-9520.

John Sterman
jsterman@MIT.EDU

[jimhines@interserv.com]

Kjeld and Syed,

I have a question for you:

I think you use "flight simulators" to refer to a game in which a team plays
simulated competitor(s) and "interactive" to refer to games in which teams play
one another. That is, in flight simulators the environment is simulated, in
"interactive" the environment is created by other people playing against you and
others.

What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of interactive games vs.
flight simulators? The common wisdom is that flight simulators are better
because any difference in outcome between teams is due to how the team was
managed, since all teams face the same "competitor". What do you guys think?

Jim Hines
jimhines@interserv.com
LeapTec and M.I.T.

[Norman Marshall]

Youre probably already aware of John Stermans Peoples Express (start up,
fly, crash and burn your own low budget airline)?
Available from:
Firm Name: Microworlds
Work Tel: 617 491 6778
Work Fax: 617 491 6744
Address: 125 Cambridge Park Drive
Cambridge
Postcode: MA 02140
Country: USA
E-Mail: MWorlds@gka.com

Kim Warren and Paul Langleys Beefeater game is an excellent simulation of
growing a chain of restaurants. They have a couple more games in the pipeline I
understand, in oil and media.

kim@farthing.stargate.co.uk
http://www.stargate.co.uk/farthing/smsim/

My firm has developed a couple of games, with a lot of help from HPS, which
have been successful in bringing managers together by giving them a common
vocabulary around a powerful shared experience (e.g. going bankrupt or getting
fired), and helping them to internalize at a gut level their intellectual grasp
of some typically complex issues. The impact of this can be hard to measure
(e.g. not making a wrong decision whose wrongness wouldnt have emerged for
years), but is potentially pretty substantial when you consider the scale of
chronic value destruction that has occurred. One game covers the issue of
cylicality, while the other is about human resource management in joint
ventures.

Id venture two thoughts about what makes a good game based on what Ive seen:

1) you can get pretty low returns from trying too hard to enhance business
games with multimedia clips. Charts and graphs and text messages are often
quite sufficient to get players very involved, while video clips take up a lot
of space which makes it harder to distribute the game, and can look a bit
unexciting if youve just watched Toy Story with the kids;

2) keeping the levers to less than a half dozen allows for plentiful complexity
within apparent simplicity, which provokes constructive irritation: "Why is it
so hard to win when there are so few variables to deal with?"

All of these games and others that Ive heard of are single player games. Is
anyone aware of games where the players are directly interacting with each
other (SD business games that is)? Are they useful? The biggest impact you get
from playing SD games is having three people together in front of a screen
hanging out their mental models to dry. Im inclined to believe that its this
side of the screen where you need multiple users. Having unseen opponents the
other side of the screen could just be a distraction. Any experiences?

Norman Marshall
Practice Coordinator, Business Dynamics
McKinsey & Company, Inc.
1 Jermyn Street
London SW1Y 4UH
norman_marshall@mckinsey.com
44 171 873 5487

[Will Glass-Husain]

>From Normal Marshall:
> All of these games and others that Ive heard of are single player games. Is
> anyone aware of games where the players are directly interacting with each
> other (SD business games that is)?

GKA has done 3 or 4 multi-user simulations over the last year. The ones
weve done have tended to be fairly detail-oriented, creating a realistic
environment in which teams of managers act out roles as fictional
competitors in their industry. These simulations are powerful highly
engaging experiences, raising many general systems/strategy issues as well
as industry-specific ones.

Part of the reason that I believe multi-user simulations are so useful is
that it is very difficult to think through the feedback between your
company, your market, and your competitors. If you make a strategic move
(such as an across-the-board price cut) your competitors will respond in a
certain way, your market will respond, and then you will make another set
of decisions, causing your competitors to respond again, causing you to
make more decisions. A competitive multi-user simulation allows you to
live through this process in a short time frame, allowing reflection and
learning. This can be studied in single-user games such as People Express
where the competition is simulated, but there is a high level of
abstractness making it harder to internalize these relationships.

An interesting method of running these simulations is to spread it out over
a week, alternating simulation sessions of about an hour (per year of the
simulation) with other company learning/information sessions highlighting
real company issues (preferably ones that tie into simulation issues).

One final note: with this level of detail and length, a good debriefing is
essential. Its good to have companies "tell their stories", sharing
insights into their assumptions and strategies. An interesting fact is
that the presentations that get the strongest applause are usually the
company at the top and the company at the bottom. The company at the top
usually had a good strategy and figured things out early. The company at
the bottom usually has struggled hard to "break out" of their bad position
and has lots of learnings as a result. We then use archetypes and other
systems tools to discuss these issues, hand out prizes and go have a
celebratory dinner.

Regards, WILL GLASS-HUSAIN
wglass@gka.com
MicroWorlds
(a division of GKA Incorporated)

[tomfid@MIT.EDU (Tom Fiddaman)]

Kjeld & Syeds question led me to ask what the difference is between models
for the exploratory stage of strategy development and management training.
The key, I think, is that in strategy development you may not have a good
model of the system, probably because you dont understand the loops in an
opponents head.

In this situation, exploratory modeling is useful to discover which loops
actually matter. Still, there is only so much one can do to to anticipate
the possible feedback loops in a model of a multiplayer system - e.g. the
electric utility competition George Backus just described. In this
situation, exploratory simulation-gaming may be more helpful. Its common
practice to test any simulation-game on real users many times in order to
identify missing feedback loops and other features of the system that
players may exploit.

No model-based exercises for the early stages of strategy development come
to mind, but I do know one (non-business) exercise thats commonly used for
"raising the awareness of the need for change." This is the Fish Banks
game, in which multiple teams of players run fishing companies, sharing a
common ocean. The usual outcome is catastrophic depletion of fish
resources. This gets people motivated to think seriously about resource
issues.

Theres a dark side to this kind of game, though. Its much easier for
participants to attribute the outcome to random or extreme behaviors by
other players. In the Fish game, it takes some operator skill to get
players to stop pointing fingers at one another and to start looking at the
system characteristics that led to collapse. Another drawback is that its
often tedious to play through a multi-role simulation more than once, so
people dont have a chance to learn from repeated exploration of the
system.

On another note, I found Norman Marshalls comments on simulation games to
be right on the money. Participants time and attention is very scarce
during a simulation game. If theres too much detail complexity (many
decisions or overused multimedia), players dont have time to appreciate
the dynamic lessons (delays, worse-before-better behavior, etc.) that were
presumably the reason for using a model.

There are some ways to get around this problem, though. One is to
distribute information and responsibility for decision making among several
different roles, so that no individual has to deal with everything at once.
Then you may be able to squeeze in a few extra decisions. Of course, this
introduces new communication challenges in the participants group process
that may not be central to point of the exercise.

Another possibility is to remove the computer from direct interaction with
the players, either by embedding the model in the mechanics of a board game
(i.e. the Beer Game) or by having a computer operator enter decisions and
generate reports.

______________________________________________________________
Thomas Fiddaman, PhD Candidate http://web.mit.edu/tomfid/www
MIT Sloan School of Management, System Dynamics Group
E60-355, 30 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142
MIT: 617-253-3958 home: 603-497-2273 email: tomfid@mit.edu
______________________________________________________________

["Monus,Paul,PA"]

Jim Hines asked about multiplayer SD games. John Sterman mentioned the
Manufacturing Game a while ago on this thread, and Id like to comment
on this again.

The Manufacturing Game was developed at DuPont, based on their SD model
for plant maintenance. This SD model captured the learning from a hugh
benchmarking effort at over 150 plants worldwide, which were considered
the best of the best in manufacturing. The game was invented to give
people a hands on experience of what was learned first by the
benchmarkers who travelled to all of these places, and secondly by those
who developed the SD models to explain what the data meant from all of
these places. Instead of a correlational model that showed how 90
variables interacted, it was greatly simplified to a very small amount
of structure, sufficiently small to fit on the board game. The issues
of getting at the dynamics (not just detail complexity), allowing the
human behavioral issues to be prominant (communications, trust,
involving the heart and body, not just the cognitive), and focusing on
taking learning from the game into action immediately are at the heart
of why this particular multiplayer game is so powerful. I honestly
think that the SD community doesnt understand what a huge breakthrough
this game is.

The Manufacturing Game has been extensively tested. DuPont ran more
than 2000 people through it while Winston Ledet was still there, and
since he has left DuPont and become a consultant many thousands more in
other companies. Within BP over 1500 people have played the game.

This game must be played in the context of a two day learning
laboratory. The framing of it, and preparations are important. A
dialogue (sitting in a circle) starts the two days where people talk
about past experiences where a strongly held belief changed in their own
life, as context for the later input about the nature of paradigm
shifts. Following the reflective inquiry which starts the first day, a
one hour lecture is given about the benchmarking work at the 150 plants,
and what was learned. This is the cognitive input. Engaging the heart
and mind (both prior to the actual playing of the game) serves as setup
for getting players in the right mood to get the most out of the game.

The language we use in talking about the game is important. We treat
the game as a real world. It is a virtual world, but it is real. We
call the green poker chips "mechanics" and the blue chips "spare parts."
We call the game boards "your plant" and try to continually draw the
connections to real world, during the gameplay. This helps in
application of the learning later.

Following the gameplay, we think there must be a "soak time" where the
experiences of the game, in which players could do things they never
have been able to accomplish in real life (evolving from a reactive way
of working to a much more precise way of proacting) do battle in the
subconscious. We think during the overnight between days one and two,
the sleep process acts as a space for the creative tension to really
form. What I want (a proactive way of working, which I experienced in
the game), vs. what I know in my current reality (responding to daily
crisis) is suspended. The question is whether one can create in real
life what we were able to do in the game.

This is the main aspect of the reflective inquiry on the morning of day
2. The facilitation skill is to allow this to emerge and flow from the
participants, not by manipulating them, but by allowing it to just
emerge. It always does. It is a sort of "predicable miracle" that Joe
Jaworski writes about. Even hourly paid union workers who vowed to not
participate seem to be routinely engaged and able to make the shifts of
mind and behavior.

The rest of the second day engages the participants in applying the
essence of what came from the virtual world to their work environment,
via forming action teams (usually cross functional) to go after defect
inflows that lead to the failure events.

The key reason why this game is powerful is that is engages the full
person, the mind, the heart, and the body. I havent yet seen computer
games that can do this (the Learning Environment community may be able
to, but I havent yet seen one that is as powerful). The multiplayer
aspect is because in real life the tough problems of increasing plant
reliability, reducing cost, increasing production rates, improving
quality, etc are typically cross functional multiperson activities. The
virtual world serves as a practice field for these intact teams to work
on their real issues, even if they are not consciously aware they are
doing so in the beginning.

There is a lot more I could say, but Id close by offering to work
offline with anyone who wants to know more about how we are using this.
We have had a lot of people visit us over the past three years we have
been doing this, and Id be open to this as well, if youd want to come
and play and participate in the Manufacturing Game here in Ohio.
Winston Ledet also does public sessions in Houston.

Paul Monus
BP Oil Lima Refinery
419/226-2383
monuspa@olima.usaref.msnet.bp.com