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Organizational Excellence Experiential Training, The Most Fun and Engaging Way to Create Impact Drivers

In the year 2022, from July to November, AMBIZ had the opportunity to help one of the biggest telecommunications companies in Indonesia to teach V-level executives about organizational excellence.

This collaboration was inspired by their mission to be the leader of their industry. We were challenged to design, plan, and implement learning initiatives that allow us to teach their V-level executives about organizational excellence in a fun and engaging manner. This learning initiative aimed to help their V-level executives gain a deeper understanding of organizational excellence so that they can be impact drivers for their company and help their company achieve their mission to be the leader of their industry.

The Fundamental

To ensure that our approaches are suitable and effective to fulfill the goal of our clients. We started conducting deep research regarding the best learning approach available. During the process of creating the learning initiative, we encountered two hurdles. The first is the fact that V-level executives have a lot more experience and knowledge compared to D-level or B-level executives, this means that it will not be easy to teach them via traditional lecture-based teaching methods because of the passive nature they’d take during the learning process which will lead to boredom and disengagement. This means that we must create learning initiatives that put them as active participants to engage them in participating with the learning initiative. The second problem is the limited time they have. V-level executives are very busy with work, their schedules are already packed for months ahead. Their tight working schedules push us to create learning initiatives that won’t take too much of their time yet are effective in helping them learn new insights and behavior.

During our research, we’ve found that game-based learning is one learning initiative alternative that can be employed for this case. Our research findings suggest that game-based learning is efficient and effective in teaching people new insights and new behaviors. This is because gamified learning allows the training participants to experience the world through new perspectives and encourages them to reflect on their behavior to perfect their craft and win the game against other competitors. We don’t have to struggle to encourage them to participate in the training and engage in it. The gamified learning concept alone is interesting enough for them to join the training and further engage with the learning initiative.

To create engaging and fun gamified learning initiatives, we must include a few elements in the game. The first and most important element is competition between the participants. This provided a challenge and drove their motivation to dig deeper regarding the game fundamentals and what it takes to surpass the other trainees. The second element is realism, the game itself should be realistic enough for them to further engage with the game. If the game elements such as story, winning conditions, etc. aren’t realistic. They would just perceive it as a game that doesn’t reflect reality. Leading to disengagement because they’d think it isn’t relevant to them. The last element is the in-game challenge. Creating the perfect difficulty balance is essential to ensure the training participants felt challenged yet still have hope to win so that they continue to play the game and learn more about the game fundamentals, allowing them to gain more insights we’ve provided in the game. To create the perfect game difficulty balance, we mixed elements of reward and challenges. Ensuring the rewards intrigued them to keep going, and the challenges can make them reflect and motivate them to keep learning.

After deciding which elements to include in the game, we started to shift our focus to creating the game itself. The game itself should have a game-like yet professional appearance, ensuring that it is user-friendly and it won’t take too much time for them to learn how to navigate through the game. To ensure this, we chose to create the game in our website dashboard, the design itself is visually forward and filled with symbols related to the element of the game. Allowing them to quickly familiarize themselves with the dashboard and doesn’t require them to read every action button available in the dashboard, rather they’d only need to remember the symbol associated with the actions. To further enhance their experience, we also created interactive guidelines with voiceover. At the beginning of the game, they will be greeted by our guide that will help them navigate through the game. The guide will introduce them to game elements and help them to familiarize themselves with the dashboard. Ensuring that they can learn how to navigate through the dashboard quickly in a fun and engaging manner. We thoroughly checked the game before it was ready to be deployed. During the quality checking process, we ensure that there are no errors in the game, the game is played the way it was designed, and doesn’t take too long to complete. Overall, the game would take 60-90 minutes to complete, challenging enough to intrigue the player to keep learning about the game fundamentals and rewarding enough for them to keep going and complete the game.

The Training

The training was virtually held in November 2022. A total of 85 V-level executives coming from Indonesia and other countries spared their time during their busy schedules and attend the training. The training started with a briefing section, where we briefly introduced the game to our training participants and demonstrated how to play the game, allowing them to get an initial look at the dashboard before getting their hands on the dashboard. The purpose of this briefing is to help them familiarize themselves with the dashboard and get a general idea regarding the game rules, goals, and gameplay. After that, we gave them the time around 60-90 minutes to play the game by themselves. During the gameplay section, we provided live support via a virtual meeting room where all the training participants have access to ask their questions directly to us. Following the gameplay section, we would gather all the participants in the virtual meeting room to announce the game-winner and debrief them about the game. Here our trainers will give them a deeper understanding of the key learning points of the game. Facilitating them to relate the in-game learning points with reality and helping them turn those insights into an actionable plan to help them drive impact for the company.

The Result

Out of the 85 V-level executives that attended the training, 82 of them have completed the game. 68 of them replay the game 3 times, and 11 of them spare their time on the weekend to replay the game. The training participants perceived the training to be fun, challenging, and interesting. They liked the game because it is realistic and teaches valuable lessons. The main topics they’ve learned from the game are strategy, management, people management, leadership, business, and talent development. The main thing that they disliked about the game is the game duration is too short and they wanted to play the game for longer. Overall,