BUSINESS SIMULATION | ‘Inspire Programme’

What the client wanted

The client – a major high street retailer – aims are to develop advanced leadership skills across the entire community of Joint Venture Partners who own and run the individual businesses. These are already, by definition, highly effective business people who have ensured a market leading position for this optical retail organisation. The focus of the ‘Inspire Programme’ is to take their leadership to an even higher level.

What we did

Impromptu’s role in the execution of this programme was, once again, to support the learning and development consultancy, Academee, through our expertise in role-play development and delivery. We worked as part of the project team, a mix of people from the client, Academee and Impromptu to design a unique, challenging and impactful learning experience for this highly discerning audience.

The design outcome, from the role-play perspective, was a business simulation that runs across both modules of the programme, constructed around a fictitious organisation (a nationwide franchised computer retailer) with parallel aspirations and market challenges to the client’s business.

The first part of this simulation reflects key themes of the programme such as developing customer orientation and effective supplier management as well as key leadership themes of staff engagement and development. It provides this through a range of fly-on-the-wall, hot seating, team meetings and individual meeting challenges for participants. The second part of the simulation increases the stretch and invites the participants to self-organise and create a leadership response to a business expansion issue. In this module, through the simulation, participants are stretched organisationally, interpersonally and emotionally.

The outcomes

This has been a very successful programme rolled out to all JVP’s across the UK. The learning outcomes have been:

• A real and profound understanding of the role of the business leader in continuing to develop staff engagement as a means of achieving business success;
• Very practical in the sense of increasing the range of interpersonal tools available to achieve this;
• A deep appreciation of individual leadership style, the impact of this on staff and the business and practical strategies for developing a broader range of approaches.