It's a bit like football... In September 1994, I was an extremely shy and nervous 7-year-old muddling my way through my first days at a new school.
Lots of things would make me cry: my mum dropping me off for the day,
teachers asking me a question I couldn’t answer, the horrible food, the
boisterous other kids …
My first clearly positive memory of school was an informal, chaotic game
of football which took place at break time towards the end of September.
I found myself charging around, immersed in the action, with dozens of
other boys, all from different year groups. I didn’t have a clue what I was
doing at first, but I quickly got the hang of it.
That football game made me feel like I was part of something. I was
learning through play, I was forming relationships and I was creating
meaningful shared experiences with others.
On the pitch, I had the confidence that I was lacking in the classroom. I
did not give into my shyness and nervousness by withdrawing into myself
as I had so many times before.
That informal game of football gave the vacuum of breaktime – which I usually dreaded – structure and purpose.
The game itself broke down hierarchies and naturally created bonds. Individually,
I rapidly improved in my shooting, tackling and passing by observing others then
by trying myself within the dynamic, competitive context.
In the game, I started to gain the confidence that helped me to enjoy all aspects
of school life – except the food! That was genuinely revolting and would still
make me cry.
It is not too much of a stretch to compare my schoolboy struggle of September
1994 with the task facing many managers in large companies in 2022:
For shyness and nerves, read stress and dis-empowerment
For the sterile classroom and my habit of withdrawing to my own company, read traditional learning methods, most e-learning and disconnection from colleague
For the impact the football game had on me, see the agendas of most L&D/HR/Talent leads
"Serious games simply swap the 'football' in my story for any topic – leadership, sustainability, business acumen. They enable participants to rapidly develop skills in that area in a highly relevant, engaging and memorable way."
Graham Hutchings, CEO at ProfitAbility
What are Serious Games?
Simply, serious games are games designed for education or professional training
rather than for pure entertainment (De Gloria et al, 2014). They may be played
by individuals or large learner cohorts in digital or analogue formats.
They often take the form of game-based learning experiences, which use
storylines, characters, interactive gameplay, feedback and rewards to
convey/reinforce learning content and generally make training much more fun
(Forbes, 2017).
Serious games can also take the form of business simulations, which are tools
for creating highly engaging, hands-on and business-applicable scenarios in
leadership development training. They are usually experienced by learning
cohorts, led by a facilitator (Forbes, 2020).
"The best course I have attended for building business knowledge."
Tess Humble Dillner, Compass Group Participant, 2022
Serious games are not the same as gamification. In some ways, serious games
flip gamification on its head by putting the game first and the learning second:
PBS' serious games combine the critical elements of game-based learning and
business simulations to create learning experiences that are intrinsically engaging
and competitive, whilst still accurately recreating reality. Here are some
examples of organisational contexts for which PBS have created games:
Client | Business Outcome | Solution Objective | Scenario Recreated | Target Population | The Game |
PepsiCo | More diverse talent attraction and retention | To practise and see the impacts of inclusive talent management decisions | A five-year stint of managing a team | All people managers at PepsiCo | Participants compete to attract and retain the talent which will best enable them to build the highest performing team |
Nestlé | Increased profitability | To understand the financial consequences of day-to- day decisions | The end-toend process of manufacturing and selling coffee products | All new leaders at Nestlé | Participants compete to win the most profitable orders in a live customer market |
Taylor Wimpey | Improved stakeholder sentiments | To experience the realities of the journey of a constructio n project | Two-year long home building process | All new hires | Participants compete to secure the best development sites and to optimise stakeholder support throughout the process |
Typically, these are facilitator-led experiences for around 25 people at a time
(split into smaller teams), lasting anywhere between 2 and 10 hours (split into
smaller chunks) and delivered in virtual, classroom or hybrid formats.
PBS’ central value proposition is to enable leaders to experience in just a few
hours what might take months or years in their real jobs, thereby accelerating
their progression to peak performance.
What are Serious Games?
The key principle of agile learning is its connection to business outcomes. The
critical outcomes that most business leaders are seeking relate to issues like
diverse talent acquisition and retention, the race for net zero, and enhancing
operational resilience (BCG, 2022).
These topics are critically important because there are major competitive
advantages to solving them. The same is true for other enduring challenges like
leadership development and organisational transformation. History proves that
the businesses that will win over the next 10 years will be the ones that can
solve these issues faster than their competitors. These issues are difficult to
solve because:
They are complex, rather than complicated, in nature
They can only be overcome with peer group discussion/reflection, cross-functional empathy building and eventually, shared understanding
They lead to damaging strategic and cultural failings: these problems only occur when people aren’t able to practise the behaviours required to deliver the change objective
"The interactive nature of the game was excellent: we learnt by doing rather than listening as in a typical training session. The breakout rooms helped generate strong conversation."
Katie Hatton, PepsiCo Visible Value participant, 2022
Traditional learning methods are generally better for topics – such as mandatory training – or for learning closed, technical skills that are performed in a predictable environment, like coding.
Complex problems require training experiences which allow participants to “learn by doing,” in context, together. This is the real adoption of agile learning principles.