Dutchman is a great way for teams to experience issues of communication, resource management and team dynamics common to the workplace. During debriefing, team behaviors are linked to opportunities to improve collaboration, leadership, teamwork and communications critical to optimizing results. Participative, visual and interactive, it produces an excellent learning environment in a high-impact and memorable way.
The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine is a fast-paced simulation engaging teams in a journey to mine gold in the Superstition Mountains of the American Southwest.
The key to the game is to work together and have fun, collaborating and not competing. Participants join others at tables set for 6. On the tabletops are a map, their Grub Stake of resource cards, planning tools and other information about the exercise. Putting on cowboy hats and colorful bandannas (which add visual impact and energy), the group settles in to hear the history of the Lost Dutchman Mine and to learn the mechanics of the challenge.
Teams have 20 days of 2 minutes each to manage their journey to the mine and back home. They can choose from 3 paths with varying risks, planning for weather and planning for optimal use of resources.
Generally, we complete the entire activity in 3.5 hours but many users integrate the game into other training content on leadership, team building, personality styles, quality improvement and other content. The exercise is metaphor-driven and these metaphors link beautifully to all sorts of other training paradigms.
People have fun and share ideas that apply to their jobs. Substantive action plans for change are common outcomes.
Teams from all over the world have found Dutchman to be a dynamic journey and highly positive learning experience. The game works quite well with small groups as well as large conferences and retreats.
Benefits:
- Team building, innovation and creativity
- Realigning missions and visions / how to motivate people and organizations
- Leadership training and supervisory skills development
- Communications skills training (direct links to personality styles, NLP, etc.)
- Continuous quality and service quality improvement
- Energizing of existing quality programs and SPC training
- Executive Development Retreats
It's fast-paced and high impact -- a memorable experience for all!
