Month: February 2016

In employee engagement, Facilitation, improve organizational performance, people and performance, productivity improvement, Spring Forward Monday, Square Wheels LEGO images

Monday’s, most typically, are the least favorite day of the work week but the Monday following the Daylight Saving’s “spring forward” time change, arguably, should be considered the worst of Mondays being that people find it even more challenging to face this workday since they are still adjusting to having lost an hour from their lives the day before. According to numerous studies, the attitudes and happenings around this lost hour cause this Monday to be particularly low in workplace productivity.

What might you be doing to counteract the loss of productivity that will most likely occur in your workplace on Monday, March 14, 2016?

At Performance Management Company, we’re always looking for opportunities that can bring about employee engagement and workplace improvement for better organizational success. Realizing that Monday, March 14th is that special kind of day that needs a good reason for getting up and going to work, we’ve got a concept and solution for turning it into a rewarding workplace happening day and we’re calling it,

Spring Forward Monday!

What is the Spring Forward Monday Concept?

Managers and leaders can gather their employees together and seize Monday, March 14, 2016, as day for workplace improvement by inviting ideas, innovation and involvement for improving workplace practices. By doing so, people can get away from their desks and become energized by taking part in a process that can make a positive difference for everyone.

How Can You Do This?

It’s simple. Facilitate a session that will stimulate and engage employees in sharing their perspectives and ideas for making a better workplace. Doing so will give them a feeling of empowerment and an opportunity to create improvements and increased workplace happiness.

If you’d like a way to successfully approach this, we designed The Stupidly Simple Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit for just this type of occasion with everything needed to create an interactive and engaging session with serious outcomes. The gist of this Toolkit is the Square Wheels One illustration that elegantly generates thinking, creativity and humor as people react to it and its lead-in statement, “This is how most organizations really work.”

Here’s a quick, illustrated video showcasing

how facilitating

Spring Forward Monday

in your workplace will cause people to

“Wake up and Energize for Improvements.”

You can purchase this Toolkit here for only $24.95, for a one-time cost with unlimited use with any number of people.

This Toolkit provides both the original black and white line-art Square Wheels One illustration and the new Lego image of Square Wheels One

giving you the choice of using either version.

Square Wheels One - copyright 1993, Performance Management Company

Square Wheels image using LEGO by Scott Simmerman

Here’s what’s included in Toolkit:

The Square Wheels One illustration (in both the original line-art and its Lego image)
A Leader’s Guide for facilitating the session
Participant Worksheets/Handouts
A collection of Square Wheels Lego Posters that can be hung in the workplace as anchors to the insights gained.

All yours for only $24.95!

Whether you choose to use this Toolkit or prefer to consider another way to approach the Spring Forward Monday concept, it surely makes sense to make a difference in everyone’s present and future workdays through involving them and energizing them in the journey forward.

Make Monday, March 14, 2016 your
Spring Forward Monday!

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s blog on themes of People and Performance is here.

Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine Team Building Exercise – Survey Results

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On February 15, 2016

In Corporate Team Building Games, experiential learning, large group team building events, LDGM

We completed a user survey, following up with the owners of our team building exercise to get their reactions to the game in the context of its value and impact. Given the complexity of the world and the difficulty of reaching people, we were pleasantly surprised to get over 50 responses to our questions, along with a variety of solid comments about the exercise.

We have been selling and supporting The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine worldwide since 1993, and we are really pleased to get so much confirmation from our users as to its value. Respondents were experienced team building trainers and consultants; 36 respondents had used 6 or more different team building exercises.

And they LIKE to use Dutchman: 31% (16 of 52) report they have run the game more than 10 times while most (84%) have run the exercise two or more times.

Deliveries were successful from the git-go, with 22 of 44 people reported that their first delivery of LDGM “was wonderfully successful” while most found that first play simply “successful.” Few had any problems or issues using the exercise in their sessions, and some people use the exercise routinely for senior management groups (like Robin Speculand) or very large sessions of more than 100 people.

Most people thought Dutchman very solid and useful. And remember that these people are generally experienced trainers and consultants, globally. If they went to another company, 45 out of 47 people said that they would consider purchasing the exercise again for improving teamwork, communications, engagement or leadership. (I will admit that I really do like that number!)

We asked a really tough T/F question: “LDGM is the best exercise I know of to work with senior managers on issues of strategy, alignment, and organizational collaboration.” Fully half (50%) said this was TRUE! Only 9 people said False, which given the broad experiences of our users, is fantastic. Comments were all supportive of our design, packaging and pricing.

29 people (56%) responded that Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine is “the best overall team building exercise I have used.”
And, fully 100% would recommend the game to others for purchase and use, with 63% saying they would recommend it to ANY trainer or consultant.

As to my support support, 100% agreed that I was readily reachable and available to answer any or all questions they had! That absolutely confirms what I have been trying to do for the past 30 years – be seen as very responsive and supportive for the use of any and all of our training materials. Few developers are known for offering that level of support, but most of my ideas for new exercises or delivery frameworks also come from those discussions. It is the reason we remain a small company and a reason that I seem to always be online! (grin)

As to value, two thirds (67%) strongly agreed that the purchased of the exercise represented an excellent value to their organizations and 11 merely agreed, with only 5 people sharing a neutral response. And 96% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that, “the exercise linked well to our issues of workplace collaboration and performance management” with one person being neutral.

As to representing a Best Value for a teambuilding exercise in the global marketplace, 19 people strongly agreed and 15 others agreed. Again, we framed that question up as a real test of perceived value and even the neutral responses were supportive with their comments!

It seems we are doing pretty well out there, and no one would actually name an exercise they thought was better than Dutchman.

In a word: Cool!

You can find 38 testimonials on a slideshare page here.

If you have any questions or thoughts or testimonials, we would love to hear from you,

For the FUN of It!