Search Results for “dutchman” – Performance Management Company Blog

In Articles on Teamwork, Corporate Team Building Games, executive team building exercises, improve organizational performance, LDGM, Leadership Development Game, Organizational Development Tools

For a number of years, we have been working with Solomon Salvis to deliver our team building and organizational development products in Asia and it is really great to have him come online with his new website. Now based in Singapore, he is expanding this teambuilding and leadership development work and product sales for that marketplace.

Simurise Learning Solutions is my exclusive distributor, worldwide. And while any of our users can resell my products to their clients, Solomon’s expertise and exposure should make distribution and development much more interesting.

Solomon is also a solid presenter and facilitator and is building his delivery and support teams to support a variety of workplace improvement initiatives and collaborative partnerships throughout the region.

If you want a reliable supporter for your teambuilding or organizational development / experiential learning needs and are in the Asian Marketplace, my suggestion is to contact Solomon.

It has been great fun to build the global network of users and to gain so much positive feedback about the exercise and it impacts. You can see a summary of user comments from a survey we did a while back; this is something I think we need to do with all of Solomon’s new user / customers. After all,

And, we are in the midst of rolling out a special version of our game to HRDQ’s distribution channel as well as upgrading all of our materials with various LEGO® scenes to add color and more impact to the presentations and discussions. It continues to be a fun as well as most excellent journey to impact workplace collaboration and alignment.

Rock and Roll!

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.

One of the best teambuilding exercises in the world, as rated by his users, is The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, which focuses on leadership, collaboration, alignment and focuses on implementing the collective performance optimization ideas.

Connect with Scott on Google+

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Press Release on Lost Dutchman’s Teambuilding Exercise 25th year

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On April 20, 2017

In Articles on Teamwork, business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, employee motivation, executive team building exercises

We’re a small business and some things are just normally out of our range of motion but we wanted to do a Press Release about our 25th year of supporting The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine team building exercise worldwide. It has continued to be a fun and interesting and rewarding experience for me to be supporting so many people and trying to have an impact on people and performance.

Joan created and polished this piece, which I think is outstanding given the limitation of 600 words and the focus of making this an integral part of our interesting company story:

Are Team Building Exercises a Waste of Money?
No, According to New Survey

User survey for “The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine”
finds 100% would recommend the exercise to others based on performance and value

TAYLORS, SC, April 17, 2017—While many people believe that Team Building Events don’t generally work, Users of Performance Management Company’s The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine Team Building Exercise hold a much different belief. Based on results received from a Users’ Survey of Dutchman, 100% of the responders said they would recommend the exercise to others based on its performance outcome and value.

Celebrating its 25^th year in the global marketplace, this top performing exercise has helped hundreds of companies generate real discussions about the negative impacts of competition on organizational improvement. Dutchman’s design produces measurable results to clearly show participants how their behaviors sub-optimize outcomes, including the overwhelming choice to compete rather than collaborate.

“A good teambuilding game design, one allowing teams to make choices, can link beautifully to a debriefing focused on making better choices for improving and optimizing organizational improvement. In Dutchman, players readily see the many negative aspects of inter-organizational competition, so we get them to choose alternatives to generate more collaboration and alignment to shared goals and outcomes.”

So says Dr. Scott Simmerman, Dutchman’s creator, a behavioral neurophysiologist specializing in organization performance and Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984.

When about 1/3 of a workforce would forgo a raise to instead see their boss fired, doesn’t it make more sense to build a cohesive team and increase shared goals? And when only 1 in 3 managers are engaged in their jobs, should we not look to do some real things to improve their workplace? Is doing the same thing going to ever generate a different result?

Users value Dutchman because it:

Easily sets up an engaging, fun learning experience with a successful outcome for any group size or type from shop floor workers to senior management.
Contains extensive, flexible debriefing materials with solid links to issues of workplace collaboration, leadership development and motivation.
Clearly shows participants how their behaviors impact ROI for the organization as well as for their own personal improvement.
Offers real value and measurable impact to their organizations.
Motivates people, improves performance results and strengthens communications.

While many things are sold as “team building,” few have actual impact. They may be fun, such as playing paintball, but do they change anything; do they create a viable return on investment for the organization? Dutchman has the backing of enthusiastic users, worldwide, in all kinds of organizations who use it to implement strategies or generate alternative choices.

Dutchman also wins for its various purchasing or rental options and is sold for a one-time cost with unlimited use and no per-participant fees. And, its “satisfaction guarantee” has yet to be necessary for purchasers. Visit PMC’s website or contact Scott to learn how Dutchman will lead to constructive outcomes and teamwork for your organization.

About Performance Management Company:

Performance Management Company designs team building exercises and is the creator of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, its flagship exercise. It is also the creator of Square Wheels^® images for organizational improvement that are packaged in various Toolkits for Managers and Supervisors. PMC was founded in 1984 by Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D., Managing Partner and has been selling its products, worldwide, since 1992.

A partial list of client users: http://www.squarewheels.com/clents.html

It continues to be a great trip, working on team building with my network of users worldwide. AND, we are updating the exercise – if you own it, check with me about a free upgrade of the Intro and Debriefing materials,

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.

One of the best teambuilding exercises in the world, as rated by his users, is The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, which focuses on leadership, collaboration, alignment and focuses on implementing the collective performance optimization ideas.

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

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

Teambuilding Exercise – Overview of Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On June 21, 2016

In business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, executive team building exercises, improve organizational performance, Involving and Engaging People, Leadership Development Game, Organizational Development Tools, team building exercises

My associate in India emailed me with the info that he had just run his 169th session involving my team building exercise, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine. Pretty neat. And I am glad that we are leaving a “legacy” of teamwork and organizational improvement in India and in other countries.

He also shared his newest video overview of the exercise, which I thought to share here.

Click on the image for a 2-minute overview of a session held for one of their clients.
https://youtu.be/n2A4Di3ye_c

If you are interested in acquiring one of these exercises for your own use as a consultant or trainer, you can find information here on my website, or contact me directly at the email listed below

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 quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Debriefing Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine – The Numbers

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On April 18, 2016

In Articles on Teamwork, business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, employee motivation, executive team building exercises, large group team building events, Performance Feedback, team building event ideas

For the past 20+ years, we have been supporting a team building exercise focused on inter-team collaboration and the sharing of resources and information with the goal of optimizing organizational results. We know from our users, a global network of consultants and internal trainers, that the exercise is unique as well as highly effective.

Our users are a highly experienced group, with 70% using 6 or more different team building exercises in their organizational development work. Most (89%) have run the exercise multiple times and 36% have run it more than ten times. (You can see a summary of our 2016 User Survey here)

So this paper was designed as a “high-level” document overviewing basics as well as advanced interpretations linking behaviors and game results to issues of organizational performance and alignment to shared goals and objectives. The goal of play is to drive real change in the workplace based on perspective, observations and commitments.

The attached document might be of interest if:

You already own The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine
You are interested in how a team building game can be used to link to desired future behaviors and drive alignment and collaboration
You are already using another team building simulation and are looking to make improvements in your debriefing or your evaluation of play or ready to choose my game for use, instead!

One of our customers, a senior manager at a large public utility company, asked for my thoughts on her debriefing of the results when she delivered the exercise to her 100 direct reports. What evolved was a highly detailed review of how the results generated in play could be interpreted and discussed. While some of this information is included in the packaging of our exercise, I thought to include it here should our existing customers want to see these details.

Linking Measured Game Results to
Organizational Development Opportunities

Design features in Dutchman allow teams to acquire additional informational resources that help them optimize their results. Basic planning will allow every team to be successful and contribute. But collaborating with the leadership team and working across tabletops will allow them to mine even more gold. Acquiring the extra information allows their team to improve outcomes even more, and to choose as to whether they will assist another team or teams in the quest to mine even more gold.

You can see an intro to the Lost Dutchman’s exercise by clicking on the image below:

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 quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine: The BEST Teambuilding Exercise?

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On April 4, 2016

In employee motivation, experiential learning, improve organizational performance, large group team building events, team building exercises

I asked my customers for their feedback and they shared it. These are people who have purchased my teambuilding exercise and have used it, some for dozens of years. What they told me in the survey was Most Excellent, confirming of my 20+ years of developing this simulation for global use by consultants and trainers.

You can download a full summary of results by clicking on the link below:
Dutchman Survey Results Summary

Our users are a highly experienced group, with 70% using 6 or more different team building exercises in their organizational development work. Most (89%) have run the exercise multiple times and 36% have run it more than ten times. Half reported that their very first delivery was “wonderfully successful” while nearly everyone else reported success.

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 (53%) said this was TRUE! (Only 9 people said this was False, which given the highly experienced and global nature of our users, is pretty fantastic. We are NOT the most expensive exercise out there, just apparently the best value!.)And comments were uniformly supportive of our design, packaging and pricing.

Another tough question was this one: 30 people (55%) responded that Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine is “the best overall team building exercise I have used.”

Fully 100% would recommend the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine game to others for purchase and use, with 63% saying they would recommend it to ANY trainer or consultant.

As to value, two-thirds of users (64%) strongly agreed that the purchased of the exercise represented an excellent value to their organizations and 11 merely agreed, with 5 people sharing a neutral response.

The exercise was designed to be useful for organizational development, alignment, leadership and teambuilding. It was designed for impact.

Fully 7 in 10 agreed or strongly agreed that the simulation was effective in generating observable, “desired changes in behavior after the session ended, back on the job.” One person disagreed.
96% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that, “the exercise linked well to our issues of workplace collaboration and performance management” with two people being neutral.
As to, “representing the Best Value for a teambuilding exercise in the global marketplace,” 21 people strongly agreed and 16 others agreed of 52 registered responses, or 71% of our users.

Again, we framed that question up as a real test of perceived value and even the neutral responses were supportive! It seems we are doing pretty well out there, and no one would actually name an exercise they thought was better than ours.

We asked some tough questions and we got some great answers.

If you are looking for a real team building exercise, one that does the building a lot more than it focuses on “bonding” like so many other exercises in the marketplace, check out our simulation. It is powerful and yet inexpensive. After all, fully three quarters of our users felt it represented a Best Value in the global marketplace of tools for organizational improvement and communications.

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.

Note: we would love to engage in a discussion about team building simulations, costs, and all that so please feel free to comment.

—————–

The specific wording of the questions on value appeared as follows:

10 – The purchase or rental of the exercise represented an excellent value to my organization.

11 – I saw desired changes in behavior after the session ended, back on the job.

12 – The exercise linked well to our issues of workplace collaboration and performance management.

13 – As far as I am aware, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine represents the best value for a teambuilding exercise in the global marketplace for business simulations and designed exercises.

14 – If I moved to another company, I would consider purchasing the exercise if they had the need for improving teamwork, communications, engagement or leadership.

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 just 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!

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

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 Team Building Tips – Delivery Nuances

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 7, 2015

In business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, Dutchman Delivery Tips, Leadership Development Game

We’ve been selling and supporting The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, a powerful teambuilding exercises with anchors to collaboration, leadership and motivation, since 1993. We have owners and users of the LDGM game worldwide, so I thought I would do two things to improve that ownership experience and expand on the issues and opportunities that we support with this exercise:

1 – Continue to publish articles with ideas to improve organizational performance and link to issues of corporate team building opportunities like this blog post.

2 – Go back and add the category, Dutchman Delivery Tips, to the relevant previous posts in this blog to improve the sorting of these particular articles. You can now search that Category for ideas about improving the link of team building simulations like LDGM to your development frameworks.

Most often, people just purchase the Dutchman team building exercise and play it with their group. It is pretty bombproof and users see that it goes really well without understanding the thinking under the design and those little things that make everything pretty congruent.They get a good outcome and they are then satisfied with the way things work and are not looking for different ways to play.

It is surprising how seldom we get into dialogs and interchanges about other features of the design, however, even though many options are detailed in our Professional Edition of the exercise or appear in different posts of mine. And the reality is that there are any number of different nuances that can be integrated into a program to improve its connection to desired outcomes.

Let me share three different delivery frameworks:

One: I had forgotten ALL the cards for a program up in Gaffney. SC and had an hour over lunch between the morning Square Wheels and the afternoon Dutchman delivery. Immediate panic. The creative solution to that problem became the Inventory Management Delivery Option, where I gave teams their starting inventory and we simply kept track of consumption on an inventory form (me at the Trading Post and the Supply Expert at each tabletop).

What I discovered with this delivery was that knowing exactly what resources a team had helped me manage the game immensely — I could see which team had what resources precisely and then coach teams to share resources like trading surplus Supplies for Fuel between them. You cannot really do that in the normal way the exercise played…

Two: An old friend and consulting buddy told me the game was TOO collaborative; he worked with real estate people. SO, I designed the Single Turbo version of the Tortilla Flat Video. It does not have the three Turbochargers in the Video but merely the one, thus not allowing research sharing. (It rewards strategic planning and not collaboration. Neatly.)

Three: Someone asked me, “How can we mine even more gold each day?”

That was a really really excellent question, causing me to rethink the overall design… It is awesome that questions become new ideas.

What I did was to repack The Mine Video to have 16 Cave Cards (instead of 12) and I changed the instructions to tell players that by using a Cave Card, they could mine 11 ounces of gold each day. The extra Caves I include can be shared freely with other teams and each one used would generate an extra ounce of gold. We call this The Assay Office Version, since the Trader can report to another person (at The Assay Office) to track the gold mined over the days (leaving the Provisioner to simply bank the game).

You can purchase this complete tool, with instructions and delivery options, at this location on our website. It is about optimizing overall profitability and it adds another collaboration element to the play and discussion.

You can actually see when the collaboration between the teams starts and you can count the unused Cave Cards and you can add the number of extra ounces produced by the planning — getting the Mine Video. Each unused Cave Card loses $250 in results. Measurement of results adds more impact in your debriefing and linking back to the reality of the workplace!

(And, yeah, I can do all that / any of that by myself when I deliver the exercise for groups of 5 tables or less, although it IS a bit chaotic!)

None of this appears in the LD3, 4 and 6 games but this and more is in the Pro Version (but not mentioned directly in the Rental stuff, simply because it is too nuanced for a single use in a large group… But these kinds of enhancements can be integrated into all the LDGM game deliveries.

We believe that the Lost Dutchman’s teambuilding exercise remains as one of the absolute best simulations in the global marketplace for collaboration and leadership development games. If you are interested in a solid corporate team building simulation, drop me an email,

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 quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

A Perfect Playing of Teamwork: Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On August 10, 2014

In business team building exercises, Dutchman Delivery Tips, experiential learning, LDGM, manager as motivator, motivational team building exercises

I first published The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine back in 1992 and we ran a lot of sessionss to perfect the exercise and polish the materials. You can read a press release about it’s 25 years here.

Not long after that, I started selling versions of the game to consultants all over the world. By now, we are pretty well represented with play in most regions and even collaborating with SimuRise Learning Solution‘s Solomon Salvis in Singapore who is handling global distribution with us.

In April, 2013, I got a note from David Simpson responding to some of my instructional delivery notes that said no group had actually delivered A Perfect Play as shown in my debriefing powerpoint files. In that, I construct what the optimal play of the exercise would be for one team (that happens a good bit) and for a group of three teams collaborating together. To my knowledge, it had never happened. Something had always occurred to prevent a team from doing everything correctly.

Well, David announced to me that one group of three teams for Couch, running the game in Shenzen, China, was able to collaborate with each other as well as collaborating with The Expedition Leader to generate an optimal outcome.

And, he had them so excited that he asked if I might generate an Official Certificate of Accomplishment for their efforts. Guess we gotta go with the flow and get that done. So, I spent a bit of time and put this together.

There are just so many possibilities to generate intrinsic rewards from accomplishments that it still amazes me that managers do not do more of that. We can engage them by asking what things need to be improved or fixed. We can dis-un-engage them by asking them what blocks their involvement and what we should be dong about it. What is so hard about all that?

Do you have any special ways in that you recognize high levels of performance over the long term? What kinds of things do you do that might sustain high performance and add to your effectiveness and team results?

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: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

Team Building with Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On August 8, 2014

In Corporate Team Building Games, executive team building exercises, experiential learning, large group team building events, Leadership Development Game, Team work

After 22 years in the global organizational improvement marketplace, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine still continues to receive the highest kudos from users. Below is feedback just received from new user Barry Howarth, Director of The Engagement People in the UK, who bought the Pro Version of Dutchman a few weeks ago and had this to say after his first run with it:

The event went brilliantly and the feedback was very positive so I am very happy!! The other tasks worked perfectly and the debrief brought the whole thing together.

“Dutchman” is a truly inspirational piece of work which manages to be fun and engage delegates while driving a massive amount of learning at all levels in an organisation.

Barry has plans to run a sessions of 200 people this month. Meanwhile, Robin Speculand, Strategy Implementation Specialist in Singapore and a long-term user of Dutchman has this to say:

I have been using the Lost Dutchman for 19 years and it never fails as a business simulation to stimulate the participants and create excellent learning. Its close link to business reality makes it a winner as well as the energy it creates. I have run it at 8 pm at night after a full day and the energy is just as good as at 8 am.

While some organizations have cut back on team building kinds of events, we’ve found that Dutchman remains one of the marketplace strongholds for helping organizations build collaborative teams. This is simply because it performs beyond the typical team building fun and games. Its quick playing adventure leads to a strong Debriefing that links game play to organizational issues and makes all the difference in exceeding learning expectations.

You can find a complete overview of the exercise by clicking the icon below:

You can review the framework for Debriefing this and other experiential learning teambuilding exercises by clicking on this icon:

If you have the desire to use Dutchman in your organization or to introduce this as a workshop or event to your clients, we’d love to help you make that happen because we know it will make a turnaround difference in the workplace.And it is truly one of the best games for big events, lending itself to aligning large groups to organizational goals or to generate ideas for implementation.

By using Lost Dutchman in a training and development event, you’ll be giving people a learning experience that has been used to create positive impact, worldwide since 1993, one that continues to exceed expectations because of how well it works to cause performance and organizational improvement to take place.

I guarantee that the Dutchman exercise does everything we say it does and I have 22 years of customers and testimonials to support that guarantee. Please also feel free to connect directly with me to ask questions or to get clarification on the offer or the exercise or any of our other products and services.

You can find a link to a compendium of blog posts about using the exercise and in presenting large group team building events here

And let me add one other thought. I really make a big deal out of client support. I will go WAY out of my way to help someone, whether is is customizing some of the materials for a special focus or simply answering questions. I developed and did a webcast on facilitating the game for a very large group of people who were running the game all over the US — we had 50 people on the program and I did it from a McDonald’s half way down to Tampa since I was on the road when it was most convenient. Purchase a game from me and you get as much support as you need! Dutchman is MY baby!

So, please feel free to connect directly with me at Scott@SquareWheels.com or 864-292-8700 to ask questions or to get clarification on the offer or the exercise or any of our other products and services.

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 with programs delivered in 38 countries for 30+ years.

 Connect with Scott on Google+

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com or 864-292-8700

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s blog on Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

Two new testimonials about The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine teambuilding exercise

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 8, 2014

In business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, executive team building exercises, Leadership Development Game, Organizational Development Tools, The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

Most of my posts try to be informational and instructive and I love adding cartoons and poems and haiku and all that for spice. But occasionally, it is simply useful to me to post up some good testimonials that I can offer up to people who are interested in our products and services.

The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine is our flagship exercise for building teamwork and inter-organizational collaboration. It works great at every level of an organization as a tool for leadership development and organizational alignment or even for implementing strategy and change. It is easy to deliver, inexpensive, reusable, and very effective.

Below are two testimonials, one from a long-term consultant user of the exercise and one from a client. Clicking on the LDGM testimonial images will take you to different slideshare overviews of the exercise and its impacts – the top one is about pricing options and the second shows links to issues of organizational development and how the exercise can be debriefed.

and

I will add this one, from a senior line manager who rented the LDGM exercise from us and who chose to rent it again after she changed jobs and had 50 new reports — she wanted to involve and engage with her in a session on alignment, one designed to demonstrate her leadership style and her organizational goals in a fun and engaging way:

We are really proud of how well the Lost Dutchman exercise works for organizational development and alignment issues. Please contact me if I can offer any additional information or assistance,

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 Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

Teambuilding with The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On February 24, 2014

In business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, Dutchman Delivery Tips, employee motivation, Involving and Engaging People, Leadership Development Game

We’ve been selling the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine game for twenty years now and I continue to feel that this is the best program in the marketplace niche in which it appears. And it continues to surprise me that the exercise seems as fresh to me today as it did 10 years ago when the materials were fully developed, fine-tuned and polished. I guess I am also surprised that the opportunities for improving inter-organizational collaboration are still evident everywhere and corporate team building seems to continue to be an area of high leverage for impacting productivity. Companies should have made more progress than they have!

We have active consultants working with corporate team issues, worldwide, and the opportunities for trainers and internal consultants to use this exercise and approach seems like an untapped opportunity. After all, don’t these internal people see an advantage to using a bombproof exercise that generates the precise competitive behaviors that need to be better blended with collaboration and engagement opportunities as well as the need for inter-organizational alignment?

A recent conversation with an outdoor training organization in Asia resulted in a potential collaboration with that firm and networking them to three other global experiential training companies who have blended my programs into their other offerings. It seems like the collective idea of sharing and the learning about positioning team building simulations into the other kinds of corporate teamwork programs is a simple and straightforward one. I am glad that my network continues to be quite collaborative in sharing ideas for delivery and marketing.

You can find a pretty solid description of the Dutchman game in this slideshare overview, which shares key design features and benefits.:

You can also find a solid video about how I debrief the exercise and link the behaviors exhibited to the organizational issues here. This is not a marketing video but a candid discussion of what I see as organizational realities and potential ways to impact performance improvement opportunities:

An overview about how we use our Square Wheels illustrations as tools for debriefing the Lost Dutchman team building exercise is found by clicking the icon below:

Hope you find this information and the links of use in evaluating our Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine game into your corporate team development. We are more than happy to discuss specific issues and desired outcomes for your improvement efforts at any time,

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 Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

Provisioner Training for The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On February 4, 2014

In Articles on Teamwork, business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, Dutchman Delivery Tips, large group team building events, Leadership Development Game, Team work, The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

One aspect of delivering The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine for a large group is that you need three people to help operate the game for every ten tables (60 participants). The banking and the delivery are really straightforward, but they do require a review of rules and systems and optimal processes. And you can run lots of really large groups, cheap. You just need some helpers!

I just finished a webcast for about 70 people who will be involved as Provisioners in the banking of 9 different sessions of between 140 and 290 college students, each. This is part of a professional honor society’s student development initiatives and they will be running Dutchman all over the US. Pretty neat. Almost 2000 students will go through this as part of their orientation to the accounting profession.

So, I am volunteering a good bit of extra time to help them, with this webcast being but one of several coaching sessions for their supporting volunteers.

As of yesterday, I now have a much more refined and detailed powerpoint training program for Provisioner (banking) Training. Any of you that own the game would probably find it useful, since it reviews ALL of the key parts of the support activity and might point out something you either missed or did not quite understand about the delivery.

(Square Wheels: Part of it got video recorded before the movie-making software decided to quit. There were a couple of things I also want to clarify in the back end of it, also, so I will redo the second half and put it all together within a few days. Square Wheels really are everywhere!) But it will be a better product when I redo it…

The powerpoint of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine is done for this part of the training, if you want to take a look at it.Click on the link and I can email it to you if your game needs updating.

You can find a complete overview of the key aspects of Dutchman in another blog post that has a connection to our slideshare program describing the exercise.

Dutchman is one of the premier team building exercises in the world, especially when used for very large group presentations. Highly interactive, and focused on collaboration and strategic planning, leadership, motivation and teamwork.

This game works for large group team building events and is easy to facilitate and debrief. I also built them a special debriefing that you can get if you request it,

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 Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

PMC – our Square Wheels and Lost Dutchman logo

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On January 30, 2014

In Team work

Optimizing Profit through Collaboration – Ideas for Lost Dutchman Deliveries

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On January 24, 2014

In Articles on Teamwork, business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, experiential learning, large group team building events, Organizational Development Tools, Team work, The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

We designed and sell The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, a team building exercise focused on planning and collaboration, among other key outcomes. A recent purchaser sent me an email this morning with a simple question but one that I thought merited some elaboration, since there are any number of design features and delivery spins that impact the desired outcomes of the client.

Hello Scott,

I am thoroughly enjoying facilitating the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine team building. 🙂

So far I have had groups between 40 – 50. Next week I have a smaller one (4 teams). How many videos do you suggest I have on hand of each?

Thanks so much!

Warmly,

First, it is nice to get the positive feedback (testimonials) and to know that she is making money from her investment in purchasing the exercise. Secondly, it is a very good question that I somewhat address in the training materials included with the exercise, but something that obviously could use some additional explanation and some awareness as to issues and opportunities.

So, I sent her a brief overview of my thoughts and promised that her questions would generate a more complete blog post from me today, one that expands on a number of ideas around this simple question. Like my post yesterday, where I discuss the philosophy around the game board design as it relates to my goals of generating more planning and collaboration (found here), this post also discusses themes of how the available resources can link tightly to desired outcomes.

The Videos are a metaphor and game accessory that ties to strategic planning and best practices. The Mine Video is about the gold mine and contains Cave Cards that teams find useful. Getting that Video costs one day of time and the team getting it leaves on Day Two of the 20 day exercise instead of Day One. (See more on this on the other blog post if that is of interest.)

The second video, on Tortilla Flats, contains best practices resources and one video can actually support three teams if the resources are shared across tabletops. I choose not to expand on that here.

So if there are four tabletops playing, her question is how many Videos should she make available for play?

The answer is that it depends on the desired outcomes for the session. Allowing the teams to all get both videos would mean that there are wasted planning days and a bit of analysis paralysis… They do not NEED to spend that much time gaining information and they are losing days of Mining Gold because of it. Plus, with all that information available to every team, it takes away some of the excitement and risk and all that.

Having too many resources is NOT motivating. Having sufficient but not excessive resources to accomplish something adds more challenge. People are not motivated climbing stairs but they are when using ropes and climbing gear to make that ascent!

Having only ONE of each Video available is a scarcity model. The Mine Video resources and information are not as available to the others and there would be little incentive for a team that acquires that to share it — the competitive aspect of it would play in. Having one Tortilla Flat Video would enable 3 of the 4 teams to optimize their performance if – and only if – those resources were shared. If one team got both videos, they would see all the teams leave on Day One and they would leave on Day Three. They would also mine more gold than any of the other teams and they would have an easier time of it, overall.

So, one needs to balance resource availability.

Generally, for a group of 4 tabletops, I might play with three Mine Videos and two of Tortilla Flat so that resources could be shared with all teams.

But there is another option that I really like to do with smaller groups and one that emphasizes the issues around inter-team collaboration even more than the regular design. That involves what we refer to as the Optimizing Profit Performance Option or what I refer to as The Assay Office Version, since that was what it was originally called. There is a long history as to how it evolved but here is what it is and how it works:

This Assay Office version of The Mine Video contains extra Cave Cards, more than one team could possibly use. So, the design is that the team acquiring this Video would absolutely know that they have extras that they could share with another tabletop. And, this Video also contains information that by using a Cave Card, a team could acquire an extra ounce of Gold each day, 11 ounces rather than 10.

We tell the teams getting this “new edition” of the video that it is different than the old ones — we generally use only ONE of them in a delivery. We tell other teams getting the “old editions” that they should check with that other team to understand the changes that were made in the new edition. WE TELL THEM TO CHECK; WE TELL THEM TO SHARE; WE GIVE THEM EXTRA CARDS!

If a team reaching the mine uses a Cave Card, they can ask for an extra ounce. ANY team using a Cave Card can ask for an extra ounce. Thus, if they got the Assay Video, they should remember to get the extra gold and if they heard about the Assay Video and used Cave Cards given to them (or if they got their own Mine Video with cards), they could also get the extra ounce.

We now simply use a spreadsheet to track when the team asked for the extra ounce and we know which team got the Assay version and which teams could have benefited.

In the above example, the Yellow Team got there a day later (staying home and getting both Videos) and they got the Assay Office version of the Mine Video. We know this because of the day they arrived plus the reality that they used the information to acquire the extra ounce the first day of mining. We know that they got the Tortilla Flat Video because they did not leave on Day 14. (this is information that only game owners would understand!) The Yellow team optimized their results and mined the most gold, contributing the most to the overall gold mined. Remember:

You might guess that the Red team got an older version of the Mine Video and spent that extra day at Apache Junction and never did find out about the extra gold. They left on Day 14.

The Blue team got there on Day 7 so they did not spend a day planning — they acquired Cave Cards (or at least started using them on Day 9) and someone shared the Assay Office information with them. Only on Day 13, the day before they left the Mine, did the Purple team actually use a Cave Card.

(These are actual game results, by the way. This version is harder to administrate than our regular one because there is more tracking. I also think it would be really confusing in a large group environment and harder to debrief.)

If the different teams would all share information and collaborate, they mine more gold and the goal of the game is to mine as much gold as we can, not to compete and win as your own team! If the teams asked the Expedition Leader for advice or assistance, we would also help them to understand how this works. We explain this only to the team getting the first Mine Video, the Assay Office one.

This blog is written for users or those about to facilitate and support a delivery of the exercise so apologies if you got this far and remain a bit confused. For those of you familiar with the normal delivery, I trust that this will make some elegant sense. If you click on either of the two icons above, you can go to the order page for the exercise to add this to your toolkit. It comes free in our Professional Version of the Lost Dutchman game.

You can read more of my thinking on collaboration versus competition at this blog post of mine – click here

You can find a nice screenshare overview of the complete exercise by clicking on the image below:

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 Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

Lost Dutchman – Thoughts about Day One of the exercise

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On January 23, 2014

In business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, employee motivation, executive team building exercises, LDGM, Leadership Development Game, team building exercises, team motivation

One of my new users ran The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine for the first time and had a question about the design of the game board and how it all plays out with the weather. I thought that my thinking about how this should work and why we designed it this way might be useful for other users. Here is what he said:

If you look at the first cell after Apache Junction, it is connected on all three routes!

This will allow a team to move from one route to the other without having the teams to come back to base – Is my understanding correct?
In that case, shouldn’t the weather pattern be the same on day one for all the routes?

I understand that this is a bit tricky, especially when teams can move out on Day 1, 2 or 3 based on them taking the videos and I would love to hear your thoughts on the same.

Here is the game board and the area in question:

And here is my thinking about how this works and why:

YES, if they leave Apache junction, the start up point, they go into a block that surrounds AJ and that connects to all three routes.

Leaving on Day One, with the rainy weather pattern on that day, they get punished for not planning and getting a Video. They use up an extra Fuel Card and they can see that will happen before they commit to actually leaving. There is no way around that weather — they are OUT and in a block that is “muddy” in how it is drawn with the light brown dirt and the squiggly lines.

The rules say that this Mud does NOT occur on the High Country or Plateau Trails. But if you look at the map, the signs marking those trails start on the NEXT block and not this one.

Having one large surrounding block enables a team to take ANY route on Day 2 — they can change their mind at no cost and simply go a different way. If they had planned to go on the Low Country Trail and Day One is MUDDY, one might expect a logical team to question that decision (they just got some new negative data!!) and take another route. This, of course, never happens!!

They could also get information from teams that get The Videos and choose to go up to the Mine using the High Country or Plateau Trails on Day 2.

The weather for Day One is the same for all three routes — Yes. Day One is Day One and they are in a block that is colored muddy, lined as muddy, and is clearly their first step out of AJ. If they stay at AJ, they consume 1 and 1. If they leave it is 1 and 2.

PLUS, there is Rule Number One —

The reality of being in charge is that the weather and the consumption of resources IS what you TELL THEM it is! Some might argue. Some might simply be confused so you explain the rules again. Some might try to cheat and save a fuel. But it is simple: If they leave on Day One, the cost is an extra Fuel Card!

There is nothing “tricky” about any of this. It is very simple and straightforward. It is highly congruent with my thinking and the benefits of planning to their individual team success and to the overall success of the group…

Note that you can always simply do what makes the best sense for the expedition at any time. That is simply good leadership of any expedition in any workplace – do what makes sense. Having a Rule Number One is certainly helpful! (grin)

There are a number of similarly elegant little nuances to the map, like the movements around the Supply Depot near the Mine and the use of a Turbo for movement there as well as the actual number of days from AJ to the mine with the other resources available. Some of these features were simply the result of luck on my part and some were thought out — this one with the design of the block surrounding AJ was a planned one!

We think that this game is pretty tight and easy to deliver. Over 20 years, we think that we have very congruent rules that make it easy to tie to themes of project management, strategic planning, team collaboration and inter-departmental collaboration, and to all sorts of issues around organizational alignment, leadership development and strategy implementation.

It also seems to generate the same kinds of play and debriefing discussions. The above was from a user in India, but it could have been Germany or Dubai.

Oh, did I mention that a major goal is to also have fun?

You can find more about The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine by clicking on this link that takes you to our overview on Slideshare.

Clicking on the link that is the image below will take you to an overview of the games on our website.

You can also see the many articles in the blog about the game by clicking on my image below.

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 Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

Performance Management Company Blog

Ideas on People and Performance, Team Building, Motivation and Innovation

Search results: "dutchman" (Page 1 of 12)

Simurise Learning Solutions enters the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine fray

Press Release on Lost Dutchman’s Teambuilding Exercise 25th year

Teambuilding Exercise – Overview of Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine

Debriefing Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine – The Numbers

Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine: The BEST Teambuilding Exercise?

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

Lost Dutchman Team Building Tips – Delivery Nuances

A Perfect Playing of Teamwork: Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine

Team Building with Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

Two new testimonials about The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine teambuilding exercise

Teambuilding with The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

Provisioner Training for The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

PMC – our Square Wheels and Lost Dutchman logo

Optimizing Profit through Collaboration – Ideas for Lost Dutchman Deliveries

Lost Dutchman – Thoughts about Day One of the exercise

Subscribe to Blog via Email

General Categories

Recent History

Archives