(please scroll down or jump to a particular question by clicking on the link to its right)
8 - Does the simulation work everywhere? (click here)
1 - What is the licensing arrangement? Is it complicated?
The purchasing / user agreement is actually quite simple.
Buy a game -- use it.
One purchase allows you to maintain ONE set of game materials for use. This means you may not re-manufacture or split the game into two or more parts to run more than one simulation at a given time.
But there are no restrictions on how often you can play or where.
There are copyright restrictions on the use of the images, logos, and the like and protections are in place for the intellectual property behind the simulation.
We are supporting an active and positive collaboration with our purchasers for mutual gain. The more the game is played, the more exposure it will get and the better it gets for all.
We also try to provide our consultant users with leads and referrals since our business is much more a publishing business than a consulting or delivery business.
It is our long-term intention to continue to fill the pipeline with new products, simulations, and the like and to develop some high-technology versions of the materials. It is truly a global marketplace and we intend to be long-term players.
2 - Is Lost Dutchman a good investment for a consultant?
Absolutely! Guaranteed! If you are looking for a solid team building exercise with very flexible links to organizational issues or if you are looking to develop new applications and working with large organizations, Lost Dutchman is a proven profit-maker and a bomb-proof exercise.
We've proven it with children and with adults acting like children.
It has worked quite well with senior engineers and top executives as well as with front-line workers with limited reading and mathematics skills.
It has also become a recognized brand name. It's gotten good exposure throughout the world.
Yet our penetration into the potential marketplace is tiny. The game is a proven success with participants worldwide. Thus, we think that most consultants doing team development or management retreats can use it with their clients in a high-impact manner. It's fun and is an outstanding simulation for a client retreat or conference.
There are no limits to the number of people who can play the game at a single time. We did an outdoor version of the game for 350 people with Torrington / Ingersoll Rand (instructions are in the Support Binder) and a 600 person game in a big ballroom with another. You'll love the instructional design and the ease of delivery!
A less-collaborative version exists for outside sales people, designed for Mike Brown when he was looking for some enhancement to use with real estate people where collaboration was not the main theme. Another version (Inventory Management) allows the Expedition Leader to coach teams as they play, offering a most interesting impact. A couple of folks wanted more complicated play so we developed Option B that makes the last 5 days more intense. You get all of these versions with the Professional Edition.
We think Dutchman offers the highest-value simulation in the marketplace. An outstanding value for consultant users who want to be in business for the long-term and want to offer something other than or along with products and services of their own design.
We even offer you low cost marketing materials as well as FREE links from this website to yours (and your email). You can take information from the site and put it on your website for marketing -- text, graphics and whatever...
Who else is collaborating with their user base like this?
3 - Is Lost Dutchman a good investment for an internal trainer?
Dutchman is a most flexible simulation that can be configured in a number of ways. The Support Binder has over 125 potential debriefing questions and a number of types of debriefings are suggested.
Generally, the simulations we deliver are for leadership retreats or sales conferences, often as large as 200 people and occasionally larger (600 is the largest thus far, but there are actually no limitations on size if one has a support staff). In that regard, it is exceptionally flexible.
But many clients use it as a kickoff to a week-long or longer training program (IBM corporate and EDS MPD are two such users) and then link various aspects of the game to issues of leadership development, personal style, communications, systems thinking, etc. The game has nice links to TQM and QFD, especially since it sets up a database for analysis. The package contains a complete Process Re-Engineering debriefing with worksheets.
What I really hope trainers and consultants will do is use the game with their local schools, both with administration and teachers and with students or student leadership. To that end, the simulation's Support Binder dedicates a full section of materials for discussion and debriefing. Our schools need the help!
The simulation is metaphor-driven, which gives it a great deal of flexibility. We have built in metaphors of Square Wheels® and a whole series of other illustrations.
It is a powerful and flexible tool, and thus a good toolkit for any trainer.
4 - How many versions and options are there for delivery?
We sell three basic configurations
LD4 for 4 teams of up to 6 people each
LD6 for up to 6 teams of up to 6 people each
LD Pro for unlimited numbers of teams and players
We developed a High Risk version of the game that we suggest be played with no more than 6 teams because of the complexity. We also developed a version structured specifically to link with the Herrmann International HBDI Thinking Styles Inventory - this is a 5-team version.
We also support these games with a variety of delivery options within each game. There is a framework we call The Diversity Option as well as a high collaboration modification we call The Assay Office Version. There are also a number of different nuances and customizations you can add based on specific needs.
We view our exercise as a tool for organizational improvement rather than a dogmatic, do it our approved one way simulation. We have a usergroup that shares ideas and innovations with all of us.
5 - How much time does it take?
Generally, we like 3 to 3.5 hours to introduce, plan, play and debrief. This allows us to move quickly but to also do an elaborate job of linking the debriefing to the issues at hand.
With larger groups of 100 - 200 people, because you are only as fast as the slowest team, we generally request a minimum of 3 hours.
With smaller groups, you can play and minimally debrief in 2.5 hours.
If you are using the exercise as part of a longer, multi-day training session, you can play and summarize results within 2 hours. You then defer much of the debriefing specifics into the course content itself.
6 - How does Lost Dutchman compare to other simulations?
Dutchman is not a pencil and paper team building exercise -- it is a full-blown, interactive simulation designed to engage participants in a highly interactive and stimulating environment.
The game has evolved from our experiences with other training tools and was designed to be metaphor-driven and not a "game for a game's sake." It is outcome-oriented and a powerful learning tool.
Dutchman is fast to play but sufficiently complicated to be engaging and challenging. Our Professional Edition offers a number of alternative designs to generate slightly differing outcomes and key learning points.
Unlike some other exercises, it does not contain falsehoods or traps to catch people -- it is designed so that teams will communicate and collaborate - it is the teams' decision as to whether they work together or not and whether they get planning information. Teams have sufficient information and resources to be successful. Teams take risks, but do not "die" if they fail to plan effectively.
Dutchman is somewhat unique in that it was designed so that many aspects of the simulation can be measured. We can, for example, measure the sub-optimization that occurs when teams do not work together or share information. We can track the performance of the team on objectives and goals.
And it is challenging enough that we have had teams play the exercise more than once, striving to develop a strategy to optimize results (that delivery design is detailed in the Support Binder).
7 - How does Lost Dutchman compare to Gold of the Desert Kings?
We're often asked that question. GDK was in the marketplace a few years before Lost Dutchman. And we did have extensive contact with that early game, with Scott being the first US agent for them.
There are a lot of points of comparison. For a fairly detailed comparison that Eagle's Flight has reviewed, please click here
8 - Does the simulation work everywhere?
Probably not. <grin>
As the Dutchman developer, Scott Simmerman has led highly successful sessions for 11-year old kids at a YWCA, top managers of government in Hong Kong, senior school teachers in Singapore, consultants and managers in diverse places as Johannesburg, Copenhagen, Brugge (Belgium), at a "trainers meet trainers session" in Malaysia and a wide variety of other programs worldwide. It has been played thousands of times and we've worked hard to continually update the program.
Personally facilitating more than 200 sessions of the simulation, I can honestly say that we've gotten desired results in every case (except for a very late evening session with a group of significantly intoxicated sales managers!); we've gotten very good to excellent reactions from participants. Some of those sessions were as few as 7 people and one session was with 600 participants.
Generally, we prefer sessions of 30 to 100, where there are enough teams to generate some "action" yet the group is small enough that discussion of key learning points and action plans is possible.
Our network of trainers and consultants continue to offer outstanding feedback as well as suggestions for continuous improvement. I would guess that Eastern Europe and South America are the only places where we've not had at least some exposure.
9 - How many people can play? / How few people can play?
Generally, the preference is a group of 36 people - 6 teams of 6.
This allows for difficulties in tabletop communications among the team about things like risk, route, strategies and the like and also good interactions between teams. One of the suggested roles for a team is The Collaborator, and we explain that they can often discover that other teams have better strategies and plans. With 6 collaborators running around, it generates a lot more activity.
With teams of fewer than 6 people, it actually seems easier, since communications are improved and there are fewer people to agree on a team's main goals.
We have played the game with a LOT more than 36 people (often for more than 100 and a few times with more than 500). It is harder to manage this activity but much of the learning is "leader led and tabletop discussion" in orientation anyway.
We've delivered the exercise with as few as 7 people and it plays quite well (2 teams of 2 and one of 3). The play is generally a bit more collaborative in nature but the teams still compete and they do not optimize results for collaboration.
User feedback indicates that these sized deliveries are fairly common and well liked.
10 - Is the game flexible in application?
Absolutely!!
And we pride ourselves on its adaptability -- it is one of this game's special attributes.
We have lots of consultants with all sorts of viewpoints, experiences, processes and products linking the metaphors and experiences of the simulation into all sorts of other aspects. One client kicks off their 2-week training program with Dutchman and then keeps returning to issues as they discuss and work on various aspects of leadership development. Another 3-letter company uses it for their 6 week experiential management development program and have purchased a number of games from us for use worldwide. And another company has purchased 5 or 6 of the simulations from us for various links.
A large, international institute for training just purchased its first copy of the cd-version. They intend to use it for about 40 training sessions for one of their courses but plan on using it in a variety of their week-long programs to kick off the training.
And we've just designed a brand new Option B that introduces a very interactive inter-team resource exchange toward the end of the game, one that causes all sorts of bartering, negotiation and trading of resources and that demonstrates all sorts of interpersonal styles and influences.
Leadership and communications are our major themes, but the simulation is metaphor-driven with strong links to systems thinking and organizational dynamics.
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