My last article was about the type of management game known as an icebreaker. This article is about a different type, introduced in the title by putting 'management' into inverted commas. The intention is to show that these games are specifically about the process and activity of management, whatever the actual thing being managed. Whether one is concerned with a dinner party or a school trip or an industrial enterprise or local government, there are similar actions which have to be taken if it is to be successful.

What are these actions? What is management? Despite the proliferation of consultants, and experts, and books, it is hard to improve on the definition offered by Henri Fayol who lived from 1841 to 1925. He said, 'to manage is to forecast and plan, to organise, to command, to coordinate and to control'. These are skills necessary whenever one is trying to control a future event - which all managers are seeking to do. They have to look ahead, and imagine the actions that will be necessary if they are to achieve their goal, and the conditions that will apply while those actions are being taken. They have to organise the resources that will be needed and make sure that they will be available in the right place at the right time. They have to find staff, and train them, and instruct them in what has to be done. When the activity starts, they must watch what is happening and check whether it is all going according to plan. If it is not, then they must take action to rectify errors and get things back on track. Management games create off-the-job situations in which this process of planning, experiencing and controlling an activity can take place. The usual learning objective is increased sensitivity to the nature and number of the variables that have to be considered. The hoped for outcome is that managers will less frequently find themselves in a situation where their plans go awry because they have forgotten critical elements, or failed to see how the effects of different decisions will interact.

The ability to use such games well is enhanced by an understanding of three major issues. They can be identified as Creating the Scenario, Driving the game Forward, and Demonstrating Relevance.

CREATING THE SCENARIO

If the game is to extend the current awareness and predictive skill of participants, it must not be too easy for them to succeed. It must at least be possible for the plan they have made to go wrong. Therefore the data upon which they are asked to make decisions must not point obviously to a single correct decision, but must allow several courses of action to be seen as credible. It must therefore be reasonably sophisticated. All this means that the participants have to be placed within an imagined environment: it may take time to create this environment, to ensure that they understand it, and to make them aware what can and can't be done within the rules of the game. If a complex scenario is created only by text, that text can confront participants with so much preliminary study that they are totally bored before they start to play. There are a number of ways in which 'scenario creation' can be simplified.

Keeping the mechanics simple and limiting the options

The more things that players are allowed to do in a game, the more data they will want in order to evaluate the possibilities. An excellent simple format is that used for the "Lost in .....XYZ". type of game which says, for instance, "Your party has just crash landed in the Sonara Desert.......You have been able to salvage the following fifteen items.......Rank them in order of importance for your survival from 1 to 15". A limited amount of factual data is provided but all the instructions can be contained on a single A4 page and it is apparent that the only extra knowledge available is the collective expertise of the group. The only required output is a list of priorities, but to have a rationale behind the list it makes a group has to decide on the survival plan to be followed. A group deciding to trek out will come up with a different list of priorities from one that decides to wait until they are found. The format allows quite a sophisticated debate with very little time spent 'learning the rules' .

Using familiar backgrounds

Games often invoke situations about which there is a high degree of common knowledge: things that everyone is aware of, or has attempted. Favourite themes are building pyramids and preparing some sort of expedition. Contrasted with some totally unfamiliar scenario, they demand far less explanation.

Using boards, tokens, dice and other display materials

The playing board is a universally understood medium. It allows information-giving through the printed word, it allows the identification of different places, and it allows relationships between them to be defined. MONOPOLY provides an excellent illustration. A player throws a dice, moves a token, lands on a square and immediately enters a decision-making situation. Suppose the player lands on a property which is not yet owned, though one other property in the set of three is owned. The decision invited is a buy/don't buy one - and possibly a build/don't build decision on other properties owned. The data available includes:

His/her financial state.

Position on the board of his/her token.

Position on the board of other players tokens.

Perils/opportunities of the twelve squares ahead of his/her token.

Estimated chance of trading the property, if purchased.

Estimated chance of acquiring the other two properties.

Estimate of where he/she will land after the next throw.

Estimate of where other players will land after their next throws.

This is a great deal of information, but the means by which it has been gained is so easy and familiar that few players realise how extensive it is. They are able to cope with quite a sophisticated scenario.

Using Cards

The playing card format has special advantages in distributing information unevenly. A situation can be created, by the way the cards are dealt, in which one person knows something and another does not, thus making communication between them significant. For example, cards might be distributed around a group, each one carrying data about a different potential problem in the execution of a plan. If any group member failed to communicate his/her data then in the subsequent progress of the game that problem would take the group by suprise. Cards also provide a link to the concept of different suits (Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Clubs), and once that concept has been invoked, nobody needs instruction about separate types of card, or parallel values in each type, or relative values within a suit.

Using physical objects, models or icons

The idea is best illustrated from those construction games - building towers or bridges - in which a planning stage is followed by physical building and testing. Participants are told what they have to build, to what standard, what materials are available (with costs) and what figure their own labour will be charged at. They have to design their structure, decide on the materials required, estimate the construction time, and enter a quotation. If it is accepted, they must buy and build. If such a game were played on paper there could be extended arguments about what the words meant - was a certain component adequate for a purpose or not, and so on. If physical materials are used there can be no argument: the participants do or do not have the materials: their structure does or does not fall down when the agreed weight is placed upon it.

DRIVING THE GAME FORWARD

The message of the experience has to be "This happened because you did (or did'nt) do so-and-so". It means that every allowed choice has to have an effect, and that choices must be made before the effect is revealed. The game has by some means to be moved on from one state to another. There are several ways in which it is done.

Post-game consequences revealed by comparison with a single 'right' answer

Games like Lost in the Desert usually have three stages, and are moved on automatically by the completion of the one before. At first, individuals are required to make personal rankings. Then each group has to agree a single ranking, which means that every member will discover how his/her rankings compare with those made the others. Finally the group ranking is compared with the expert answer. All groups will experience different consequences - a greater or lesser variation from the expert answer - but that expert answer is always the same. It does not change because of the actions of participants.

In-game consequences that themselves affect the course of play

An example of this type might be a planning game in which teams had limited financial resources and were required to choose between items of equipment. The game would proceed in time periods, and there might come a time when one team was able to surmount a difficulty because they possessed appropriate equipment while another team had to accept a delay. At once there are complications, because there must be records of what equipment teams possess. Also, somebody must introduce the difficulty and administer the rules. Different techniques are used to move these games on, and reveal 'what has happened'.

Sometimes equipment is represented by tokens and the progress of the project is revealed by the administrator reading from a text, or using a taped recording. The words heard might be "It is now Day Four of the expedition and one member has contracted malaria. IF you have the appropriate drugs then continue normally and credit yourselves with twenty miles covered. If you do not have the appropriate drugs the man concerned must return to base. Reduce the recorded strength of your party by one, and credit yourselves with a march of 15 miles only." Supplementary decisions may also be called for, offering options about 'What you can do now'.

Sometimes the progress of the task can be controlled by a micro-computer program. All details of the plan are entered, and then the computer runs through the sequence of events displaying what has happened and imposing penalties and benefits automatically. This method can handle far more complex issues than are possible with manual administration.

The board game format is dice-driven and moves forward in small steps as each players make the throw, finds out the consequences, and makes decisions. The format is excellent for handling problems about the possession of resources. MONOPOLY, for instance has a card labelled 'Get out of Jail free'. It is a means of providing a player with an immunity from peril which can be used for all sorts of hazards.

In-game and post-game consequences revealed by physical evidence

Games that physically simulate an activity are usually time-controlled. The administrator might decree that designs must be submitted by such-and-such a moment, and quotations so many minutes later, orders for materials placed within another limit, and construction completed by 'X-Hour'. What can be achieved in each phase is conditioned by what was done before. Suppose, for instance, that a structure requires a pre-fabricated concrete arch (simulated) and a team fails to order it within the allowed time slot. The construction phase arrives and they suddenly find that they don't have this vital component. Work ceases and time is lost while they negotiate with the administrator to rectify their error.

DEMONSTRATING RELEVANCE

Problems often arise because of the fact mentioned early in the article about management being a general skill which is applied to a range of particular subjects. This means that one may be studying 'management' as a principle and that one may also be studying 'the management of ZXY'. The latter demands a great deal of subject knowledge. Compare, for instance, throwing a dinner party and making bicycles in a factory. In the first case there are decisions to be made about the dishes to be prepared, the purchase of ingredients, the recipes to be followed and the timing. In the second case there are decisions about the type of bicycle, the purchase of necessary parts and the organisation of the production line. They both require subject knowledge, and possessing it or lacking it will make a difference to the outcome. The expert hostess will not immediately be a good factory manager, nor the expert factory manager a good host, because they don't have the appropriate subject knowledge. But so far as the actual management process is concerned they are doing the same thing.

Training specialists can run into trouble here if they are not clear which objective they are pursuing. Are they trying to promote learning about the principles of management or are they concerned with increasing knowledge about a particular subject, as a contribution to managing a particular activity. The idea can be illustrated by looking at two games which focus attention upon factory management. One sets up a factory to produce 'magic squares'. These are no more than pieces of paper bearing a grid of 16 or 25 or 36 squares, each filled in with a number in such a manner that adding down each column, and adding across each row and adding along each diagonal will give the same total. The blank grids are the 'raw material' and the completed ones are 'the product'. There is a group of 'managers' who plan the factory, and quote prices for products of different sizes, and hire the equipment (pencils and rubbers) and train the workers and control the quality. There is a team of 'workers' who fill in the grids, being instructed to avoid duplication. When the organisation is complete, the factory is 'tested' by giving the managers 'orders' and receiving (in the role of customer) a supply of 'magic squares'. The diagram below shows an example of 'raw material' and another of a 'completed product'.

This is very much an abstract exercise - the product looks nothing like the 'real' output of a factory. But the 'goods' often have to be rejected because the numbers in the squares just don't add up correctly: the 'workers' can not be relied on to carry out simple arithmetic. So the abstract exercise can be used to illustrate the general principle that you MUST have a competent, motivated work force if you don't want to be let down.

The other exercise creates a factory to make paper booklets using conventional office machinery - guillotine, stapler and paper-punch. It is in one sense a much more credible simulation because it uses 'machinery' and the 'product' has clearly been manufactured by the completion of several operations. A common reason for rejecting goods from the factory is that the holes at the edge of the booklets (which might enable the booklet to be placed in a file) are not in the right position. Why has this happened? Possibly because the man using the hole punch does not understand his responsibility for setting and monitoring the end-stop which controls the position where the holes are made. It is easy enough to draw the lesson that machine operators in a factory must be well-trained and motivated. The lesson has much greater apparent relevance in the eyes of trainees from a factory background - but the general lesson, the message about management principles, is exactly the same as that emerging from the magic squares exercise.

In considering each lesson likely to emerge, the training specialist needs to ask "Am I looking at one particular instance of a general principle (in the way that doing sums and minding a machine are instances of the COMPETENCE principle)? If so, what is that principle? Will it be more stimulating to my target group if I present the principle and work down to individual applications or if I start with a particular, familiar instance?" The answer will make selecting a game or simulation easier.

The words 'Face Validity' are sometimes used to describe the quality of being acceptable to participants. The game has to seem appropriate to their situation, or be presented in a manner which makes an acceptable connection. This is not too difficult to achieve if the training specialist is fully aware of the need and is familiar with a broad range of material. A final piece of tried and tested advice is "Never make exaggerated and unrealistic claims for a game. Don't present it as something which it is not". One should think carefully about what one is trying to achieve, make a choice, and explain to participants why one thinks the experience will be useful. Probably the most significant of all the variables which determine success is the commitment of participants. With it, even quite weak games will promote learning. Without it, the best of them will fail.