The concept of a simulation culture, which has long been harnessed by the tech industry, is now rapidly making its way into the mainstream business landscape. Simulation culture is an integral part of how high-performing teams find success. It is a philosophy of work, built on the idea that playing out scenarios, institutionalizing preparation, and role-playing future moves drives better decisions, improved ways of working, more profitable projects, higher win rates, closer client relationships and bottom-line growth.
Simulation culture has reached a critical point in its evolution because of the confluence of three factors. One is the explosive growth of artificial intelligence combined with high performance computing abilities which can now make simulation-based practices more immersive and accurate, and therefore more powerful.
The second is macroeconomics forcing more frequent and rapidly evolving business cycles that are demanding business model adaptability. The third is a disappointment in the impact of most training as not being relevant enough, nor real-time, nor at scale.
At BTS, our work with companies over the last thirty years has put us in a unique position to solve this challenge. From our origins in business simulation to our work today helping the world’s leading companies create change and transformation at scale, we understand what it takes to build a simulation culture and up the performance of teams every day.
Take our work with a global technology company. According to their EVP of Global Enablement, “We are a rapidly evolving, high-growth company. Our go-to-market strategy is always evolving. It’s critical that we bring our employees, in particular our customer-facing employees, along for the ride, in a meaningful and impactful way.”
The answer to this was simulations. Through simulations and micro-simulations, employees across the enterprise got to experience different perspectives on the various parts of the business. People from different departments got to try new things, test out creative ideas, and fine-tune potential decisions by accessing real-time data and adjusting their approaches in a safe environment.
We worked with the company to embed simulations in four key ways: to connect with customers; kick off a sales year; prepare leaders for taking on C-Suite roles and evolving the company; and provide real time wisdom sharing to embed the lessons learned at scale.
The impact has been revolutionary to enabling the company’s go-to-market transformation. Organizationally, the company has found that implementing a simulation culture has led to greater alignment. With over 70,000 team members, group simulations allowed coworkers to practice cross functional teaming, prepare for inevitable moments of tension on a big initiative, and inspire each other to act in a way aligned with delivering on the company’s promise.
In summary, the trends that have created the environment for the rise of simulation culture – AI, macroeconomic disruption, and the need to pivot and scale new ways of working, fast – are only going to continue to demand more of leaders and their organizations. We look forward to partnering to lead the way.
