Yesterday, I had the privilege of facilitating an innovative new digital business simulation called, “The Escape Room Simulation” and it was a blast. Our client was looking for a new and fun way to get people to understand a significant new process and they asked us to develop a customized escape room simulation.

An escape room simulation is a type of immersive adventure game where participants are "locked" in a themed room and must solve a series of puzzles, riddles, and challenges within a set time limit to "escape" from the room. These simulations typically require teamwork, critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and creativity to decipher clues, unlock hidden mechanisms, and ultimately progress through the scenario.

The session went amazingly well so I wanted to share some of the benefits of this type of simulation experience. Escape room simulations offer several benefits, both for individuals and groups, including:

One of Advantexe’s great existing clients who works with us on three different developmental programs (two in Business Acumen and one in Business Leadership) emailed asking about a new simulation we just released in our most recent simulation catalog.

“What can you tell me about this new Building Trust simulation? I love the idea of some sort of exercise that helps our leaders understand how to build trust by practicing, not just having some speaker talk at them for a couple of hours.”

I shared the highlights of the three immersive, interactive scenarios that provide learners with the opportunity to develop their leadership skills in the area of building trust by taking on the role of a leader in a simulated environment pulling the right levers to build trust with the characters in the simulated world. She loved it and asked me if I would help create some talking points for her to use with key stakeholders to have them support the implementation of a pilot. I said, of course, and am pleased to share what we came up with in this blog.

Being “ghosted” by a customer, colleague, supplier, or anyone else in your business ecosystem that have an established relationship with can be very unsettling. Being ghosted refers to the sudden and unexplained cessation of any and all communications without any idea why. In most cases, you have reached out with good intent, and haven’t done anything “wrong,” but nothing.

Pure “radio silence.”

In a typical non-sales business environment (being ghosted in sales is another blog for another day), being ghosted can be awkward, confusing, and very frustrating.

Based on some recent discussions coming from our Business Leadership workshops, I put together some interesting insights and best practices on 3 things you can do when you are being ghosted in a typical business scenario.

Last week I shared some insights on the Business Acumen Skills that Execute Business Development. The impetus for the blog was several requests from clients to share insights on what is business development in 2024 and beyond and what the “average employee” needs to know about it to both drive it and support it. As we have seen, many public and private organizations have determined that one of the most important ways to grow and scale is through “Business Development” which means mergers, acquisitions, licensing, investments, options-to-buy, and several other investment vehicles.

We have seen an exponential growth in Business Development in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, technology, and even professional services.

Many public and private organizations have determined that one of the most important ways to grow and scale is through “Business Development” which means mergers, acquisitions, licensing, investments, options-to-buy, and several other investment vehicles.

We have seen an exponential growth in Business Development in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, technology, and even professional services,

In the past, these same companies had a culture and philosophy of “If it’s not invented here, we don’t want it,” but those days are long gone because of the inherent risks associated with a strategy that thinks an organization can do everything perfectly. Business Development is all about mitigating risk and at the same time increasing the quality of products, services, and overall efficiencies.

From a business acumen skills perspective, it takes a new and different mindset to build the organizational capabilities to successfully create and execute a strategy and culture of Business Development.

I am pleased to share 7 different business skills needed to achieve Business Development success. We will follow up this blog with another one focused on the business leadership skills needed to execute a Business Development strategy.