The Business Big Picture Workshop
I recently finished the first draft of the BUSINESS BIG PICTURE Workshop, which is designed to help entry- and mid-level managers acquire strategic skills. Using the board game OFMOS as scaffolding and knowledge umbrella, the one-day program provides companies with a highly-effective tool for developing their talent.
It is a timely development that fits within a broader trend. As the McKinsey & Company article Building the Workforce of Tomorrow, Today, published in November 2018, notes:
"Finding and training the talent that companies will need if they are to thrive in the future has become a defining issue for business leaders in our era of advanced technologies. While hiring and contracting are options for individual companies, across the corporate landscape as a whole, retraining—or 'reskilling'—is inescapable. So far, only a few companies have embarked on large-scale programs to upgrade the skills of their workforce."
Also, because the board game OFMOS is basically a simple mechanical model of the corporation, the BUSINESS BIG PICTURE workshop is highly aligned with the three key findings of the report How People Learn, assembled by the National Research Council (How People Learn: An Education Revolution Two Decades Delayed):
#1. Learners’ preconceptions are the starting place for their further learning
“Learners come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for the purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom.”
#2. Deep foundations of knowledge for deeper learning
“To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must (a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application.”
#3. A metacognitive approach to teaching and learning
“A ‘metacognitive’ approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them.”
With these considerations in mind, the prototype of the BUSINESS BIG PICTURE Workshop can be reviewed below or it can be downloaded as a PDF document (here), in which the links to the resources are active.
