Hearts, minds and hands – Established Member, Prashanta Mukherjee, Director and Principal Practitioner, In2Excellence

Hearts, minds and hands – all three must be involved to help people learn to change, it can be fun too – Prashanta Mukherjee, Director and Principal Practitioner (In2Excellence) – Established Member

In our work with Government and Business helping with change, we often create solutions that engage people because after all organisations change when all people embrace the change.

We have been thinking about how to accelerate the ability of people to change and have recently found the concept of learning spiral very powerful. The central thought behind the concept is that one has to learn something in order to embrace change, arguably one has to (un)-learn some things too. Further, learning has to happen in a way that it endures, and the learning experience must cover three aspects:

HEART – The Why?

It takes courage to face change. People need to feel motivated – emotionally as well as intellectually – to take on new challenges. That’s why it’s so important to involve people’s hearts in learning.

MIND – The What?

People have to see the big picture. Only then can they make sense of the different, smaller parts that make up their day-to-day work. When people understand how things fit together and work, they can turn this knowledge into action.

HAND – The How?

Finally, people learn best when they are actively doing something. This is usually the hardest part because one is afraid of failure and a safe, fun ‘sandpit’ to experiment.  After all it’s the doing that actually make a difference and sustains the learning and gives us confidence going forward.

So I dug deep and thought about when I learnt deeply and with a lot of fun and remembered one time when I played a game about 20 years ago when I was working for Oracle Corporation. It was a board game! a business simulation called ‘Tango’ and I still remember it, like it was yesterday. So about 20 years ago I decided to check it out again. Tango was borne out of the experience and thinking of Klas Mellander (if you want to see his story, this short 2 minute video does a great job) who founded Celemi in 1985 and further enhanced in 2013 in collaboration with Dr. Karl-Erik Sveiby, Professor at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland.

Since then Celemi Business Simulations have been used by more than 3.4 million people in over 70 countries to:

  • Practice strategic decision making and see the impact of their decisions
  • Develop leadership skills and Secure project success
  • Practice strategic decision making and see the impact of their decisions
  • Develop leadership skills and Secure project success
  • Build financial acumen

Well, that was about 6 months ago and after a number of coffees in Amsterdam with Tore Byström and spending some time with Barbro Andersson in Melbourne and Singapore, In2Excellence decided to bring Celemi Business Simulations to New Zealand.

The hearts, minds and hands of people are at the core of Celemi business simulations and attendees learn from exploration, peer discussions, discovery and experience using gamified business simulation. It is experiential learning at its best – check this 1 minute video.

We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with Celemi, Sweden to bring its word class innovative business simulations to New Zealand – they are pretty cool.  Personally, I am proud to have been accredited on Celemi Apples and Oranges TM and Celemi Performance TM

In2Excellence is very excited about the difference, Celemi Business Simulations can make to organisations in accelerating change and we would love to tell you more about it or generally how we can help your business, think, plan and manage change and engage your people to lead and embrace change.