Going through an Income/Outcome workshop provides a number of business competencies including the ability to read and visualize financial statements.
You will make better decisions. In the simulation, you learn to use game board itself as a mental checklist for reviewing the following:
- how the different pieces of the business interact
- how you impact other areas with the decisions you make
- where you need to get the information you need to make the best decision
- how your decisions will play out in impacting turnover, profit, cost structure, cash flow and working capital.
Additionally you develop a better sense of the company’s needs and teamwork:
- what the company as a whole needs (can reduce union/management conflict, increase support for senior management decisions)
- how you contribute to its success (improve morale, reduce absenteeism and staff turnover)
- how others contribute to its success (improve interdepartmental respect and helpfulness)
- what someone else’s request for information is needed for (improve the speed and accuracy and usefulness of the response)
Two examples of the need for speed and accuracy of communication, related to the ever more rapidly changing world we live in:
- A computer component manufacturer needs to start planning now to bring a product to market in 5 years time. The estimated cost is $2 billion but they can’t accurately forecast the size of the market, the selling price, the cost structure, or who they will face as competitors; all they know is that they have to start to the R&D now if they want to launch in 5 years, and that they will then have only a 15-month window for that product’s active life-cycle, before it is obsolete. So they have to start spending $2 billion today, for a 15-month opportunity in 5 years’ time. Throughout the five years, the rapid flow of accurate information between R&D and Marketing, and the Finance Department, and the Salespeople on the front line, and the Production managers, is essential to the product’s success.
- An American specialty chemicals salesperson in China hears of an unexpected opportunity for a new variation of a product. The information is conveyed to the District sales office, and by them to the National, and so to Division HQ in the US, to the Finance Department, to the R&D professionals, to the Production managers, with a reply accumulating as it goes back to R&D, to Finance, to Division HQ, to China, to the District, and finally to the salesperson. This is like a telephone-whisper game: how much does the answer relate to the original information? How rapid, how accurate, and how useful is it?
But in an increasingly rapidly-changing world, speed and accuracy of response is a key factor in competitive advantage, success, and survival.
Business Acumen for the Group
When one person goes through an Income/Outcome workshop, they learn to make better decisions. When a team goes through, they perform better individually and as a team, there is a multiplying effect from the improved speed and accuracy of communication.
And the more wide-spread you apply Income/Outcome within the organization, the greater the multiplying effect of the business acumen of the group – the speed, accuracy and relevance of information, the increased morale and supportiveness, and the accumulation of better individual decisions and understanding.