Future Mind® Business Simulator

Future Mind^®: The dynamic learning setting that prepares managers for the future.

Self-reflection, curiosity, willingness to learn, problem-solving skills, the ability to change and work in a team, and personal responsibility are the key skills of the future in most current studies. Future Mind^® is aimed precisely at developing these skills.

What is it about?

Future Mind^® is a temporary learning organisation. Over 3 days, the participants build up and operate a company according to the Organisational Excellence model. The products and services they develop have to be accepted and purchased by the market. The simulator reproduces real situations in the company and makes it possible to experience the dynamics of organizational processes directly. Mindset, behaviour, decisions, reactions, and their consequences become visible. Within a very short time, the participants find themselves in the “foggy square”: goals are evaluated differently, and current problems are complex and confusing.

The path to be taken is not transparent and the side effects, repercussions and long-distance effects of activities are difficult to assess. Nevertheless, decisions have to be made and results delivered. Learning “out-of-comfort-zone” becomes a reality. Cognitive, content-related learning is enriched with concrete personal elements. This means that NOT learning is practically impossible.

What makes it special?

“To be ready for the future” means: we stop doing more of the same and cultivating the familiar. We start finding new ways, trying out new behaviour and experiencing its effects. As part of the simulator, participants gradually become aware of personal beliefs, previous patterns of success and “things we take for granted in our daily work” and, above all, their limits. This is not always pleasant but offers an incredible number of opportunities for personal insight and further development. But that’s not all. Together with colleagues, new, often uncomfortable and unfamiliar paths must be found and taken.

This is the very point at which true experiential learning begins:

• Experimentation and constant critical reflection – individually and as a team
• Finding creative solutions together and putting them into practice
• Celebrating small successes
• Failing and starting again
• Sharing experiences with others openly and honestly
• Learning from others and thus developing an increasing awareness of the effects and interrelationships of decisions and actions create a unique learning environment.

Here, the development of “readiness for the future” is possible and real.

No right or wrong: In Future Mind^® there is no right or wrong, no good or bad. It is about acknowledging the existing situation with all its advantages and disadvantages, with all its strengths and weaknesses, and drawing personal conclusions from it. An ideal learning environment that is clearly outside of a traditional learning setting and achieves a completely new form of impact for all participants. As numerous feedbacks show, Future Mind^® is a kind of “incubator” that helps to prepare for the new, unpredictable and unplannable.