The market changes, the company management changes or the business strategy needs to be realigned. Companies must constantly restructure, adapt to new situations and keep pace with the market. Change management is designed to ensure that such changes are successful. To ensure that our managers of tomorrow are equipped for this, both Texlink: Health and Culture and Management students in the Master's program are conducting a simulation game.

In the software-based game, which can be played via web conference or in person, the students embody external change agents whose task is to convince as many employees as possible of the planned change in a fictitious company.

Such a change can be, for example, the transformation of a business model by developing a new business strategy. This is also the case in the health managers' simulation game: the change agents have three rounds to achieve their goal, with one round corresponding to around one to two quarters in reality. There are 42 action cards available to persuade employees to take part. Actions such as "Hold discussions" or "Conduct group workshops" must be selected cleverly and in the right order. Economic aspects must not be neglected, as there are only limited resources available in the form of "bits" per game round.

As if the game wasn't challenging enough up to this point, there are also the "naysayers". These are employees who are totally unwilling to change and stand in the way. But they also need to be taken along - to the center of the playing field. Because at least half of the 22 simulated employees, who are all gathered in a circle at the edge of the playing field, should be moved to the center of the playing field. To do this, however, they must first overcome the seven phases of change management.

The first phase is that of shock: the employees are initially completely surprised that a change is necessary and are fundamentally against it anyway. Accordingly, in the second phase, they react to the situation with rejection and cling to the familiar structures. However, as soon as they rationally realize that change is necessary, the emotional insight is not long in coming. Employees are now ready to let go and want to try things out in the fifth phase. The final step is to recognize the new things that have been tried out in order to finally reach the middle of the game and the seventh phase, integration.

Each decision is evaluated directly by the game master in order to find out the status of the company members on the playing field. There are also rings for reaching certain "milestones", which make the progress of the change in the company and therefore the success of the change agents visible. Incidentally, the longer the game lasts, the more intensively these rings are celebrated by the players.

During our studies, we sometimes come across very abstract concepts that we don't know much about at first. Business games help to make this theoretical knowledge tangible in a modern and digital way and to try it out in practice. How do I make the right decisions? What do I do if I make the wrong decision and what impact do my decisions have? Plans sometimes have to be adapted and (experience shows) things rarely go as expected in business games. However, they also offer a good opportunity to learn leadership skills, make conscious decisions and deal with the consequences. In the worst case scenario, you can really learn something :-) !

Business games are an integral part of many courses at the HSZG.

Pictures: Falk Maiwald
Text: Alexandra Liebich