EUMA - Games that transform companies

Magazine:
14th Sep, 2016
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What does the 90's movie The Game, starring Michael Douglas, have in common with your company’s next conference? Quite a lot, if you ask Niklas Tyllström, founder and CEO of Green hat People.

The requirement that meetings and conferences should be shorter and more efficient, yet at the same time, to yield higher return on investment to the company is constantly increasing. Companies today spend a lot of money, time and energy on making their conferences as memorable as possible. At the same time, a conference participant on average remembers only four out of twenty slides in a PowerPoint presentation. That isn’t really playing the cards right, says Niklas Tyllström, founder and CEO of Green hat People.

Their belief is that working with interactive workshops and scientifically developed games for conferences, often with the support of the latest mobile technology, gives a better return on investment than the perfect venue or amazing food.

People have no time for poor meetings, simply put. There is an increasing awareness among companies conferences needs to have a clear goal, and that the results should easily be used in the daily work, and then measured in order to show the effects. Today's conferences function more as an in depth working session than an annual occasion to present numbers.

The Green hat People concept, an engaging digital service was conceived with the two co-founders at an Italian restaurant on Fleminggatan, downtown Stockholm in 2006, says Niklas, an economist with a focus on business development.

“We discussed possible alternatives on how to make life in general more exciting and came to the joint conclusion that challenges of different sorts would be an element that could provide a thin red line. Especially when applied in a learning environment but also for pleasure purposes. As true entrepreneurs a trial and error approach was conducted, and eventually corporate conferences, meetings and training sessions became the chosen field to provide the services for.”

“The movie ‘The Game’, in which Michael Douglas played a banker who has the lead role in an elaborate role-playing as a birthday present, served as a great inspiration. When you are exposed to a challenge, often something unexpected, the level of excitement rises. So does the degree of presence and, above all, the commitment of the individual. These factors can make a big difference in benefiting to meetings.”says Niklas.

Education - an active and constructive process

Green hat People has developed a series of workshop games that help companies get a mental shift in the organisation. Some popular themes at the moment are organisation values, sustainability and digital transformation. When actively taking part in a workshop, working with realistic cases and problems identified from their everyday life, messages can easier get across the organisation. And working together using tablets, pictures and playing cards the participants help employees to teach and learn from each other. Or as the American philosopher John Dewey put it in his book ‘Democracy and Education´ in 1916: Education is not an affair of telling and being told, but an active and constructive process.”

“We are always looking for the latest educational tools that help to open your eyes and provide insights. This together with proven methods of education help to meet a demand to communicate in new ways, and to fully understand and solve complex challenges in an easily understandable and engaging way helps create a mind-set to bring back to the office.” says Niklas.

Ongoing strategic processes, not single points of injection

The workshop about customer focus is also one of the more popular recently. It begins with working groups watching short video clips in a humorous and familiar manner, to introduce the participants to the topic and where experts, e.g. Professor Ranjay Gulati at Harvard Business School, gives practical theory in the field. The workshop also include substantial group discussions and creative exercises. One example is an analogue puzzle that demonstrates the difference between customer focus and product focus.

“This is really the beauty of what we do, combining proven methods, digital technology and modern behavioural science to help organisations take on their challenges and use their conferences as a catalyst in their daily work. Many companies would benefit greatly by stop seeing conferencing as single injection points and instead as part of an on-going strategic process,”says Niklas Tyllström.

Green hat People is a Gold Partner to European Management Assistants (EUMA)

EUMA Contact
Else-Britt Lundgren
European Chairman
europeanchairman@euma.org
www.euma.org

Green hat People in short
Founded in 2006 and provides business transformation games, interactive workshops and team activities using the latest, often digital tools
Offices in London, Barcelona, Stockholm, Malmoe and Oslo
Provide workshop- and team work activities for groups from four to 10,000 participants.
www.greenhatpeople.com

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