Space Program – Nationale Nederlanden

The Problem / Challenge

Nationale Nederlanden had initiated a culture pogram aimed at developing new professional competences and for deploying process based ways of working throughout the organization. In total 250 employees were impacted by this program. GamingWorks deployed the Apollo 13 workshop to achieve a number of program objectives:  to create awareness for the program and its aims; to let people see, feel and experience the needs and benefits of these new competences; to let people experience the benefits of process based working; and to involve and engage the whole company in order to capture improvement needs.

Our Solution

GamingWorks conducted 22 business simulations using Apollo 13. Each simulation was played by 12-15 employees. During the day the employees were challenged to act as if they were in this ‘new’ organization. They were challenged to apply the new competences. During the reflection moments we talked about the impact of the new ways of working and identified bottlenecks, concerns and improvement suggestions.

Team Results

The sessions captured a number of improvement suggestions that were taken up by individual line managers within their own departments and were taken up within the overall program. Other results directly relating to the session:

• Line and program managers gained insight into improvement needs from the shop floor
• employees became aware of the benefits of process working on both their own work and organizational performance
• employees bought into the aims and objectives of the overall program
• employees felt empowered as their improvement suggestions were taken on board by line management and by the program
• employees started organizing interdepartmental and team meetings aimed at improving their work