The Blogworld of Poppyfish People Development

Pandemic is a Poppyfish business simulation and management learning exercise designed to help organisations to understand the possible consequences of an outbreak of pandemic flu. The simulation involves participants managing a number of realistically structured and interactive departments, business units or teams through a pandemic cycle, juggling resources to maintain operations and deliver objectives. Run as a one day phased decision making exercise Pandemic uses data on infection rates from the UK Dept of Health and NHS but is tailored specifically to the organisational hierarchy of the client organisation. Learning objectives The learning objective of this simulation is that by the end of the session participants will have negotiated their organisation through a 15 week pandemic cycle and will understand more about the impact that an event such as a pandemic flu outbreak could have on their workplace. The simulation is primarily about strengthening organisational resilience ...

The legendary Australian fast bowler, Jeff Thomson, had a great way of putting things. 'Tommo', who alongside the equally fearsome Dennis Lillee spearheaded one of the most infamous fast bowling attacks that the planet has ever seen, isn't really one for management speak. "Pushing the envelope" or "touching base" are not really his style. Tommo liked to ply his trade the direct way: "The sound of the ball hitting the batsman's skull was music to my ears" This famous quote starts off this seasonally inspired post. In the spring time the passions of all true men turn to that noblest of sports - cricket. All across this noble isle dreams of smashing centuries at Lord's come creeping into the minds of men of a certain age as they attempt to reconnect with their youth by squeezing their increasingly rotund frames into their musty old cricket whites and puffing their red faces around the village green. Think of the village cricket match...

Being a snow bully is snow joke… Everyone knows a snow bully . Snow bullies just love it when the snow comes, for this is the chance for them to shine. A snow bully will walk 15 miles through waist high drifts   just to attend a meeting that no-one else can get to. They will take the country lanes route to work when everybody else sticks to the main and treated roads. They will have snow shoes that they purchased from a specialist Alpine shop exactly for this kind of situation. They have a spare pair of dry socks that they keep in their desk for this type of crisis, and a glove compartment stuffed full of energy bars. Oh yes, they are well organised to cope with a little bit of snow. Unlike you, you pathetic ‘snow victim’ … A snow victim never wanders far from their slippers when the snow arrives. They are the first to fret about how the snow stops them from doing things. Much to the outward frustration (but inner victory) of the snow bully they will not be at today’s m...

Understanding how a critical incident develops can help us to know what to expect when an incident happens for real. So far this year there have already been a number of high profile critical incidents affecting organisations. Most recently the escalation of the Algerian hostage crisis has been a major news story. Last week, the first ever helicopter crash in London sparked a critical incident that, whilst more local in impact, was headline news and impacted organisations caught up in the maelstrom of unfolding events.   Studying how the news unfolded in this stand alone tragic accident can help us to assess the realism of the timelines in our own continuity exercises and critical incident simulations. In this blog post I present a timeline for the helicopter incident and briefly discuss critical incidents from an organisational impact perspective. Building the timeline What I have done below is to build a timeline of the helicopter crash incident, as best as I have been ...

Ahead of some upcoming conferences and important workshops that we are involved with over the coming weeks we've been busy indulging our creative side and blowing the budget this week on some new publicity materials to help spread the word of Poppyfish. Just thought we'd share a few on the blog. We hope you like them. You can also see these on our facebook page. Alongside our more established OD work we have chosen to emphasis the key contribution that simulations and decision making exercises can make your people development programmes and organisational resilience, under the title "Simulate to Stimulate". We always welcome the opportunity to talk to anyone interested in incorporating these activities into their organisation learning and resilience programmes.