Neon Buzz®: Lighting Up Organizational Performance
Neon Buzz is a classroom-based, highly interactive and fast-paced business simulation that demonstrates the incredible power of a high-performance organization while energizing employees around the actions and behaviors that drive success. Managers learn that successfully leading teams is a balancing act of collaboration and empowerment.
High-performance organizations achieve extraordinary employee teamwork and productivity by combining:
- Well-designed structures and processes
- Intense focus on customers, quality and continuous improvement
- Internal collaboration and teamwork
- Committed, motivated employees
- Effective, empowering managers and leaders
Overview
The Business Simulation
Your learners become employees of the fictional Neon Buzz Company, where there’s no shortage of challenges, including a chaotic work process, a rigid organizational structure and unclear goals. The task? To produce circuit boards that light up and buzz — while meeting quality standards and customer requirements.
Inefficiency, frustration and poor communication abound through two rounds of play. It’s pretty obvious that things have got to change!
By round three, learners are working as a team, they’re committed to clear goals, they’re operating within a more efficient organizational structure, and they’re working with an empowering manager who facilitates communication and provides encouragement. The team’s results — in productivity, quality and customer satisfaction — are nothing short of amazing.
Connections — Bridging to Your Organization
The second half of the session bridges from the simulation to the learners’ own work environments. Called “Connections,” exercises help guide participants through an assessment of their organization, their team and themselves as they consider a variety of issues:
- Which actions or behaviors are currently leading to high performance?
- Which are not? Why?
- What can we do as individuals or as teams to impact productivity, customer satisfaction, communication and teamwork?
Adapt the provided exercises yourself, or work with Paradigm Learning to fully customize the Connections session for your target audience.
Uses
For managers, consider using Neon Buzz as part of a leadership development curriculum:
- As a stand-alone half- to full-day leadership session
- As a program for new team leaders
- As a powerful, invigorating session at a management event
For employees, consider using Neon Buzz to build commitment to team design:
- To energize existing teams
- To complement quality, continual improvement or process redesign initiatives
- To impact intra- or interdepartmental collaboration
Target Audience
- New or existing “teams” of employees (project, departmental or interdepartmental teams)
- Managers and supervisors who lead departments or teams
Time Frame
- Three-hour business simulation followed by a two- to three-hour Connections session
