Neon Buzz®: Lighting Up Organizational Performance

Neon Buzz is a classroom-based, highly interactive and fast-paced business simulation that places learners within a fictional organization with inefficient processes, poor teamwork and collaboration, and lack of creativity and innovation. Motivation, commitment and focus on customers are low as the simulation begins. But then things start to change!

As learners begin thinking differently, reengineering processes, achieving goals, working together with peers and managers, and making decisions that result in customer satisfaction, they discover the incredible power of a high performing organization, one that includes:

  • Well-designed structures and processes
  • Innovation and creative thinking
  • Intense focus on customers, quality and continuous improvement
  • Internal collaboration and teamwork
  • Committed, motivated employees
  • Effective, empowering managers and leaders

The result? Learners discover new ways to break through the “we’ve always done it this way” barrier that blocks creative thinking, innovation, empowerment and teamwork.

Overview

The Business Simulation

Your learners become employees of the Neon Buzz Company, where there’s no shortage of challenges, including a chaotic work process, a rigid organizational structure, lack of innovation and unclear goals. The task? To produce circuit boards that light up and buzz — while meeting quality standards and customer requirements.

Inefficiency, frustration, poor communication and lack of creative thinking abound through two rounds of play. It’s pretty obvious that things must 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, they’re thinking critically and creatively about their work processes, 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. “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, creative thinking 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