AREA OF EXPERTISE > Financial Literacy and Business Acumen

Zodiak®: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy
EVA® Version

How do you develop the financial literacy of your employees or improve the business and financial acumen of your managers? In today’s business environment, both can be critical to your success.

Many companies today have adopted an Economic Value Added (EVA), or Economic Profit (EP), metric as a key measure of financial success. If you’ve already invested in implementing and tracking this measure, do your employees understand it? Are they contributing to value creation?

That’s where Zodiak: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy can help. Managers and employees who play the game develop financial literacy and business acumen that they can use in the real world, learning not only what EVA means but also how their day-to-day decisions impact success.

Call it a sophisticated business simulation…an exercise in experiential learning…or a board game. Whatever you call it, it’s fun, it’s fast and it makes a difference in the world of business.

Overview

The Business Simulation

Zodiak, a four- to five-hour classroom business simulation, quickly immerses participants in the world of business. They become new owners of Zodiak Industries, a company struggling to be profitable. They sign for a bank loan, attract investors and begin delivering products to customers. Over a simulated three-year period, they handle problems, make decisions and — at the end of each year — prepare and analyze income statements and balance sheets to understand the impact of their choices.

In small teams, learners experience the adrenalin rush of business ownership:

• Invest in new products
• Manage inventory and sales
• Make equipment and materials purchases
• Purchase materials
• Respond to quality challenges
• Analyze EVA results
• And more

Most important for EVA companies, they learn these concepts:

• How EVA is calculated and measured
• The impact of sales and inventory increases on EVA
• The impact of reducing operating expenses and making better use of capital
• The value of analyzing EVA trends

Connections — Bridging to Your Organization

Connections exercises create a bridge from the classroom simulation to the participants’ organization. Learners apply knowledge from the business simulation to calculate their own organization’s EVA. They also learn how this measure is used and ways in which they — and their departments — can “drive” this measure of success.

Use the exercises provided with the program, or work with Paradigm Learning to customize Connections for an even closer fit with your issues and your audience. A high-impact visual modeled on the Zodiak game board can highlight your company’s financial operations. Laser-focused exercises can deal with such company-specific business challenges as pricing, product mix, personnel issues, operating expense initiatives, capital investment strategies and more.

Connections exercises help guide employees toward discovery of their personal impact and toward a commitment to action.

Uses

Consider using Zodiak:

• As part of a leadership curriculum for managers and supervisors
• As a “finance for nonfinancial managers” course
• To educate employees about EVA concepts
• As a company-wide initiative to establish a common foundation of business understanding,
• As a boost to employee ownership and/or profit-sharing programs
• At a departmental or company “event” to improve business literacy 
• And more

Target Audience

• Managers and supervisors
• Individual contributors/employees

Time Frame

One day: four- to five-hour Zodiak game; 1½  to 2½ hour Connections session

Training Delivery

Paradigm Learning can train your own in-house facilitators or provide experienced discovery learning facilitators to conduct your sessions. It’s your choice!

Maximize the Results of Zodiak in Your Organization

Z Plus provides online access to ideas and ready-to-use materials to help spread the word about the power of the Zodiak program to your employees and managers, provide you with tips on how to make Zodiak more effective, and offer ideas to help maximize your investment in the program. The collection of tools will continually grow and develop, and access to Z Plus is available at no charge to all Zodiak customers. Click here to learn more.

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