Simulation Highlights
This onsite team-building simulation will:
- Place teams inside a fully realized business scenario where decisions have real consequences and the right answer is never the only answer.
- Challenge participants to separate the symptoms of an organizational problem from its root cause.
- Examine what consistency requires from leaders and what happens when standards bend under pressure.
- Put teams in structured competition to prioritize, decide, and defend their thinking in front of their peers.
- Introduce new information across four rounds that raises the stakes and tests the quality of earlier decisions.
- Generate a shared experience that creates common language a team carries back to work.
Course Overview
Jen and Larry’s Ice Cream: A Business Simulation is a half-day competitive team-building workshop built around a fictional but fully realized company facing a problem at the center of most growing organizations: the gap between good intentions and consistent execution. Teams step inside the business, work through four rounds of escalating challenge, and discover that the hardest decisions are rarely about strategy. They are about people, standards, and whether a leadership team can hold the line when holding it is inconvenient.
Simulations work because the learning is inseparable from the experience. When teams compete, debate, and commit to a recommendation they have to defend in front of their peers, the conversation becomes real. The dynamics that surface in the room are the dynamics that exist in the room. By the time the final round closes, participants have not just discussed consistency and decision-making. They have practiced it.
The following outline highlights some of the workshop’s learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).
Program Objectives
At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Distinguish between organizational symptoms and the root causes driving them.
- Describe how leadership behavior supports or erodes consistency across a team or organization.
- Evaluate competing priorities and commit to a course of action under pressure.
- Defend recommendations clearly and assess the strength of recommendations made by others.
- Recognize decision-making patterns in their own team that the simulation brings into view.
Workshop Modules
Overview: The Company
The simulation opens with the business. Participants will receive the full picture of Jen and Larry’s Ice Cream, a regional premium ice cream company with a strong product, a loyal following, and a pattern of inconsistency that growth is no longer hiding. The group will examine the company’s founding story, business model, and operating data before the first round begins. The setup gives teams everything they need and nothing that makes the answer obvious.
Round One: Diagnosis
This round asks teams to do what the company’s leadership has not yet done. Attendees will identify the most serious problems facing the business, rank them by urgency and impact, and recommend the first actions leadership should take. Teams then present their diagnoses and evaluate the work of other groups. The debrief surfaces the distinction between what looks like the problem and what is actually driving it.
Round Two: The Leadership Conflict
Progress has been made. The deeper problem has not moved. This round focuses on a conflict at the top of the company that no operational fix can reach. Participants will examine what organizational consistency actually requires from leaders, identify where the two founders are pulling in different directions, and develop standards specific enough to guide real decisions under real pressure. Teams evaluate each other’s leadership recommendations directly.
Round Three: Pressure Test
Time has passed and the company is not where it said it would be. New information arrives that changes the nature of the challenge. The group will first assess how well the company has been living up to its own commitments, then respond to a development that demands immediate action. Participants will determine what leadership must do now, what accountability requires, and which earlier decision made the current situation more likely.
Round Four: The Reset
The company needs more than a correction. It needs a direction it can hold. Teams will make final recommendations on where the business goes next, where the guardrails need to be, and how its leadership will stay aligned once the pressure of the moment passes. The simulation closes with a structured conversation that brings the workshop’s central lesson back to the participants and the team sitting in the room with them.
Target Audience
This workshop is designed for groups that want to:
- Strengthen decision-making and critical thinking in a competitive, high-energy format.
- Explore how consistency and accountability function at the leadership level.
- Surface real team dynamics in a setting where honest conversation comes naturally.
- Build shared language and reference points that outlast the training day.
- Walk away with more than notes.
Frequently Asked Questions About This Business Simulation Workshop
How long does this simulation run?
The workshop is designed as a half-day program. With a fast-moving group it runs approximately three hours, including team discussion, presentations, and debrief time after each round.
How many people can participate?
The simulation works best with groups of 12 to 40 participants organized into teams of four to six. Smaller groups can be accommodated with adjusted team structure.
What industry experience do participants need?
None. The simulation is set in the consumer food industry, but the leadership and consistency challenges at its center are recognizable across every sector. Groups from government, healthcare, financial services, and professional services participate with equal success.
Can this workshop be customized?
Yes. As with all Business Training Works programs, we can modify content as needed to meet your group’s specific goals and objectives.
Who is this workshop a good fit for?
Any intact team, leadership group, or mixed professional audience that benefits from a shared challenge. The competitive format works equally well for frontline managers, senior leaders, and cross-functional groups. If the group makes decisions together, works toward common goals, or needs to strengthen how they hold one another accountable, this simulation will give them something real to work with.