The Windmills of our Minds

a culture clash game in strategic information planning

by Gert Jan Hofstede

"The Windmills of our Minds" is a business simulation game. The game can be played by 10 to 30 participants, who team up to form national subsidiaries of a multinational company, Energy Forever inc. The players' task is to design and negotiate a "communication architecture" for the sales and maintenance information of Energy Forever's new product line: Windmills. The special thing about this game is that each national subsidiary has its own fictitious caricatural national culture, embodied in seven key values. The game consists of two rounds, and takes at least half a day to play, including a brief evaluation. In the first round, each national team (4-5 people) designs a communication architecture. In the second round, a representative from each culture is sent to one of the other teams, assumedly sent by the CEO, in order to reach an agreement about the communication architecture. This second meeting usually generates strong culture clash, as evidenced by the remarks of participants over the last years.

The game is intended for all those involved in international cooperation who wish to improve their awareness of the pervasiveness of differences in culture. It generates both enthusiasm and food for thought. Because of the content matter, it is particularly suitable for Information Systems students or professionals.

This site contains all the information needed by prospective players or organizers of "The Windmills of our Minds". The game is public. If you play it, I would appreciate an account of your experiences with it (mail to gertjan.hofstede@wur.nl).

Information for players

The story of Energy Forever, Inc.

Energy Forever, inc. is a large, commercial provider of energy, based in Europe. With a yearly turnover of $ 3.500 million, bases in over 40 countries, an IS staff of some 500 people, and yearly expenditures on IT of some $ 10 Million, it is quite an enterprise, and ranks among the Global 100 remarkable IT users worldwide (as given in "Computerworld", June 1995). Energy Forever has been around for some thirty years, and most national branches have led a fairly stable life over the past few years, with typically some tens of employees, including field staff, per country. Its main products are electro-technical installations, ranging from simple gas-powered aggregates to complete power plants. Conventional sources of energy are Energy Forever's stronghold.

The research lab, having worked out the technology in experimental settings, has been advocating for some years that windmills should be added to FE's standard product range. A favourable political mood has now resulted in an advice by the Board and a subsequent decision by the CEO to launch a Windmill project: "the Windmills of Our Minds". The project's aim, apart from delivering sustainable energy at a favourable price, is to alter the company's image as a high-ranking polluter. This is worth a fair investment, so that the WOM project, as it is called, is not short of funds.

Having read Peter Keen's advice (see literature) that technical architecture and infrastructure should be seen by top corporate management as a long-range capital investment, the CEO wishes to position WOM as a model project in this regard. The project's first deliverable is to be a "communication architecture" for a global network for selling windmills of a variety of types (from modest and easy to maintain, but not very efficient, to extremely leading-edge) in a multitude of countries. The architecture must in particular support a sales and maintenance network for the windmills. Transferring knowledge from experience quickly across the sales and maintenance network is an important objective. As far as the choice of technologies goes, the project team has a free hand, and permission to "go grand".

In short, Energy Forever is a successful company, and the WOM project is a very innovative prestige project. Both the explicit concept of a "Communication Architecture" and the idea of adding windmills to the project range are very new. For the energy installations that Energy Forever currently sells there never has been a conscious design of a communication architecture for sales and maintenance.

Sales information at a company-wide level is only fed back to salespeople through the yearly business report which appears on paper and was also published on the company's WWW site this year. In some national branches there are additional flows of sales information, mostly through face-to-face meetings of personnel at company social events.

Maintenance information is currently not being gathered or kept centrally. There are files of repair jobs and of spare part orders in all national branches, though. From these files, some information about maintenance needs could be derived. Data on why an installation broke down is currently not collected, let alone spread in the organization.

There are some national differences in the way maintenance people are sent to maintenance jobs. Typically, they make fixed tours along a number of installations, and will interrupt these tours for emergency jobs. Most maintain radio contact with country headquarters. In some countries mobile phones have recently been introduced. Anecdotal information about repair jobs and their causes circulates widely and sometimes reaches the company's internal newsletter.

Roles

Each team represents one country. In your country, Energy Forever has some thirty employees. There is a Country Office, and an ambulant field staff for sales and maintenance.

Among the country's employees, five were chosen in the Windmills project team. These are:

National culture scripts

The scripts for the teams' fictitious national culture are based on the work of Geert Hofstede (see background and literature). Geert Hofstede defines culture as the collective mental pre-programming that distinguishes the members of one group from those of another. Country boundaries are usually cultural boundaries, and national culture is instilled from birth, for instance when parents show their children how to behave. It has to do with what is considered proper, civilized behaviour: It includes for instance how to act towards strangers, colleagues, family; how to address somebody, whether to look them in the face, when to invite them home, when to offer them gifts, etcetera.

GeertHofstede empirically found five dimensions of national culture. These dimensions are linear scales. Your team's culture is one extreme of one of these scales.

The dimensions with their two extreme synthetic cultures are:

The full scripts are available in my book Exploring Culture (2002).

Organizing the game

If you consider organizing a session of "The Windmills of our Minds", the most important prerequisites are: 10 to 30 participants who are willing to do role-playing, and a time slot of four hours at the least. Apart from that, a meeting place for each team of four-five players is needed, something to write on for each team, and a plenary room.

Schedule

The game requires at least eight, but preferably twenty to thirty participants. It takes half a day, e.g. from 12.30 to 16.30. The participants go through the following sequence of events:

12'30" Welcome. The game leader introduces the game and the synthetic cultures. The participants choose one of these as their own. During the rest of the game they will playact belonging to that culture. The team leader makes sure all teams consist of four or five members, plus an observer.

12'45" Warming up. All participants team up and do a few warming up-exercises to acculturate. For instance, they present their team in a culturally appropriate manner (NOTE: culture is not talked about, but enacted. So, a team will not say things such as "We are the Hipow culture"; rather, the Country Manager of a Hipow team might be the only one to speak during the team's presentation, by naming his country's favourite words in a dignified manner, while the other team members maintain a respectful, supportive silence).

13' 00" Taking roles. Each team spends some time dividing roles and reading about their company, Energy Forever inc.

13'15" First project meeting. Each team is given the same instructions about its task: to set up a communication architecture for windmill sales and maintenance. The main points of their proposal (including choice of hardware, CSCW software, data sets, organizational procedures, and roles of people), together with the main "dos and don'ts", are collected on flipover sheet or blackboard by one of the team members. (NOTE: keeping to one's culture and role is more important than arriving at a perfect proposal!).

13'30" Within-team evaluation of the first project meeting, led by the observer.

13'45" Briefing for the second meeting. The team chooses a consultant from among its members. The team then sets objectives for this consultant, who will visit another country. The consultant's aim will be to make the other country adopt as much elements as possible of the same superior communication architecture that his or her own country has designed. The team, meanwhile, wishes to stick to their country's architecture as it emerged from the first meeting.

13'50" Break.

14'30" Second project meeting. The consultants spend the meeting in the host group, then return to their own culture to report briefly. The teams adapt their architecture proposals if necessary.

14'45" Within-team evaluation of the second project meeting, led by the observer.

15'00" Plenary de-briefing. First, a member of each team briefly presents their communication architecture as it stands. The game leader draws a comparison. Then, for each second meeting, the visiting consultant and the observer give their main comments. The game leader sums up what can be learned from the confrontations between various cultures during the second project meeting.

15'45" Game evaluation. This is a brief plenary reflection on the game as a whole. The contents depend on the participants' backgrounds, and relates the game to their everyday experience.

16'30" End of the game.

Observing and de-briefing the meetings

The section below is a check-list for the observers, who acts as delegates of the game leader.

The first meeting

In advance:

During the meeting:

De-briefed within-team evaluation of the first meeting:

The second meeting

In advance:

During the meeting:

De-briefed within-team evaluation of the second meeting:

Background and Literature

A full description of the game's theoretical background can be found in:

I was prompted to the game's invention by an IFIP Wg 8.4 project, of which the position paper is:

Sources of inspiration for the synthetic cultures were the following:

Energy Forever's CEO had been reading:

What is a communication architecture?

If you are a participant whose background is not in automation, or in the discipline of Information Systems, you may benefit from reading this brief appendix.

A communication architecture, as the notion is used here, is the overall structure of an information system to enable communication between Energy Forever employees about the Windmills they sell.

What, then, is an information system? This consists of five components:

1. Hardware, e.g. mainframe computers, notebook PCs, faxes, wireless telephones, cables, satellites, possibly other technology.
2. Software, used by the hardware. The software can either be custom-made (Energy Forever's large Information Systems department would take care of that) or ready-purchased, e.g. text processing, e-mail, workflow management, or videoconferencing packages.
3. Data sets of data used by the Information System, e.g. names and e-mail addresses of employees, type data on windmills, stock data, repair reports, FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions) about problems with certain types of windmill, sales figures, competitor's sales figures.
4. Procedures according to which the information system's users work. For instance, a mechanic might be required to make a weekly report for the country manager on all the reparations carried out: type of windmill, type of problem, cause, how it was fixed. The country managers might be asked to send these reports to Headquarter, which would compile them and send aggregated info to both the engineering department and the field repair services in all countries.
5. Another example: Sales figures might be collected monthly and distributed to all countries, so that sales managers can compare their performances. There might be a monthly videomeeting of all country managers, or just informal e-mail contacts.
6. People who work according to the procedures. This implies they must be adequately schooled and motivated, especially when changes are being made to the procedures.

The project team's work for Energy Forever's windmill sales and maintenance information system will require decisions about all five elements. Moreover, since an architecture is asked for, there will be an emphasis on the overall structure. Relevant decisions might, for instance, include "will there be a two-level structure, with national information systems reporting back to headquarters, or will there just be one network for the company as a whole?"