A business simulation workshop where your leaders run a company for a day
Your team takes over a company: a business model, real numbers, real people. Four rounds later they read a P&L, set goals that move it and lead the conversations that come with it. Bricks, a live digital model and AI-played stakeholders make the day feel like the job, not like a seminar.
LEGO®, SERIOUS PLAY®, IMAGINOPEDIA™, the Minifigure and the Brick and Knob configurations are trademarks of the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this website.
Three layers, one day
Build it
Teams model their company, market and organisation with special LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® bricks and canvases. The invisible becomes visible.
Run it
A live model turns every decision into a P&L, a balance sheet and a cash position. AI-played employees and customers react to what your team does.
Live it
The last round is your real company: own numbers, own team, own OKRs for the next quarter.
What your leaders can do right after the workshop
Read a P&L and know which lever moves it
Revenue, margin, working capital, cash: participants have pulled every lever themselves and felt the result.
Set goals that connect to the numbers
Every team writes OKRs for the next period that follow from its own results, using the format we teach in our OKR trainings.
Lead the conversation that follows a decision
A budget cut, a reorganisation, a new target: participants rehearse the talk with an AI-played employee before they have it for real.
See the organisation as a system
Brick models make dependencies, power and bottlenecks visible, so decisions stop surprising people three rounds later.
How a SkillDay business simulation workshop works
Every sandbox follows the same rhythm: a round of decisions, a round of consequences, a round of reflection. Four rounds, one day, one real transfer at the end.
Choose the sandbox that fits your leadership programme
Each sandbox is a complete one-day business simulation workshop with its own storyline. Combine two for a two-day leadership module.
A quarter as a team lead
Participants take over a team for one simulated quarter: an underperformer, a budget cut, a star who wants to leave. Decisions every round, consequences the round after.
- Difficult conversations with AI-played employees
- Your own team, modelled in bricks, before and after
- OKRs for your real team at the end
Run the numbers
Business model, value chain, pricing and cost calculation, then the P&L, balance sheet and cash position that follow. Business acumen training for leaders who did not study finance.
- Business Model Canvas and value chain
- Pricing, costing and the P&L they produce
- Reading a balance sheet in your own words
Lead a transformation
Your team is the change team of a company introducing a new operating model. Resistance grows or shrinks with every decision.
- The organisation and its power lines in bricks
- AI-played stakeholders from works council to early adopter
- Stakeholder map and first three moves for your own change
Align the leadership team
Real-time strategy with bricks for leadership teams: identity, landscape, guiding principles. The fastest way to a strategy everyone has literally built.
- Shared model of where the company stands
- Simple guiding principles for decisions
- Strategy to action: OKRs for the next quarter
A team goes AI-first
Your team has ninety simulated days to make AI part of its daily work: tools, rules, skills, resistance. AI itself is used live inside the game.
- Decisions on tools, rules and skills per round
- AI-played colleagues who adopt or resist
- Your own AI roadmap for the next quarter
Business acumen training that is facilitated, hands-on and built around your company
SkillDay sandboxes are facilitator-led. No software login, no manual to read the night before. Your team sits around a table, builds, decides and sees the consequences on a screen within minutes.
We adapt the storyline to your industry, your numbers and the decisions your leaders actually face. The format works as a stand-alone business simulation workshop, as the experiential day inside a leadership programme or as the opener of a leadership team offsite.
One-day inhouse workshop
8 to 24 participants, one sandbox, four rounds. At your offices or a venue we arrange.
Two-day leadership module
Two sandboxes in sequence, for example Business and Leadership, as the experiential core of a management programme.
Half-day strategy kick-off
The Strategy sandbox as the opener of an alignment workshop or offsite.
Artefacts, not slides
Everything your team builds during the day leaves the room with them.
A suggested flow we adapt in the briefing
Kick-off and briefing
The company, the market, the rules. Teams take over their roles.
Round 1: Build
Business model, value chain and organisation in bricks and canvases.
Round 2: Decide
Pricing, investments, people decisions. The model answers; AI-played stakeholders react.
Round 3: Consequences
Reading the P&L, the cash position and the mood in the team. Course corrections.
Round 4: Live it
Transfer to your real company: own numbers, own team, OKRs for the next quarter.
Debrief
What we keep, what we change right away, who owns it.
Timings are a proposal. In the briefing we agree what success looks like after the workshop and adapt the flow.
Teams we work with
Questions about the business simulation workshop
What is a business simulation workshop?
A facilitated day in which teams run a fictional company over several rounds. Each round they decide, the model computes the consequences, and the group reflects. The learning comes from having pulled the levers yourself, not from hearing about them.
Do participants need finance knowledge?
No. The Business sandbox is built as business acumen training for leaders without a finance background. Terms like margin, working capital and cash flow are introduced the moment the team needs them to make the next decision.
How is this different from a computer-based simulation?
The computer sits in the background. Your team works at the table with bricks, canvases and cards; decisions go into a live model that returns numbers within minutes. AI-played stakeholders add the human side a spreadsheet cannot: conversations, resistance, buy-in.
What role do the LEGO® bricks play?
We use special LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® bricks to build models of the company, the market and the team. Building makes everyone contribute and makes abstract things like dependencies or culture visible and discussable.
Can you adapt the sandbox to our company?
Yes. We adjust the storyline, the numbers and the event cards to your industry and the decisions your leaders face. The last round always uses your real company.
Where do you run it, and does it work online?
On site at your offices or at venues in Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Brussels and Vienna. The Business sandbox also runs as a live online session; the brick-based sandboxes work best in the room.
LEGO®, SERIOUS PLAY®, IMAGINOPEDIA™, the Minifigure and the Brick and Knob configurations are trademarks of the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this website.
Jörn has facilitated more than 1.000 workshops for leadership teams and has supported companies with OKRs since 2019. Before founding SkillDay he worked as a consultant at Accenture and in corporate development at XING and freenet. He holds an MBA from EADA Business School Barcelona.
SkillDay is a network of around six trainers. Depending on your topic and language, Jörn facilitates alone or with a colleague.
Let’s plan your business simulation workshop
Tell us about your team and the decisions your leaders face. We come back with a sandbox proposal and a suggested flow.
Book a call