Search For The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine

08/17/2025

Unlocking Innovation in Workplace Conversations — with Square Wheels One and our approach to continue to impact team building events with LDGM while we are also pushing our SWs tools for OD so here is some Big News:

In the spirit of advocating for fresh thinking and team collaboration, I’m excited to announce that Square Wheels One—my iconic image for sparking actionable conversations about process improvement and workplace engagement—is now available to you under the Creative Commons BY-ND license.

What does this mean? You can legally incorporate the SWs One image into your organizational communication, staff newsletters, leader briefings, or any training materials, both in print and digital form. The only stipulation is that you keep the image as is (no remixes or modifications) while crediting me as its creator.

This move opens a whole new toolbox for organizational development professionals, facilitators, and leaders—enabling you to use a proven visual metaphor to ignite meaningful dialogue around performance, teamwork, and workplace innovation. You can very easily generate ideas and understandings about how things really work in most organizations.

Whether introducing a new initiative, facilitating a skills workshop, or just looking for a compelling spark for discussion, the Square Wheels One image offers a high-impact, engaging and practical way to connect people’s day-to-day experience with opportunities for growth and engagement.

With this license, you’re empowered to use it broadly and freely, provided it’s unchanged and properly attributed.

So go ahead: try adding Square Wheels One to your next communication or workshop, and watch as it powers new insights, discussion, and energy among your teams!

Connect with me and I will share the link (TBD) on a webpage. And note that many of the same designs and metaphors found in SWs are found among our LD support and debriefing materials.

For the FUN of It!

06/20/2025

Probably my last presentation around Dutchman and Square Wheels, since I am 77 and winding things down. It is with my colleague in Mumbai, Solomon Salvis.

The focus is on generating impacts and it will be more of a give-away session (with SWs) than a salesy one.

Come join us.

(My health is great but I am playing more with Square Wheels than Dutchman or Jeff's new game, "Saviors of Cultura," these days! 😁)

Webinar Details:
Date: 27th June 2025
Time: 7.30 PM IST & 10.00 AM EST

Registration Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/3SLeolJRQ0SAcvJ1jY5B9Q #/registration

01/03/2025

I thought you might like The Toast -- about organizational detoxification:

I was thinking organizational detoxification and about a simple, very direct way to change thinking about your organizational culture.

12/22/2024

It is sad that Facebook wants to load up this page with all their crap but that is how they make money, so you guys get to see all the junk that people pay to promote.

I also thought you might actually LIKE to see how I am playing with comedians and how they might think of Square Wheels and people and organizations.

Here is one of the new posts I am doing:

Steven Wright, known for his deadpan delivery and surreal one-liners, would likely approach the concept of Square Wheels with his signature blend of absurdist

07/08/2024

I've been blogging a LOT lately so if you want to see some of the new posts, like the one about "What would Tom Peters do?" or a similar one on Peter Drucker, go to the blog page on the performancemanagementcompany dot com website.

In working on developing a compendium of my debriefing slides (now at 330!) for The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine, I got into a series of questions and comments around closing a session.

So, I added my most favorite closing story, The Moose Joke, to the set but also thought to share it here. It is a story about continuous continuous improvement and persistence and accomplishments that relate nicely to the team building and performance themes.

Here is a link to the "train-the-trainer" version with a narrative about how to actually tell the joke. (It works globally, for sure. It works great even if people do not know what a moose actually is, like in Hong Kong or Singapore.) Proven with audiences over 35 years, in reality.

Have FUN out There! 😃

The Moose Joke is the closing story that I use for workshops and team building sessions to anchor key learning points and to get people to consider possibili...

07/06/2024

I have always considered Dutchman play to be "an excuse to do a debriefing" and we designed it to be really seamless in its design and delivery. I think it is about as close to perfect as one can design an interactive team building exercise.

Yesterday, I passed on a compendium of Debriefing slides to my colleagues in India -- there are 330 debriefing slides, with questions, quotes, images, and other support materials. Our images provide for better framing and retention of the materials and are pretty unique to the training and development approach we use.

We are also looking to embed some AI tools into the idea collection and implementation / performance coaching aspects of using the exercise and discussions to build better cultures.

06/21/2024

LOTS of people (yeah, including me) have things to SAY about managing people and performance in the workplace. Yet, with all the talk and models of this and that over the years, nothing seems to really make a difference. We're not dealing with the bad managers and the bad leaders very effectively, for example.

And we allow the really bad actors like the senior management at Boeing to make things really bad and even worse.

Thoughts?

The Data: Employee engagement levels became slightly less negative between 2022 and 2023. While the percentage of global employees who are engaged was unchanged at 23%, the percentage who are actively disengaged fell by three percentage points to 15%, and those not engaged increased by three points to 62%.

Larger Implications: Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace. Gallup estimates that low engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion, or 9% of global GDP.

😢

I think Dutchman is a really effective tool for starting to make changes in the workplace cultures of the world. More than 60% are just coasting and COULD be more involved and engaged if they felt it would make a difference.

06/09/2024

We can impact organizations in many ways by improving the interface between supervisors and their people. Here is an overview:

Supervisors are critically important for engagement, motivation and innovation. Are we optimizing the impacts?

06/07/2024

A couple of good posts about debriefing the game:

https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2024/05/19/debriefing-great-team-building-experiences/

and

https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2024/05/15/the-business-case-for-culture-change-boosting-engagement-and-collaboration/

“What do we need to do to better convince senior managers that changing their culture to increase engagement and collaboration has significant organizational

10/20/2023

We can help shift workplace attitude by generating real teamwork and collanoration cross teams in the workplace. And here are some thoughts abou people in general:

People resist change and you can expect them to push-back. And people do not like pressure or to feel they are being managed.

You cannot empower someone because it is THEIR choice as to whether they want to act. (You can dis-un-empower them by helping them to remove their perceived roadblocks to action through coaching or something but it is still THEIR choice).

We talk about motivating others, but we can't. It is their choice as to how they react.

We can help change their skills and we can change their environment. We can build trust but we cannot make them trust us.

Yep. All this triggered by one simple image I found online, unattributed. We need to put this into all of our mental workplaces, I think, because it is just a basic human reality: 😃

08/20/2023

Hey, Hi and Greetings.

And I am asking for a couple of minutes of your time...

IF you have played Lost Dutchman, I am asking for a RATING of the game on the website Board Game Geek. Right below the black block is a blue "ADD" button for "Ratings and Comments.

PLEASE? 😁 And thanks in advance.

Have FUN out There!

As described by Dr. Scott Simmerman, the publisher: Lost Dutchman is an well-designed team building game that focuses on collaboration, leadership and engagement. It is designed to be facilitated by a trainer or consultant interested in generating discussions about the organizational culture and fra...

08/19/2023

We are redesigning The Game, and planning for Version Two, mostly with new graphics, a new game map, new cards, more debriefing illustrations and moving the TTT and support to an online delivery.

We will also start Certification process to give users a formal badge of recognition and also bundling a set of graphics that owners can use to publicize the game for players or prospects.

One user suggested this for the redesign:

"Why not set up a game that we found the Mine and challenge the teams to compete to get there first and stake their claim. Everything then can be be tied to current weather conditions, resources, etc."

My response goes to the CORE difference of LDGM compared to everything else in the marketplace, and what I see as the game's main design:

I do not want the game to be a race with winners and losers.

The game is about optimizing the gold mined, not who wins. The overall results are the key, not how much one of the teams acquires compared to the others.

Collaboration is the underlying message; generally teams CHOOSE to compete, but sometimes they do collaborate so we stress that in the debriefing and look for what they want to do differently.

Getting there first negates the strategic planning — they would not get the Cave Cards (to replace tents and thus to get more supplies and fuel) or to get the Turbos (which allow them to go two blocks per day and to share the extra two with other teams). Pushing this as a competition is NOT the design."

The game is about COLLABORATION and ENGAGEMENT! And "The goal is to mine as much gold as WE can."

Have FUN out There!