The Big Fat Lesson I Learned From Simsoc or The Simulated Society

Have you Simsoced lately?

That's me, E.C.-----> blond hair/grey sweater; figuring out how I was going to get out of the horrible predicament I found myself in.

Simsoc, or "Simulated Society" was part of our Leadership Training from which we graduated last week.

Simsoc Simulated Society, according to the participation manual is:

"A dynamic group simulation game that forces participants to cope with the daily problems of governing society. Assuming a variety of roles, the players grapple with issues like abuse of power, justice, diversity, trust and leadership as they negotiate their way through labor-management strife, political turmoil, and natural disasters."

Entrepreneur Chick found herself unemployed as well as did everyone else in my particular geographic location- in this case, The Red Room.

It struck me as so weird that all my classmates, after looking, horror stricken, into their instruction envelope at the start of the game and finding themselves unemployed, nearly all but two of us, myself and Diane said, "We need to get a job right now! We need jobs! Where can we get a job? Who's going to hire us? Oh my gosh, if we don't get jobs we're going to die in 2 more rounds!"

I'm sitting there thinking, what? A job? No, no. I'm NOT getting a job. So I say, "No, we need to start an enterprise." Which is the game's equivalent to a business, "an enterprise". I was more than a little miffed to see the manual state that as an option, we can chose to start a "high risk enterprise". That's the only option, "high risk". More about that in a moment.

"How are you going to start an enterprise with no money?" my team mates shot back. Okay, I suppose it's a valid question. But in the "real world" I do it all the time! You just come up with an idea and find out if it's valid, nail down the peices you need to put the puzzle together-usually a lot of business meetings- figure out your price point, figure out exacly how you get paid, figure out your break even point, and start putting the deal together- raise the capital. Shazam! Cashflow!

When you know what you're doing and you've done your due diligence, rolled out a test market, an "enterprise" does not have to be "high risk". But even in the game, the simulated society, the rules were already predetermined and there was nothing I could do about that.

But do you not see how society as a whole is simply taught to "Play it safe", "Don't take a risk", "Oooooooh, my. That's too risky- better not?" I was irritated with the game for a long while for that reason and wondered a great deal when lunchtime was and what we were going to have.