Friday Night at the ER
General presentation
Friday Night at the ER represents a means of developing skills such as: systems thinking, leadership, change management, as well as performance management. Friday Night at the ER is a board game, having the goal to simulate the challenge of managing a hospital for 24 hours. Its main purpose is to help people develop systems thinking, by relying on their work styles and by teaching them to work together and make decisions in a complex framework. Therefore, the simulation is relevant for every industry and functional area.
How does it work?
Each table has four players and they are the managers of one of the hospital departments: Emergency, Intensive Care, Step-Down and Surgery. The game has 24 rounds and the players must make decisions regarding the patient turnover and their care. They also have to resolve the administrative issues, using wisely their resources. The process helps the players understand the interdependence in an organizational environment and teaches them how to attain their individual goals and their collective ones. At the end of the simulation, they evaluate their performance and discuss about what they have learned as far as the systems thinking and the team work are concerned.
Who is it for?
Any expert/professional interested in understanding the systems thinking concepts in an organizational context. The simulation is a one of a kind experience, helping the participants to understand the importance of available resources and that of coordinating the internal activities.
Why attend?
The management simulation teaches people to:
- Consider the effects of their decisions on the larger system
- Collaborate across functional boundaries with an openness to redesign
- Develop sound data on which to base decisions
- Use concepts or tools of Process Improvement, Reengineering or cross functional team performance
- Examine the dynamics of team behavior and learn how to improve team effectiveness, often when stakeholders represent diverse interests
Workshop Agenda
Session 1: Friday Night at the ER Management Simulation (2h) |
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Session 2: Friday Night at the ER Debrief (2h) |
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How much time does a game session require?
Allow 3.5 to 4 hours. The introduction, game play and scoring require 2 hours, and the debrief requires 1.5 to 2 hours, including a short break. (If you must, it is possible to shorten the total time to 2.5 hours, but this is not advised for most situations.)
What is the best group size?
Friday Night at the ER works well with different-sized groups. We have seen great experiences with groups as small as four and as large as 300! Your objectives and your circumstances will drive the group-size decision.
As a general principle, a group size of 24 people (at six tables) is ideal, providing enough diversity to demonstrate different mental models and management practices, yet small enough for an interactive debriefing.
What training do I need to facilitate programs using the Friday Night at the ER game?
The game package comes with a step-by-step guide for facilitators and a 45-minute training video. Anyone with group facilitation skills can lead a Friday Night at the ER learning experience.
Before leading your first bona fide learning experience with the game, expect to invest some hours becoming familiar, planning your debrief and practicing the facilitator role with a small test group.
Alternatively, we also provide in-person training, which is particularly effective if you have multiple facilitators who will use the game or if you want help customizing its use within your organization. You can reserve an instructor from the website.
Does knowledge of healthcare or hospitals matter for the facilitator or for players?
Just as you can enjoy Monopoly without real estate know-how, you can facilitate or play Friday Night at the ER with no healthcare background. The game instructions are clear; the processes represented are common to all organizations; the teachings are universally relevant.
People from all walks of life play the game and readily relate the experience to their own circumstances.
What Systems Thinking principles does Friday Night at the ER demonstrate?
These basic principles (and their corollaries) are demonstrated by Friday Night at the ER:
- The parts of a system are interdependent
- Our actions have multiple-order consequences
- Optimizing a part can lead to poor system performance
- Our mental models influence our actions
- Structure drives behavior
- Systems must be able to learn and adapt
What lessons does Friday Night at the ER teach?
Successful management requires these behaviors:
- High-level collaboration across functional and other boundaries
- Openness to innovation to adapt processes of the system to meet customer needs
- Data-driven decision-making: knowing what customers want; having systems for measurement and performance feedback in place
Organizational structures (e.g., boundaries, policies, performance feedback systems) can be designed to produce these behaviors, or they may, inadvertently, inhibit these behaviors.
In which countries is the Friday Night at the ER game being used? Does it come in other languages?
People are using the Friday Night at the ER game in Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, People's Republic of China, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States.
Customers who wish to translate the text may do so with authorization, and we can reproduce selected game materials in your preferred language.
What are the terms of the license agreement?
The license agreement authorizes your use of the Friday Night at the ER game under certain terms. It prohibits re-sale and it prohibits you from altering the product without express written permission. You can download the license agreement here.
Do you have a question still not answered? Send us an email and we will respond.
"The ultimate benefit for games like Friday Night at the ER comes when groups of people who actually work together, play the game. Because then they collectively can start to discover that, "all my smart ideas and all the good stuff I am doing might actually be part of the cause of the problems". When a group of people that work together start to develop that sort of awareness, they actually have a possibility for change that is never achieved any other way." Peter Senge, Director of the Center for Organizational Learning MIT Sloan School of Management |
"This exercise shows a new side of the way in which processes within an organization are taking course. By participating at this workshop, you will be evaluated without even realizing. Consequently, at the end of the workshop, you will be aware of your level of knowledge and you will know how to improve your skills and competencies in the future." Stefănuță Mihaela, Resident doctor, Family medicine |
"I think this workshop is very useful, as it can be applied in an organizational context. The simulation reveals important aspects, and among them are the team work, the importance of the informational flux in an organization and the way in which its performance can be influenced by inter relations and communication." Vice-President of HR, AIESEC Sibiu |
"I loved this exercise; one again, it was proved that without strategies, there are no results. And strategy does not exist without good information." Lorenzovici Lazlo, Senior Consultant, Hospital Consulting |
"Friday Night at the ER is an interactive game, involving team work. Well-thought and extremely real, it can be applied in various fields. It was a pleasant, amusing way to learn how to make the activity of an organization more efficient." Cosmin and Casandra Rociu, Owners, Frangipani |
"Challenging, interactive and extremely real – it can help with the implementation and adjustment of the new ideas in real life organizations" Negulete Marius, Director of MNT Operations, Healthcare Europe |
"Any manager has to experience it, as it can teach us to ask questions all the time."
Adina Manda, Manager, Victor Babeș Hospital |
"I simply could not even tell when the time flew by – a truly engaging way of learning, a great way to tap into critical yet difficult concepts such as change management, systemic thinking and clarifying success factors at all levels in the organization. The experiential learning method, the similarity with day-to-day work activities and decisions, as well as the trainer’s excellent facilitation and debriefing skills all contributed to helping us better understand organizational and team dynamics, as well as some of the assumptions that model our very own behaviors. As a team leader I was happy to notice that this highly interactive, team based activity also encourages communication and collaboration at team level."
Performance Improvement & Reporting Manager, Cross Upstream Services, Upstream Application, Global Solutions, OMV Petrom |
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