Leadership for New Managers Short Sims: Clark Aldrich's suite

Clark Aldrich is a learning designer and author whose books include Learning by Doing and The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games. His later book, Short Sims, describes a way of building interactive content: compress the essential mechanics of a full simulation into a short, reusable experience that mirrors real decisions.

In August 2022 a suite for new managers was announced as forthcoming. It was to contain four sims on core management skills, ready to use as delivered or adapted to a company. Aldrich framed the project in an essay titled Education for a Post-Baby Boomer World, arguing that media which teach learners to do things build the behaviors that leadership and innovation depend on. He also argued that rigorous assessment sims could stand in for drills and standardized tests.

Buyers could try one sim before committing, through a page called Practicing Leadership on the Short Sims website. That page no longer loads.

The Short Sims website opens with a playable demo and three narrated examples by Aldrich, each built around a question such as how learners gain performance confidence in certification programs. It then splits its audience in three. Learners get practice that matches real-world situations. Learning and training teams get content that takes about as much time and skill to produce as traditional material and is easy to review and update. Business leaders are told that organizations that track behavior see more right behaviors and fewer wrong ones.

There are three ways to work with the format. A self-paced workshop, priced at $75, teaches a team to build its own Short Sims with the tools iSpring and BranchTrack. Ready-made Self-Management and Team-Management sims, described as focused on leadership, judgment and decision-making, are priced on request. Aldrich also designs custom sims for an organization's own challenges, culture and constraints.

Aldrich's personal website lists three Short Sims offers: custom sim development, a pre-built scenario library titled Leadership for New Managers, and the self-paced workshop. That is the closest match to the 2022 suite. The Short Sims website uses the same title only in the subject line of its information request link.

Neither site states how many sims the library contains, so the figure of four from the announcement cannot be confirmed. The ready-made sims are listed without titles, durations or a public price.

A reader who wants the manager sims would use the contact link on the Short Sims website, which points to an email address for Aldrich.