Shele
House
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Home of the Agency Leadership Program®
How does Shele House® Work?
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Importantly the Agency Leadership Simulation is not an individual based exercise. Each participant operates in a group of typically 5 others as 'collective managing directors' of Shele House, competing against up to 3 other teams.
The simulation sequentially generates case materials describing a situation and asks the team to choose from various actions. All the case situations actually occurred in an agency somewhere, and all the possible actions are those our research found were among those facing agency leaders in real life. The Shele House agency, parent company, key staff and clients are all based on disguised agencies, holding companies, staff and clients.
After reading the situation, the team discusses it until consensus is reached on the action to be taken. That decision is then entered into the simulation computer. The exchange of personal experiences, information and differing viewpoints among members of the team is often the source of the greatest learning.
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The teams receive feedback from their staff, clients, the trade press and their bosses within the simulation and via financial and other performance indicators, as well as from the experienced team of facilitators we provide.
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The decisions are those that managing directors typically face; they all ultimately affect the creative output and financial success of any marcomms agency anywhere in the world. The simulation’s purpose is to give participants agency leadership experience and improve their skills as an effective general manager in the industry.
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​Shele House® offers opportunity in a learning environment where it's "safe" to try alternative approaches. It's OK to make mistakes here, and it’s not an individual effort. Creating outstanding work is a team process. The simulation does so by creating an environment of sharing information and applying all team members’ experience and skills.
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​And yes, it is competitive. After each simulated year teams discover how their adversaries have performed, which is all part of the regular debriefs that take place throughout the simulation.​​
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Each team begins under the same conditions: the same office history, accounts, staff, revenues, problems and opportunities but after three days there are always very differing team results.
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The simulation produces different agency outcomes depending on the team's decisions. And no team makes the same decisions as another. One team may see a case or get asked to pitch a piece of business and another team may not even see the pitch because their sequence of decision making was different.
It's an application of leadership concepts, driven by the knowledge and experience on each team.
Below is an example of a team's dashboard which shows at any given time their projected revenue, profit and margin for the year, how much business they've won, how much is still out there to win plus how they are performing on 5 key indicators.
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