RaccoonNotesGif

Why Your Consultant Should be a Dungeon Master

Why your consultant should be a dungeon master

The last thing you want to hear in a meeting is “roll for initiative.” But that doesn’t mean having a Dungeon Master at the conference table is a bad idea. Consultants and Dungeon Masters (DMs) share many desirable traits that allow them to guide clients to success.

Consultants and DMs: United in Expertise

DMs must have a breadth of knowledge to adjudicate situations arising in the game world. They must be prepared with plots, NPCs, maps, and rules. Despite preparation, no plan survives contact with players. A DM must loosen control and adapt the story. While improvising, the DM provides guidance to lead the adventuring party through challenges. Players must trust the DM, as the referee and storyteller, to be fair and keep the game fun. To foster engagement, DMs are active listeners, incorporating player ideas into the emerging narrative.

A Wide Frame of Reference Informs Solutions

A DM requires broad knowledge to depict diverse environments, cultures, plots, and challenges for the party. Like consultants, DMs have deep expertise in their core system, be it D&D 5th edition rules or supply chain analytics. This T-shaped knowledge profile enables consultants and DMs to apply specialty skills while conversing across domains.

Running games also builds valuable implicit knowledge. Improvising stories and rulings under pressure develops systemic thinking ability. Designing scenarios that challenge players without overwhelming them hones empathy and emotional intelligence.

Improvise Fluidly While Balancing Chaos and Control

DMs must project confidence in their plans and judgments, despite frequent surprises. Being perpetually prepared to improvise demands mental agility and comfort with ambiguity.

Adapting to players tests a DM’s reasoning skills. Integrating character backstories, goals, and actions into the emerging narrative requires creative problem solving, similar to weaving stakeholder needs into a new software design. Guiding the party through twists without railroading requires dynamically balancing player agency with plot coherence, not unlike managing client expectations during an agile development process.

Guiding the Party Through Unknown Territory

The DM offers guidance, but cannot dictate actions. Instead they provide options and insight to influence the group. The same “loose control” approach empowers consultant-client partnerships.

DMs function as neutral referees in mediating rules disputes and roleplay conflicts. Honoring all perspectives builds trust that the DM will be fair in adjudicating outcomes. Players thus feel confident inventing characters and moving the story in unexpected directions. Consultants play a similar mediation role - gaining stakeholder alignment, building trust, and empowering clients to implement customized solutions.

Listening is crucial for recognizing what delights and challenges players, and incorporating feedback into subsequent sessions. Active listening skills enable DMs to challenge parties at the “Goldilocks” level of difficulty.

Unleash Your Team’s Potential with a DM Perspective

In short, experienced DMs have cultivated core consulting skills: fluid expertise, systems thinking, communication, and more. Business leaders should view the hobby as enriching, not frivolous.

Consider reaching out to discuss how a DM perspective could enhance your team’s capabilities. The profession’s emphasis on storytelling, imagination, and player agency may be the most vital benefit of all.

Specifically, if you want to see a DM consultant in action, reach out to Seven Hills Technology and ask for Will. As an experienced DM and software consultant, Will expertly guides clients through complex software implementations, keeping stakeholders aligned while adapting solutions to fit emerging needs.

Bringing a DM’s fluid expertise, systemic vision, and focus on engagement to your next enterprise initiative could help unlock creativity and transform team dynamics for the better. Why not gather your own adventuring party around the conference table and let Will’s DM skills go to work for you?