How much time does a game session require?
What is the best group size?
What training do I need to facilitate?
Does knowledge of healthcare matter?
What Systems Thinking principles does Friday Night at the ER demonstrate?
What lessons does Friday Night at the ER teach?
In which countries is the game used? Does it come in other languages?
What are the terms of the license agreement?

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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