What is Pivot?
In fall 2024, I made Pivot, a strategy card game about learning design. Players hold a hand of design principle cards and use them to build a solution to a scenario, and then the scenario changes, so they have to rework their solution as new requirements come in, much like real design work. The game comes in two versions, PD Pivot for K-12 professional development and L&D Pivot for workplace learning. Both run on the same core mechanic: to win, a solution has to meet every requirement and also make good use of the design principles behind it.
What was it like to make?
The hard part was turning the messy work of learning design into a game that still felt like the real thing. What surprised me was how much of the real tension came through on its own once the rules were in place, in balancing requirements against what you’d like to do, adapting when things change, and leaning on what other people at the table know. My hope is that a team reworking a solution after a tough new requirement, or noticing two principles that work well together, is practicing the same flexibility the job asks for.
What else could be a game?
Making Pivot got me thinking about other parts of the field that might work as games: 1) stakeholder management, where players juggle competing priorities and limited resources while keeping relationships intact, 2) needs analysis, maybe as a detective game where players gather clues about performance gaps and organizational context before proposing anything, and 3) technology selection, a simulation where players choose and combine tools while managing budgets and integration problems.
What would I do differently?
If I started another game like this, I’d write more varied scenario cards that reflect newer challenges in the field, such as AI and hybrid learning, build in structured reflection points where players connect what happened in the game to their own practice, and make companion materials to help facilitators draw out the learning and guide the discussion afterward.
Pivot is released under a Creative Commons license so others can adapt it for their own contexts, and I’m curious to see where people take the basic mechanics. Structured play has a real place in professional development, especially when the thing being learned is judgment rather than a set of facts.
If you play or adapt Pivot, I’d like to hear how it goes. You can reach me at licht.education@gmail.com, and there are more tools, articles, and resources at bradylicht.com.
