Building organisational capacity through acute challenges, part two

Some­body emailed me for more infor­ma­tion about my pre­vi­ous blog post­ing on acute capac­ity chal­lenges. They specif­i­cally wanted to know how to decide what to plan as a challenge.

It’s very organ­i­sa­tional depen­dent. What fits one organ­i­sa­tion does not necce­sar­ily fit another. My pref­er­ence is to select chal­lenges that will make real progress towards your objects, not chal­lenges that are mere puff.

For exam­ple, if you have a finan­cially large project in the not too dis­tant future, you can incor­po­rate your chal­lenge into it, or part of it. The progress you make in the short term chal­lenge then has a dual effect – you get to under­stand organ­i­sa­tional capac­ity, and make ground on upcom­ing projects.

One thing I will men­tion, whilst many things are per­fect for chal­lenges, there is one realm I keep away from. Do not run chal­lenges that are likely to cause cus­tomer con­tact (in excess of usual). The high speed, “rushed” atmos­phere of a chal­lenge doesn’t always trans­late into the superb cus­tomer expe­ri­ence we seek.