There has been a drive lately to build organisational capacity. Aside from the arguments about what exactly that means, it’s interesting to consider acute challenges as a way to build capacity.
Acute challenges are basically a challenge to the organisation to acheive some objective or deliverable within a short timeframe. They are specially prepared to both measure the organisations capacity to innovate, deliver and adapt, in addition to identifying areas where the organisation excels and needs work.
Military organisations conduct mock exercises frequently, however other organisations don’t tend to conduct them on similar scales. To really be effective, the challenge needs to engage multiple business units, across almost every department. It needs to force communication, and it needs to really push the possible timelines.
As an example, in a technological organisation, the challenge may be to create a concept and outline a marketing plan for the concept by 5:00pm tomorrow. This is obviously an extreme stretch, but that’s the idea. Push the boundaries and challenge staff. Once the challenge is over, conduct a post mortem conference to determine what worked, and what didn’t. Improve next time. Who knows, the next big product idea may come out of a two day challenge.