Critical Lessons Learned Through Experience – and How To Handle Them

  • Clearly define the business objective you’re trying to achieve. If in your mind, there is not a clear business outcome to the challenge, then don’t launch the challenge. As well-intentioned as the following inquiries are, we’ve found over time that taking these approaches will undermine a challenge.


What you’ll hear How to address Unclear Business Objectives 
"I’m really just trying to engage employees. Our engagement scores on the annual employee survey were low and I think this can help." Challenges engage employees for a specific purpose. If you don’t have a specific business purpose, then a challenge is not the right tool of engagement & won’t positively impact your scores. Instead, let’s define something of business value that employees are passionate about. 
"I really don’t want to stifle anyone’s creativity, so let’s just have people put in whatever ideas come to mind. I’d hate to miss an idea by being too constrained." Creativity actually thrives on constraints – think about the tough problems & constraints faced when sending someone to the moon for the first time. Also, think about the business issue and business decision you face – certainly you have tough constraints, so let’s put that in front of the team to inspire creativity. 
"I’m trying to survey people for opinions and I think your challenge approach can help." The distinction is if you are truly surveying people, with numeric scales (e.g., 1-5) and you are not asking people to collaborate, then using a true survey tool is better suited for your outcome. If you want collaboration and creative problem solving around a specific business outcome, then The Challenge Method is ideal. 


  • Have an engaged Sponsor for the challenge


What you’ll hear How to address Sponsorship Issues 
"Can you just run this for me – I’m going to be out the next few weeks, but I’ll look at it when I get back." Why don’t we frame out the challenge together now, then let’s launch when you are back so we have your involvement. 
"We don’t own the business issue, but we need new ideas. If we run a challenge, surely the business will take some of these ideas on board." It’s really important to have a sponsor or a person who owns the outcome of this challenge. Let’s think about who might own the outcome and see if we can get a strong business sponsor to support the effort. 


  • Know who will move the ideas forward and when. Gain commitment to making these decisions.


What you’ll hear How to address Idea Implementation Issues 
"I’m not sure yet what we’re going to do with the ideas we get." One of the things I’ve learned is if people don’t understand what will happen to their ideas, or if they don’t hear back on their ideas, they lose interest. Why don’t we either think through a topic that is more urgent for your challenge, or wait until the timing is right? 
"I’m not sure who will review the ideas – everyone is so busy. Can’t we just figure that out when we get to that point?" Actually, this is such a critical piece of the process that we should figure that out up front. Not only will the team review ideas, but they’ll also help expand and clarify ideas while our employees are actively inputting ideas. Let’s wait until you’ve got a better sense for who can support this effort. 


We’ve seen these three items derail many challenges, and want to set you on a path to success.