How the
Challenge Network can help you.
Some
clients from the past five years.
Client
views on the Challenge Network.
Terms
of use, disclaimer, privacy policy, third part publications.
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The Challenge Network www.chforum.org |
The Challenge Network is a loose international partnership of expert individuals, most of whom have occupied senior planning or management roles in commerce and the public sector. We take on projects that organisations or interests find it hard to structure for themselves.
We are currently looking for affiliates and for people who are interested in marketing our services, either as a free-standing activity or as a facility within whatever it is that your organisations does. For example, we are often used by training organisations to set the tone of an event and to widen the debate. Please make contact with us if this is something which you would wish to develop.
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How the
Challenge Network can help you.
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Some
clients from the past five years.
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|
Client
views on the Challenge Network.
|
|
Terms
of use, disclaimer, privacy policy, third part publications.
|
Organisations face two kinds of problem. There are issues such as cost management, where the problem is plain and the solutions straightforward, if hard work. Equally, there are intractable and painful issues where the problem is largely undefined, and in which finding the nature of the question is often as important as seeking its answer. The Challenge Network deals chiefly with the second set of issues. We help organisations to articulate issues with which they have yet to come to grips. We give insight into the forces that are generating change, and we help to adapt and innovate in response to these.
Much of the information that is published on this site is somewhat generic, applying to all nations, organisations or firms. Real value comes when expert insight in these areas is turned onto the specific: on the business idea, on local conditions, onto genuine policy handles. The lesson of the dot.coms (and previous investment bubbles) is that one has to see how the clockwork actually turns so as to deliver sustainable value to the investor. The lesson of policy fads - such as marketisation or deregulation - is that one has to know where they work and why they work, and what is needed to keep the real machinery in play. Grand-sounding buzzwords - sustainability, governance - need to be assessed for what they truly mean to a given issue or circumstance, and trimmed down until the become useful tools.
The Challenge Network brings decades of insight to these issues. Clients know their own area of activity well, but they have often found it hard to synthesize their insight into something which generates action, or harder still to link this insight with the changing world in which they operate. The Challenge Network specialises in delivering such focused interventions.
The Challenge Network use this web site to report its findings, which it does pro bono. Legal issues connected with the use of this information are discussed below. We ask you to read this section before making any practical use of any of this material.
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Director: |
Oliver Sparrow |
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"I could have happily listened to your presentation all day. But you made us work, and my goodness it really hits me how our ideas had changed in half a day!
"That was completely stellar. You just stunned them, and made the whole conference into a success. The speaker who said 'Follow that...' was doing no more than acknowledge the rest of us thought - that anything more was going to sound lacklustre.
"When I told my colleagues that you were coming to India they just thought that I was wasting money. But now they are all onside and we are all very, very happy with what you did for us in a week.
"Many thanks indeed for contributing to [...] Our participants were, as ever, overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of your scenarios. The presentation was both very stimulating and thought provoking in relation to the challenges facing higher education."
"Many thanks for your masterful presentation and insights. A member told me later that she was simply stunned into silence when you concluded. It was just that deep and strong and we are most grateful to you for helping us achieve the goals of the meeting in this way."
"Weird, wonky, wonderful and werry werry useful. Just amazing that you got us so far - and nobody lost their temper. Harry Potter for real."
"I never expected it to get anywhere, and that it got to where it did is quite astounding. We are not the same organisation now."
"It is happy for me to say without evasion that you did the greatest thing for us. We had it all there, but you made us see how it was all together in one. Now we are great to go forward."
"However prepared our people, without the Challenge! people we would still be fighting."
"Sometimes frustrating, frequently challenging, ultimately always useful."
"The Forum provides an opportunity to look at issues well beyond the normal day-to-day working remit. It certainly speeds up the search for models of thinking and ways of looking at the world."
"The Forum has helped us to discount the flashy headline distractions. It focuses us on the big structures. We get to sense the Next Big Thing, but we can also cut today's 'Big Thing' down to size."
"You feel that someone is watching all the rest of the horizon while you focus on your one little bit of it."
"We extend our greatest thanks to our Challenge Network friends. Before we could not speak with our new partner and now we are biggest friends. You are like wedding makers."
"The scenarios provide a very useful prompt for thinking about the future. We have gained insights that have contributed to our strategies."
"By working with other participants from a wide range of organisations, our views of the forces underlying society have become more resilient."
"Goodness knows I have changed. It has changed me."
"It is really helpful to have an established external organisation that we can point to. We challenge anything 'invented here' and analyse things to death. The Forum summarises it all effectively and we can use it as an external reference without arguing."
"I didn't know you could work like this. It has given me confidence to try out techniques and ideas that are rather foreign to our concerns."
"The trouble with the Forum is that it will never go quite where you expect it to. I promise things internally and then what they deliver upsets all that because it is different from what we had thought at first."
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Organisations which have called in the services of the Challenge Forum usually seek confidentiality, which we honour. Members of the former Chatham House Forum, with which the Challenge Network ran in parallel, have been:
Many private and public sector organisations - for example, British Airways, the Environment Agency, as well as many academic institutions - have participated in various discrete activities. We have interacted with the strategic processes of over thirty other organisations and national governments.
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You are welcome to use this information, but we ask you to acknowledge the source. In using information from this site, however, you agree to hold the Challenge Network blameless for any consequences of your doing so, and you agree that in no event will the Challenge Network be liable for any direct, consequential, incidental, or special damage or loss of any kind (including without limitation loss of profits, loss of contracts, business interruptions, loss of or corruption to data) however caused and whether arising under contract, tort, including negligence, or otherwise.
The view which is expressed on this web site is personal - where an author is cited - or represents a balance of opinion amongst members of the Challenge Forum. It is not legitimate or accurate to attribute any view which is expressed here to any of our former or extant clients, whether they be named of not. We provide this synthesis entirely as a public service and we reserve the right to withdraw aspects of this site as we see fit.
We do not collect the identities of those who use this site, and we do not allow others to do so. If you wish to contact us, your communications will be treated with absolute confidentiality. Contact details are given in the main menu, under 'utilities'.
We accept third party texts for publication, provided they are brief, interesting and supplied free of copyright. If you wish to publish a paper on this site, either under your name or without attribution, then please make contact with us.
We do not guarantee to publish any such paper and we will exercise editorial powers over it if we do agree to publish it. We do not publish party political, abusive or idiosyncratic texts that advocate specialist interests, and our readership is not interested in religious or other proselytism. To save everybody's time, therefore, please submit only those texts which are both original, pithy and which closely match the overall tone of the site.
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