Enterprise Challenge
Empower rising leaders to turn business strategy into results.
A Development Experience for Emerging Leaders
Enterprise Challenge is an immersive leadership development experience for rising and aspiring leaders in your organization. In this team-based competition, participants practice cross-functional collaboration and decision-making skills under pressure.
Participants are placed on cross-functional teams, compete with others in a dynamic marketplace, take calculated business risks, react to unexpected events, and — through targeted debriefs and reflection — learn how to utilize their leadership style to execute strategy under pressure.
This was THE BEST simulation that I have participated in.
Participant, Hershey’s
The details
Objectives
Audience
Format
Online or Classroom Options
Why Enterprise Challenge?
Enterprise Challenge gives your rising leaders practice in decision-making and cross-functional collaboration. Participants learn how to:
- Adapt their leadership styles to different situations
- Take action in the face of ambiguous and less-than-perfect data
- Understand the difference between agreement and alignment in decision-making
- Practice presentation skills in front of a “Board of Directors” that is typically composed of senior-level executives
Want to learn more? Schedule a 15-minute conversation.
I like the collaboration and hands-on activity — it was one of the most engaging learning experiences.
Participant, Express, Inc.
How Does it Work?
- Teams form companies that vie for customers in a dynamic marketplace.
- Each participant assumes a different role on a cross-functional team with limited resources.
- Company roles change over time, allowing participants to experience the business from different perspectives.
- Virtual employees assigned to each participant have to be managed, as they may be hired by competitors if their morale is low.
- Unexpected events, such as social media campaigns that go awry, create unexpected challenges that the teams have to react to and solve in a cross-functional collaboration under time pressure.
- The experience has a flexible design and seamlessly integrates with broader leadership development initiatives.
- The simulation is facilitated by faculty with extensive leadership and training experience.
- Facilitator certification for client-internal trainers is available.
How Do I Use It?
Enterprise Challenge can successfully integrate into your leadership development program, whether your audience consists of high-potential individual contributors or rising leaders at the Manager/Director level.
Enterprise Challenge can also form the cornerstone of a new leadership development program. Abilitie has extensive experience in creating impactful leadership development programs for clients around the world. Learn more about our custom program design options for rising leaders here.
Individual Contributors
Level-Up Your Front-Line Employees
Enterprise Challenge works as an ideal leadership laboratory for early career employees that want to level up their skills. The simulation is embedded in many world-class MBA and executive MBA curricula at universities like UCLA, IMD, and the University of Texas, and serves as a great practice environment for aspiring leaders to prepare them for the next step in their careers.
People Managers
Develop Cross-Functional Managerial Communication Skills
People managers are at the heart of executing any company’s strategy. Enterprise Challenge offers cross-functional collaboration and communication practice for leaders throughout the organization. The simulation develops key skills necessary for successful execution of strategy across the enterprise.
New/Emerging Functional Leaders
Offer Real-World Practice to Your Rising Leaders
Enterprise Challenge is an ideal capstone experience for high-potential leadership programs. It brings together learning objectives spanning leadership and strategy to execution and business acumen and offers an integrated practice environment to rising business leaders within your organization.
It was a tough challenge, but so worth it.
Participant, American Family Insurance
Case Study
Bringing Leadership to Life
On the heels of a successful turnaround led by AMD’s new CEO, Lisa Su, AMD set its sights on finding a strategic way to invest in its people. The primary goal was to ensure that its leadership pipeline remained strong as AMD’s projected rapid growth loomed. AMD needed to fill its bench with qualified leaders ready to take on such a challenge. Leaders at AMD had witnessed the power of simulation-based learning and wanted to harness the energy that simulations can bring to continue moving their mid- to senior-level leaders forward.