Recognising that there are different kinds of resources to consider, such as: People, Knowledge (familiarity with factual information), Skills (ability to apply knowledge to specific situations), Budget, and Time. Resources should be secured and allocated for the next iteration. Where you do not have them, make plans to increase capacity through relationships with partners and suppliers or bring new resources in-house.

Determining essential resourcing will require a degree of Collabor-IT, Frame IT and ITer-IT. It is inevitable, though, that some Wicked Challenges™ will be out of reach for some organisations. It also means that your organisation is likely to have the capacity to resolve only one Wicked Challenge™ at any one time.

The examples below illustrate some aspects of the resourcing challenge.

One of the authors recalls a story told by a lecturer where a fundamental shortcoming in a new product launch was nearly missed. A leading FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) company was developing a new oven-ready product – take it out of the freezer, pop it into the oven for ten minutes, and voilà. The project team completed an early-morning meeting where it was agreed to reformulate the product slightly. As the session ended, they called the test kitchen manager and asked her to cook up the new batch. She agreed and asked if it was okay if she did it during the lunch break. The team agreed. One curious member asked why it would be done during the lunch break. “It smells so bad when it is cooking that staff members complain”, was the reply. Uh-oh. Why wasn’t the head of the test kitchen part of the core project team?

At a critical point in the battle of Waterloo – where over 600 000 men were deployed or available for deployment by the protagonists – Napoleon’s cavalry overran Wellington’s cannons. But none of the attacking cavalry soldiers had the routinely-supplied nails needed to spike the captured artillery pieces. Wellington’s army retook its cannons and redeployed them, and the rest is history. As Erik Durschmied says in The Hinge Factor, “Only a handful of nails to put these guns out-of-action, and nothing, not even the Prussians, could have saved Wellington that day.”

A reader of Masters of Battle: Monty, Patton and Rommel at War (Terry Brighton 2008), can only marvel at the impact on outcomes that strong personalities can have. “All three were arrogant, publicity-seeking and personally flawed, but with a genius for the command of men and an unrivalled enthusiasm for combat.

The message, perhaps? Sometimes your resources need to include challenging personalities. Better to have them inside the tent with you rather than outside.