Leadership Crucible

• Make people-and-culture decisions with the same rigor as financial ones.
• Apply leadership theory (Heifetz adaptive leadership, Edmondson psychological safety, Goleman EQ) to specific situations.
• Answer a crisis in writing, then decide what to change and what to defend.
• Hold a position under pressure — and know when to revise it.
• Communicate decisions transparently when stakeholders disagree.
• Read organizational signals (morale dips, voluntary attrition, board tension) and act on them.

1. 1
   Briefing and reflection

   The year's situation at the organization. Each student then writes a private pre-decision reflection.
2. 2
   Decisions

   The team answers 5-6 leadership decisions: multiple choice, a percentage split, sometimes a slider (all scored), and a written memo the professor reads (not scored). Each of the five hardest calls also asks how the team will carry it out. One student a year is the leader of record and writes the team's leader's intent.
3. 3
   Crisis

   Every team faces one crisis a year, at the severity its own earlier choices and its people's trust earned (never its score), and the Adapt window opens. People who no longer trust the team may act the same day. An event's positive effects count only if your team saves a response of at least 40 words before the year is scored; its harm always lands, cut by 40% with such a response.
4. 4
   Adapt

   After the crisis lands, the team may change up to 2 decisions. There is no bonus for changing: final answers are scored, so the lesson is what to change and what to defend. Defending pays a little: a decision kept with a one-line reason of at least 15 words that names the year's crisis earns +1.5 Decision Quality, for up to 2 decisions a year. The window closes at the professor's Adapt deadline (24 hours after the decisions deadline if none is set), and the year is scored then.
5. 5
   Results

   Team Morale, Decision Quality, Organizational Trust and Operational Stability move. Results lists what moved them, with the points and feedback for each choice.
6. 6
   Reflection and debrief

   Each student writes a post-decision reflection; the professor leads a debrief with a report per team and a discussion library for every year.

Every team is scored on four pillars that compound across the sim. They aggregate into a composite the leaderboard ranks by, and the professor can see per-pillar deltas in the gradebook.

• A crisis every year

  Each year every team faces a crisis written for its industry: a resignation, a revolt, a leaked memo, a whistleblower, a public failure. A team response of 40+ words, saved before the year is scored, cuts the harm by 40%; silence takes the full hit.

• Adapt window

  After the crisis lands, teams may change up to 2 decisions. There is no bonus for changing: the final answers are scored, so keeping a sound decision scores the same as switching to it, and keeping it with a one-line reason that names the crisis (15+ words) earns a small credit, at most twice a year.

• People who remember

  Six of the people a team inherits (the founder's closest lieutenant, the executive it champions, the CFO, the workforce and the board's two factions) carry a trust level that every decision moves, year to year. Below 30 they act: the restructuring stalls, the leaked memo reaches the press, a senior leader takes a recruiter's call. Each year's crisis is milder or harsher depending on the voice and trust the team built, and Results says why in one sentence.

• Hard calls, fair process

  The five hardest calls separate what the team decides from how it carries it out. A fair process softens what a tough call costs the people affected; a decree makes it worse and wipes out most of any goodwill.

• Five industry tracks

  Manufacturing (Apex Dynamics, the default), SaaS, Healthcare, Banking and Nonprofit. Each has its own organization profile, inherited people, board factions, briefings and crises; scoring works the same way in all five.

• Reflections that count

  Each student writes a private reflection before and after the team decides. Reflections of 40+ words, on time, count toward a personal score worth 30% of the grade (team score 70%); the professor reads them.