upGrad · Crucible
Year of Efficiency
 
Simulation 01 · Tier 1 · v2

Year of Efficiency

You've run the company for six years. The board just told you to cut 22% of it in ninety days. Who stays, who leaves, and what gets left behind?

✓ 12–15 minutes ✓ 7 decisions · 90s each ✓ 3 live meters ✓ Branching scenarios

You are the CEO of Meridian, a $100B consumer internet platform. Revenue flat two quarters. Margins from 38% to 29%. Three years of over-hiring during the boom.

The board met last Thursday. The mandate is blunt. Make this the year you get it back.

You have 77,000 employees. The number they want is 60,000. That's 17,000 people. You have 90 days to announce the plan.

Seven decisions. A shot clock. Three live meters you'll watch move. Four advisors arguing in the background. Some paths you won't see unless the meters take you there.

The timer is real. If you run out the clock, the default position (the safe, lawyered, committee-approved answer) gets filed under your name. We call that a missed call. Three of them and you earn a different archetype: The Deferrer.

PR
Priya Raman
Chief Financial Officer
AT
Adam Torres
Chief HR Officer
DO
Daniel Okafor
Chief Product Officer
MC
Maya Chen
General Counsel
$100BMarket cap
77,000Headcount
22%Cut mandate
How this works
01
A 90-second shot clock per decision
A red bar at the top of the screen empties as the seconds tick down. If it runs out before you pick, the default position (the safe, lawyered, committee-approved answer) gets filed under your name. We call that a missed call.
02
Three missed calls and the ending changes
Three timeouts override whatever leadership archetype your choices were earning. You become The Deferrer, the leader whose silence kept getting filled by other people's decisions.
03
Three live meters, always visible
Cash runway, board confidence, culture index. Each call moves them. Some scenarios (and some endings) only unlock when a meter drops past a threshold.
Before you start

Who's in the chair?

The sim calibrates to your stakes. A director in a 2,000-person firm will get different pressure than a CHRO in a 70,000-person one. Two minutes. Your report comes back sharper.

By continuing, you agree that upGrad may contact you about your report and counselling for programs that may be relevant to you. We won't share your data. Privacy Policy·.
 
Round 1 of 7
 
 
 
Your people are weighing in
 
 
The world reacts
 
 
 
Your leadership archetype

The Surgeon

 
 
 

Where this archetype serves you

Where this archetype bites you

What the data from your run says

Where you left money (or people) on the table

    What to sharpen in the next 12 months

      Your next step

      The patterns you ran here. You run them at work too.

      Explore upGrad's DBA programs →