People & Leadership · Organizational Behavior

Framing the Change — Calderwood's Project Horizon

A four-round, advanced change-leadership simulation built on Cliff Oswick's organisational-discourse theory and set inside Calderwood Building Society, a 740,000-member UK mutual in Manchester (92 branches, a GBP 14.2bn mortgage-and-savings book, 3,100 staff of whom 1,850 are front-line, and a cost-to-income ratio of

4 rounds Executive English, Español

Preview

About this simulation

A four-round, advanced change-leadership simulation built on Cliff Oswick's organisational-discourse theory and set inside Calderwood Building Society, a 740,000-member UK mutual in Manchester (92 branches, a GBP 14.2bn mortgage-and-savings book, 3,100 staff of whom 1,850 are front-line, and a cost-to-income ratio of 62% that must fall to 54% to stay viable against digital challengers).

On 9 March 2026 the board approves Project Horizon: consolidate 92 branches into 64 hub-and-spoke sites, move 480 of 1,850 front-line roles into a centralised digital-and-phone centre, retrain affected staff at ~GBP 9,000 each, and launch within three weeks — by 31 March — or push GBP 6m of savings into next year.

Trust is already low: a pulse survey shows only 34% of staff believe leadership is honest about why change happens, 28 of the 28 closures are the only bank left in their town, the union wants consultation, and the press is circling.

Playing the change leader, you (1) diagnose the discourse landscape — the existing 'family', 'fortress' and 'machine' metaphors already shaping how Horizon will be heard, and the 34% credibility gap you must close; (2) choose ONE governing metaphor (journey, renewal/growth, machine/efficiency, or organism/adaptation), naming what it enables and what it suppresses for a people-first mutual; (3) write three audience-tuned messages (staff, members/community, union) within that one metaphor and decide whether to engage, contain, or route around dissent under the clock; and (4) absorb a launch-day counter-narrative — a viral staff post reframing 'Horizon' and a community protest — choosing to reframe, hold, or suppress.

The math rewards an identity-fit metaphor that names the loss honestly, dialogic engagement of the union, audience-tuned messages, and reframing over suppression; it punishes the five classic errors: a machine/efficiency frame on a people-first identity, euphemism that papers over 480 lost roles, routing around the union and ceding authorship of the narrative, one-message-fits-all, and a 'cease and correct' suppression of the counter-story.

Final KPIs track Buy-in, Message Clarity, Resistance Incidents (lower better) and Rollout Speed (% of the deadline protected), so every framing trade-off is computable in the debrief.

Who it is for

An advanced simulation for participants used to working with the main frameworks and trade-offs of the subject, designed for executive education and experienced professionals.

How a session runs

  1. The instructor creates a session from the Eureka dashboard and invites the participants.
  2. Participants play 4 rounds. In each one they submit their decisions and the simulation calculates the results.
  3. The simulation can be run in English, Español.
  4. The instructor follows each participant's progress and results from the dashboard, and uses the class results for the debrief.

Decisions participants make

The decisions participants make during the simulation:

  • Which metaphor already dominates how staff and members hear change at Calderwood?
  • How do you read the 34% trust baseline going into the announcement?
  • How rigorously do you map the existing metaphors before choosing your own? (%)
  • Choose ONE governing metaphor to frame Project Horizon.
  • Within that metaphor, how honestly do you name the loss of 480 roles? (%)
  • Name the framing you are deliberately rejecting, and why.
  • How do you write the three stakeholder messages?
  • Where do you put the emphasis in the message to members in closing-branch towns?
  • The dissent decision — how do you handle the union and vocal sceptics under the three-week clock?
  • How much of the three weeks do you spend consulting before you announce? (% of the window)

What participants track

What participants follow on screen as the rounds go by:

  • Buy-in, Clarity & Resistance Trajectory

Subjects covered

Designed for courses in Organizational Behavior.

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