The Character Audit — Diagnose and Develop a Reckless Star at Meridian Cloud

A four-round, advanced leadership-and-HR simulation set inside Meridian Cloud Systems Inc., a Waterloo, Ontario B2B-SaaS scale-up (CA$240M ARR, 1,650 staff) roughly two years from an IPO.

Its most commercially successful leader, SVP Enterprise Sales Daniel Vos, has beaten quota for eleven straight quarters and personally controls relationships behind 38% of new ARR (≈ CA$26M) — and is also its biggest governance liability: a skip-level complaint, an off-policy discount deal, 19% regretted attrition against a 9% company average, and an engagement score 22 points below average.

He is up for promotion to CRO on the same board agenda.

Playing the People Director with a fixed CA$120,000 development budget and a three-week deadline, you (1) run a leader-character audit, diagnosing the case as a character IMBALANCE — over-played Drive and Courage unchecked by Temperance, Humility, Justice and Collaboration — at the dimension-and-behaviour level rather than a vague 'character problem', a competence gap or a motivation gap; (2) prioritise the two-or-three highest-leverage dimensions, choose a board recommendation (develop-and-retain, develop-but-hold-the-promotion, manage-out, or promote-on-the-numbers), and explicitly de-risk the 38% ARR concentration; (3) design ONE high-leverage intervention within the CA$120k cap — coaching, a structured 360-and-accountability cycle, a stretch assignment with conduct guardrails, peer-shadowing, or a performance-and-conduct plan — with a baseline, target, six-month horizon and a real consequence, and respond to Vos's defensiveness and a competitor approach; and (4) defend the recommendation to the People & Compensation Committee and institutionalise character assessment so the next Daniel Vos is caught earlier.

The scoring rewards treating character as a measurable, developable competency and punishes the five classic errors — rewarding the number, verdict-before-diagnosis, vague labelling, intervention sprawl that blows the budget, and development with no metrics or consequence. Four KPIs track Character-Gap Closure, Intervention Fit, Retention Risk and Projected Effectiveness Lift.

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.