The Trust Dial — Calibrating Control & Autonomy at Fjordkart

A four-round, intermediate leadership simulation set inside Fjordkart AS, an Oslo software company (NOK 210M ARR, 88th-percentile engagement, 6% attrition) that has just signed its largest contract ever: a NOK 24 million, 9-month real-time fleet-routing build for the cold-chain logistics operator Nordfrakt, with a fixed 1 December 2026 deadline, a 400 000 kr/week late penalty (cap 4,8 mill. kr) and a 6-week walk-away clause. You are the newly appointed Engineering Manager of the 11-person Atlas Core squad, instructed by a nervous board to 'get visibility and control.' But the team runs on radical autonomy, its intrinsic-motivation index has already fallen from 82 to 71 on the monitoring rumour, and two senior engineers who hold the routing algorithm (1,1 mill. kr each to replace) have updated their LinkedIn. The simulation operationalises Bård Kuvaas's research on trust-based leadership, Self-Determination Theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness), the crowding-out effect, the inverted-U of control, and the iron triangle of scope-capacity-deadline. Round 1: diagnose which of the board's three proposed controls (monitoring, daily logging, a NOK 60 000 contingent deadline bonus) threatens which need, and read honestly the structural ~12% (800-hour) gap that no pressure can close. Round 2: design the pay scheme — the board's full contingent bonus (the crowding-out trap), a decoupled team bonus, non-contingent recognition, or reinvesting the 660 000 kr into a third squad — and choose how the money is framed (controlling vs informational) and how far you act on the real gap. Round 3: the core round — set three 0–10 dials (monitoring intensity, autonomy granted, goal & transparency structure) on the inverted-U, and decide whether you protect the two routing experts or manage the average. Round 4: respond to a week-6 setback (a key engineer resigns, Nordfrakt adds 600 hours) without defaulting to coercion, renegotiate scope honestly, and brief the board on a defensible 1 December position. Four KPIs track intrinsic motivation (/100), effective velocity (index), key-engineer flight risk (%) and team trust (/10), plus a derived delivery probability. Sticky run-defining penalties gate the top verdict: cranked surveillance (the control trap), the uncritical contingent bonus (crowded-out drive), ignoring the two engineers (concentration risk), and using motivation levers to dodge the hours gap (planning dodged) each measurably and irreversibly underperform — so a blind click-through of the board's instincts cannot win.