You are Grace Fenwick, head of Platform Engineering at Northgate Systems, an enterprise-software company in Reading, England. The board has given you twelve weeks to restore your division's energy or it will break the division up. Before you spend a single pound, you have to decide what problem you are looking at.
The situation
It is Monday 14 September 2026. Northgate (1,400 people, £240 million in revenue) was bought by a private-equity group last year. Your 320 engineers build and run the platform that everything else is sold on. Since the reorganisation that followed the deal, the division has logged more hours than any other team in the company and reported less energy than all of them.
The board's dashboard leaves no doubt about the size of the problem: engagement has fallen from 78% to 54% (company average 72%); 41% report high exhaustion (19% company-wide); average overtime is 9.2 hours a week. Regretted attrition runs at 18% a year, twice the average, and each departure costs about £95,000 to replace. On-time delivery has slipped from 94% to 81%. An internal diagnostic puts "productive energy" at 38 out of 100; the board wants it above 60.
You have a one-time budget of £600,000, seven possible initiatives on the table and enough of your own attention to properly back two, not five. The same numbers support different readings, and your leadership team is already arguing over which one is right. In the latest pulse, some write that they are "burnt out"; others talk about cynicism, blame and an autonomy they no longer have.