You are Priya Anand, project lead at Halden & Rowe, a London consultancy. You have just won the largest contract in the firm's history on one condition: that the team reflect the diversity of the bank's customers. You have five working days to choose eight people out of fourteen.
The situation
On 4 March 2026 the steering committee of a large retail bank approved a £12 million, fourteen-month digital-transformation programme. Halden & Rowe has 1,180 people in London, Manchester and Lisbon, billed £196 million in 2025 at a 14% operating margin, and this contract carries 30%, well above the firm's average. If the programme delivers, the bank can renew it for £30 million. Your pay, like every principal's, moves with the margin actually earned and with that renewal.
The price rested on a thesis you sold yourself: diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones, but only if someone manages the friction they generate. This is the first time you have to prove it on a contract this size, in front of the client who bought it.
On the bench are fourteen candidates, rated 1 to 5 on three things: seniority, cognitive diversity (background and thinking style) and demographic diversity. The most senior form a fairly similar group that has already delivered programmes like this one; the most different sit at the other end, with fewer years behind them. No combination of eight is both the most senior and the most diverse. Four of the senior profiles also carry a reputation for conflict.
Discovery runs six weeks. On day 45 you will sit down with the bank's sponsor and have to defend whether the team you chose outperformed the safe team you left on the bench: decision quality, schedule, and whether the diversity premium the bank paid for shows up in the results and not just on the org chart.