You are Priya Nandra. On Friday you were a senior consultant at Meridian Digital Consulting in Manchester; since this Monday you lead Aurora, a fourteen-person delivery team. Two people problems are waiting in your inbox, and both must be settled before the client's steering meeting on Thursday at 16:00. The first thing you have to decide is how to start.
The situation
Meridian is a digital-transformation consultancy with 240 people, £38 million of revenue and a 12% operating margin. It promotes almost entirely from inside and has spent eighteen months printing its values, Candour, Care and Courage, on every offer letter, including the one you signed. Your predecessor resigned abruptly; your leadership course is scheduled for after Thursday. A peer manager who wanted the same job has already told two colleagues your promotion is "a stretch".
The first problem is Tom: nine years at the firm and the person newer engineers turn to. For three sprints his code has failed review 31% of the time, against a team norm of 9%, and the previous lead covered for him. Tom works on the client-critical module. The second is Aisha, Aurora's highest-rated consultant and the obvious person to rescue that module. Last week she told you, in confidence, that she has verbally accepted an offer elsewhere, expects to resign within days, and would like you to keep it to yourself for now.
Aurora's largest client bills £1.9 million a year. If Thursday's milestone is missed, a £95,000 service credit is triggered and a three-year renewal worth £5.7 million is put at risk. Three long-serving engineers have hinted they would "reconsider" their futures if Tom left feeling discarded: replacing them would cost about £600,000. Across the firm, teams under a newly promoted manager lose 24% of their people a year. The pulse survey from the week of your promotion scores, out of 100, the team's trust in you at 42, confidence that Thursday will hold at 45, and your standing as a manager at 40.