You are Naomi Ashworth, 43, and since Monday 2 November 2026 managing director of the Drivetrain Division of Pennine Drive Systems in Sheffield: your first general-management job. In the same week, your anchor customer gives you ninety days to deliver a qualified unit, and your board gives you the same ninety days to show it a plan. Before the week is out you have to say what the division must win.
The situation
Pennine makes precision gearboxes and bills £210 million a year as a group. The Drivetrain Division, 220 people, carries the company's bet on the energy transition: an electric-drivetrain product line that has already used up £26 million and missed two launch milestones before you arrived. The previous managing director is gone, and the division's engagement score stands at 58 out of 100. You have spent most of your career as a production engineer, running engineering delivery on the established gearbox lines; this is your first time owning a P&L, a board relationship and a customer already in default.
The cure notice comes from a European rail manufacturer with a £34 million, three-year contract: one qualified production unit within ninety days, or the contract is cancelled. The board's note sets its review of your strategic plan on the same clock. You can spend up to £3.5 million on recovery before a group capital review is triggered; a plan tackling every problem at once has been costed at £6.2 million. Three senior engineers are flight risks, and replacing them would cost about £900,000.
The week-one dashboard scores, out of 100, strategy clarity at 20, progress toward the qualified unit at 25, the readiness of future leaders at 30 and the board's and customer's confidence at 40, and no reading can stand in for another. Around you, everyone pulls a different way: the customer's programme manager wants only the unit; two board members want to see the whole transition plan; your HR partner warns that the team is exhausted.