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This case illustrates critical concepts and lessons about leading adaptive change in organizations, focusing on the challenges faced by Automécanique Industries during its transition from producing internal combustion engine (ICE) components to electric vehicle (EV) technologies. The case portrays the tensions between employees and management during a pivotal transformation, spotlighting employee reactions to change, possible miscommunication, and perceived leadership shortcomings. The central narrative centers on a letter written by Louis Tremblay, a senior technician, to CEO Isabelle Laurent. The letter, which gains traction among employees and leaks to external media, reflects the fears and frustrations of the workforce.
The case can be used directly in class, making it particularly suitable for executive education sessions or for classes in environments where students frequently fail to come to class prepared.
This case serves as a vehicle for exploring Heifetz’s theory of adaptive change (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002; Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009), the psychological challenges of leading change (Kets de Vries et al., 2007), and the importance of transparent communication and trust-building in leadership. The case is adaptable for courses on leadership, organizational behavior, change management, and communication in both MBA and executive education settings.

FoodCo, a historically successful global player in the FMCG field, is navigating a digital transformation initiative. The case focuses on Anette Weber, a 43-year-old Swiss national and Senior Manager for Management Reporting, who recently relocated from the USA to Germany. Anette inherits an overworked, directionless, and low-morale team due to significant headcount reductions and role transitions to an outsourced partner. Shortly after Anette took charge, FoodCo’s CEO, Timothy Brooks, introduced a new vision: “Be the leader in nutrition, health, and wellness and the industry gold standard for financial performance, trusted by all stakeholders.” Anette saw this strategic change as an opportunity but faced challenges in revitalizing her team. Her executive coach advised her to reflect on seven key leadership transition challenges: authorizing oneself as a leader, balancing strategic direction with adaptability, learning and unlearning, driving organizational and cultural transformation, building teams and networks, communicating effectively, and being her best self. To align her team with the new vision, Anette aimed to shift focus from low value-adding tasks to advanced management reporting and forecasting using data analytics. This vision met resistance from department heads who viewed her team as a service provider for exception-based tasks. Additionally, past outsourcing experiences at FoodCo had been contentious. Anette, in her new role, must address team dynamics, organizational culture, and strategic leadership challenges to navigate tensions between innovation capability, focus, collaboration, and governance while ensuring her team aligns with FoodCo's broader strategic goals. But where to start? What shall she do first?

The case examines the challenges faced Simon Kendrick (a composite character), the Global Vice President of Strategy at CabloCorp, a global leader in the cable and engineering solutions market headquartered in Barcelona, as it seeks to implement a transformational shift from traditional volume-driven sales to value-added solutions. While some country general managers and sales leaders have embraced the change and achieved early successes, others cite resource constraints and market realities, and some remain detached. Simon struggles with differing responses—active skepticism, passive disengagement, and resource-related hesitancy—and seeks to align a centralized vision with diverse local realities. The case focuses on bringing about change to an organization that currently feels no pressure for transformation.

Alexander and Lorenzo were at a crossroads with their biotech startup, PhagoMed. They had left high-profile positions at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) three years earlier, driven by a bold vision to tackle the global crisis of antibiotic resistance using phages, viruses with the remarkable ability to target specific bacteria. Despite a robust commitment to R&D yielding deeper insights into phage biology, the journey from lab to clinic was frustratingly slow. And with their capital dwindling, they faced the urgent need to reassess their strategic direction and resource allocation.

In 2013, Trumpf, a global market leader machine tools from Germany, acquired the majority shares in JFY, a smaller machine tool manufacturer from China. With this acquisition, Trumpf wanted to enter the fast-growing low-cost segment of the market. Until then, JFY had performed very well on the Chinese market, but the company's success increasingly waned after the acquistion. Other Chinese competitors performed significantly better. After JFY even had to report losses for the first time in 2019, Trumpf changed the management at JFY. Under the new management, initial successes were achieved, but even two and a half years later, JFY still did not reach the profit targets which all business units at Trumpf had to meet. In a Trumpf management meeting in October 2022, a decision was therefore to be made as to whether JFY should remain part of Trumpf or be sold off again.

Online meetings are now part of our normal daily routines. They are easy to set up, we have hardware to make them happen, multiple software solutions and high-speed internet enable the connection. But are we really good at communicating virtually? Did we really unmute?
This multimedia case builds on a recording of a not-so successful meeting (we will refer to this video as “The Meeting”) of a distributed team. The recording is not from a real-life business meeting but a plot scripted by the authors to point out learning content and enacted by professional actors. The 5.5 minutes meeting clip activates a set of challenges that we face in online meetings:
– Unclear communication;
– Missing connection between the members;
– Lack of engagement;
– Issues with the technology.
During the case discussion students learn how they can master interactions online, create better connections with other meeting participants, and how they can maximize their online presence.

This case is a set of five vignettes describing career shocks experienced by managers. The stories behind the vignettes were presented by respective protagonists to an executive coach immediately after experiencing a career shock. They can be used for discussion of the topic of career shocks or as exercises in executive coaching or career counseling.

Lucia Fargolo is a dynamic high potential who joined FoodCo – a global fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company at the beginning of their digital transformation journey. After a promotion to department head, Lucia is preparing the global Social Media Marketing strategy. The implementation should start be piloted with a few brands. While Lucia is planning for the launch of the pilot with the brand category managers, there is however a hiccup: one seasoned brand manager seems to be totally off-board with Lucia’s plan. He doesn’t even show up for the strategy workshop she organized. What should Lucia do now?

The company, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this case are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, companies, and products is intended or should be inferred.

The case tells the evolution of the call center transformation at Frontelco (a major telecom company in disguise). “Digital” and “agile” approaches to changing the way how call centers operate seem to produce different results. Debate between proponents of alternative approaches takes place across three levels of organizational hierarchy: the Managing Director seems to prefer “agile”, those close to operations in VP ranks seem to prefer “digital”, while three “managers in the middle” following each other in Senior Vice President rank seem to follow different strategies as to how to align the top and the bottom. To settle the debate, evidence-based clarity is being sought and the protagonist is tasked to design an appropriate performance measure to show the real impact of competing approaches.

The case tells the story of a project at Frontelco (a major telco company in disguise) aiming at defining and piloting a business model (Network as a Service, NaaS) in response to the advancement of a new technology (5G). It is written from the perspective of a “trusted advisor” who had been invited by the protagonist to provide methodological support to the project team. The team, which primarily represents the perspective of product management, spends significant time and effort on developing a methodical approach to their own work, leaving the substantive issue (business model innovation) to be defined only vaguely, under the dominant influence of a few team members. In the follow up to the case we learn that by the time concerns emerge that the team does not seem to have developed any presentable output, they find out that their key competitor has already made significant progress and the technology department, their “internal rival”, has also moved ahead with a concept that allows them to claim ownership for a major corporate-level project.