Interactive Crisis Simulation · 60 Minutes
The Boardroom on Fire
Five companies. Five crises. One question: what would you do?
How to play
Rules of the boardroom
Everyone is assigned one of five C-suite roles: CEO, CMO, CFO, Legal, or CHRO.
The facilitator reveals a company in meltdown. 60 seconds to absorb the situation.
Each role has 60 seconds to say what they would do. No prep, no notes.
Everyone votes: whose call do you trust most? Who would you back as CEO?
See what actually happened and what the best-practice response was.
Cast of characters
Your C-Suite roles
You own the final call. Every word you say becomes a headline. Stakeholders are watching everything.
You own the narrative. Brand trust takes years to build and minutes to destroy.
You own the numbers. Your job is to make sure the business survives the crisis financially.
You own the risk. You know what the company can and cannot say — but silence has consequences too.
You own the people. How you treat employees in a crisis defines the culture for years.
Product Recall Nightmare
A batch of NovaBite's bestselling protein bar has been linked to 14 hospitalizations. Social media is exploding. Retailers are calling. The story breaks in 20 minutes.
Decide: full recall now or wait for lab results (48 hrs)?
Draft the first public statement — 3 sentences max.
The recall costs $40M. What do you cut to fund it immediately?
Say nothing publicly vs. proactive transparency — your call?
600 factory workers may be furloughed. How do you communicate?
Johnson & Johnson's 1982 Tylenol recall is the gold standard: full immediate recall, radical transparency. They lost $100M but regained 100% market share within a year.
NovaBite Foods · Audience Vote
Who do you trust most?
Vote for the role whose 60-second call gave you the most confidence.
The Viral Scandal
A leaked internal Slack message shows your VP of Sales calling a major client 'a pain in the ass who should be dropped.' The client has seen it. The post has 200K views.
Fire the VP now, or stand by them publicly while investigating?
The brand is trending for the wrong reason. Your next tweet?
The client is worth $8M/yr. What concession do you offer?
The VP says they will sue for wrongful termination. Your move?
Every employee is watching this. How do you address the team?
In 2017, United Airlines doubled down after the Dr. Dao incident and lost $1.4B in market cap in 48 hours. Starbucks instead closed 8,000 stores for bias training.
UrbanThreads · Audience Vote
Who do you trust most?
Vote for the role whose 60-second call gave you the most confidence.
The CFO Just Quit
Your CFO resigned at 11pm last night with a 3-line email. No handover. Board meeting in 6 hours. Investors have already noticed the LinkedIn update.
Do you tell the board everything, or manage the narrative first?
Analysts are tweeting about it. Respond or go silent?
You are interim CFO for 6 hours. What is the one number you prepare?
CFO may have taken sensitive data. What legal action do you trigger?
The finance team is panicking. What do you say to them right now?
When Twitter's CFO resigned abruptly in 2014, the stock dropped 4% in minutes. CEOs who got ahead of the story with a clear succession signal recovered faster than those who stayed silent.
Zenith SaaS · Audience Vote
Who do you trust most?
Vote for the role whose 60-second call gave you the most confidence.
Acquisition Gone Wrong
3 months after acquiring a hot startup for $200M, you discover their user growth was inflated. Real MAUs are 40% of what was reported. The founder is still on your payroll.
Disclose to the board now or try to fix it internally first?
The acquisition was announced with fanfare. How do you reframe it?
Do you write down the asset now or wait for the audit?
Was there fraud in the data room? Who do you call first?
The acquired team's morale is collapsing. What is your message?
HP wrote down $8.8B on its Autonomy acquisition in 2012 and blamed fraud. The lesson: due diligence culture matters more than deal speed, and disclosure always beats cover-up.
Meridian Tech · Audience Vote
Who do you trust most?
Vote for the role whose 60-second call gave you the most confidence.
The Whistleblower Email
An anonymous email to the board claims your Head of R&D has been manipulating clinical trial data for 2 years. The drug launches in 45 days. $500M is already committed.
Halt the launch now or investigate quietly while staying on track?
Investors are expecting a launch event next month. What do you say?
A delay costs $2M per week. Do you recommend halting anyway?
Whistleblower protections vs internal investigation. How do you proceed?
The R&D team does not know why their lead was summoned. What do you tell them?
The Theranos story: Elizabeth Holmes chose to suppress internal concerns to protect the launch timeline. The result was criminal fraud charges and company collapse. Halting early is almost always cheaper.
Apex Pharma · Audience Vote
Who do you trust most?
Vote for the role whose 60-second call gave you the most confidence.
Debrief
What the boardroom teaches
In a crisis, silence is interpreted as guilt. Leaders who moved fast and transparently almost always recovered better.
Notice how your first instinct differed by role. Legal protects. CMO speaks. CFO contains. None are wrong — they need each other.
How you frame a crisis matters as much as what you do about it. The best leaders control the story before the story controls them.
The board forgets the quarterly miss. The team never forgets how you communicated in a crisis.
The best call depends on context, values, and what kind of company you want to be remembered as. That is leadership.