The LCC simulation forces students to make decisions under acute time pressure and to trade off competing demands, thereby addressing the difficulty of teaching these key elements of leadership. Intangibles such as judgment, courage, and integrity are hard to meaningfully broach with traditional teaching methods. However, leaving these skills to be learned in the field has costly financial, social, and career consequences.

 

The intensive exercise runs 24 hours and presents a realistic business crisis that poses vexing questions: What does a company “owe” the community in which it does business? Should the natural environment be sacrificed for shareholder wealth? Can companies admit wrongs in today’s aggressive legal climate? In the absence of any “right answer,” students must think hard and critically together regarding the best response, exercise integrity in making judgments about how to proceed, and exercise courage in standing up for those judgments under fire.

 

Acting as corporate executives, student teams present their plans of action to a confrontational Board of Directors (played by Ross faculty), who evaluate the quality of their decisions. The best student teams move on to a final round press conference where they face rapid, contentious questions from actual journalists (Knight-Wallace Fellows). Throughout the simulation, students are faced with changing circumstances conveyed by time-release documents, videos, and other interactive elements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above photo:

Susan Ashford (Management of Organizations)