Cases from the MBA and the Vanguard · MBA module — preparing the argument, or preparing the room
Subtitle: The uncomfortable difference between preparation and executive influence
A few months ago, our organization was considering how best to structure a managed services organization supporting customers across multiple countries and regions. At a high level, there were two competing approaches.
The first was a global support model. This would create greater standardization across the organization, establish one global practice and a single source of truth, reduce management layers, and potentially create greater operational and financial efficiency.
The alternative was a regional model, with leadership and accountability positioned closer to the customers and teams they supported. I strongly supported the regional approach.
My reasoning was primarily driven by customer experience. Managed services are not only about processes, systems and efficiency. It is also about relationships. Regional leaders understand their markets, customers and local operating environments. They work in similar time zones, understand cultural differences and can provide services in customers' preferred languages. Most importantly, they can create a more personal relationship between the service organization and the customer.
I believed that removing too much regional ownership could create distance between the organization and its customers. We might become more efficient internally while becoming less personal externally.
The global model, however, had strong arguments of its own. Finance could see opportunities for efficiency. Operations could see the advantages of common processes, global standards and a single operating practice. HR could see opportunities for organizational simplification and fewer management positions. Executive leadership could see the potential benefits of one global organization with consistent accountability and a single source of truth.
I knew that the global model had significant senior-management support, but I believed I had a strong enough case to challenge it. I researched the alternatives extensively and prepared evidence supporting the regional approach. The subject was discussed openly with Finance, Operations, HR and executive leadership. It was not a single meeting or a single presentation. There were multiple discussions and several opportunities to debate the different approaches.
I pushed hard. As the discussions continued, however, I increasingly felt that I was outnumbered. Several people appeared already comfortable with the global model. I could not know whether people had discussed their positions with one another before the formal sessions or whether they had simply reached similar conclusions independently. Either way, I was finding it increasingly difficult to change the direction of the discussion.
I tried changing my approach and continued to emphasize the customer implications of the decision. At the same time, I was reluctant to acknowledge too strongly the advantages of the global model. If I openly supported the efficiency, standardization and organizational simplicity offered by the global model, would I weaken my argument for regional leadership? Would acknowledging their strongest arguments make it easier for the group to dismiss my concerns? So, I continued defending the regional position.
Looking back, another possibility troubles me. Perhaps I had prepared extensively for the business argument, but not sufficiently for the people making the decision. I understood the organizational models, but had I spent enough time understanding what each executive needed from the decision?
Should I have spoken individually with the senior stakeholders before the formal discussions? I could have explored Finance's concerns about efficiency, HR's concerns about organizational complexity, Operations' requirement for standardization and executive leadership's desire for simplification. Perhaps I could have understood what would need to be true for each of them to support a regional model - or at least preserve elements of regional customer ownership within a global structure.
But doing this also makes me uncomfortable. At what point does engaging stakeholders individually become caucusing? And at what point does caucusing become organizational politics? I had approached the formal discussions believing that we should put the alternatives on the table, present the evidence, debate them openly and collectively determine what was best for the organization. But perhaps that is not how important executive decisions are actually made. Perhaps part of senior leadership is understanding the room before you enter it.
As the discussions continued, my position became increasingly isolated. I still believed in the regional model, and because I believed the customer impact was important, I continued challenging the direction. Eventually executive leadership closed the debate. The decision had been made: the organization would proceed with the global model.
That moment has stayed with me. Had I demonstrated leadership by continuing to challenge a decision I genuinely believed could negatively affect our customer experience? Or had I failed to recognize that I had lost the room?
Should I have compromised earlier and acknowledged the strengths of the global model while concentrating on protecting the elements of regional leadership that mattered most to customers? Should I have built relationships and support individually before the formal discussions? Would that have been better stakeholder management - or simply better organizational politics?
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: if I had done all of those things and still failed to change the decision, at what point should a senior leader stop challenging and support the collective decision?
I entered the process believing that if I researched the problem sufficiently, built a strong case and defended it confidently, good evidence would ultimately influence the decision. I left it wondering whether executive leadership requires something different.
Perhaps I had prepared the argument. But had I prepared the room?
I would open the discussion by asking: "How much of an important executive decision should already have been influenced before everyone enters the formal meeting?" I would first ask someone with significant executive leadership experience to answer, and then deliberately ask someone with less executive experience whether they see the same behavior as stakeholder management, influence or politics.
The fact I would reveal later is that the global model was ultimately implemented. It delivered some of the expected benefits, particularly around standardization and efficiency. However, from my perspective, elements of the service model and customer proximity were weakened. I would then ask: "Knowing that, would you change the advice you gave the leader before the decision?"
Looking at the same dilemma through the NEO lens changes the question. In a Networked, Exponential and Orchestrated environment, perhaps the choice should never have been framed simply as global versus regional. A networked organization depends on relationships and distributed knowledge; an exponential environment increases the pressure to make decisions and adapt quickly; and orchestration asks leaders to coordinate different capabilities rather than assume that one structure must replace another.
This also challenges my discomfort with influencing people before the formal meeting. If leadership is increasingly networked rather than purely hierarchical, conversations with Finance, HR, Operations and executive leadership before entering the room may not necessarily be organizational politics. They may be part of understanding and orchestrating the network. The harder question is where legitimate influence ends and politics begins. Perhaps the leadership challenge was not to win support for the regional model at all, but to orchestrate a model capable of achieving global efficiency and standardization without losing regional customer intimacy.
I prepared the argument, but leadership may have required me to prepare the room.
This case arrived through the module on 24 September 2026. It is not only its author's case any more: it became the mentor's and the professor's, and the book's. What follows is our conversation about it, as it happened, round by round. It is not finished.
1. How far should a leader keep challenging when the majority supports another direction?
Until the decision is made — and not one meeting after. Before it, challenge is a duty; rooms are often wrong together. But I would challenge differently: I would grant the other side its best argument first. A leader who concedes nothing true stops being heard, and he stops being heard exactly when he is right.
Once the decision is made, I stop arguing the choice and start protecting the risk inside it. I name the one number that would show customers drifting away, ask for it in the monthly report, and ask for a date to look at it again. Then the evidence argues, not me. I keep fighting after the decision only if it is unlawful or unsafe — and customer proximity, however much it matters, is neither.
Ask yourself: when I lost the room, was I wrong, or did I refuse to admit anything the others were right about?
2. Building individual support before a formal decision: leadership or politics?
It is leadership when you go to learn, and politics when you go to count. What would need to be true for Finance, HR and Operations to accept regional ownership? Nobody answers that while defending a position in front of the others. You learn it one by one, before. Two tests keep it honest: would I be at ease if each of them heard what I told the others — and can the formal meeting still change the outcome? If I walk in with the decision already counted, the meeting is theatre.
Ask yourself: before my next important meeting, am I going to learn what they need, or to count who is with me?
Your answers are excellent — and they are the answers of someone who has already lost. You wanted something to happen, you tried, it did not happen, and life goes on. That is completely fine. But is there a way to win? Finding it is the art of Vanguard. Go to my books — Vanguard Leadership, and the second volume even more.
The first volume's chapter on maneuver and attrition says it plainly: do not attack the enemy's strength; maneuver to create advantages, attack vulnerabilities, create dilemmas they cannot solve. The regional model was defended head-on, against the room's strongest ground — efficiency, standards, one source of truth. That is attrition against a majority. Commander's intent says what to fight for instead: not the structure, the purpose. The second volume's Command Layer adds that trust is the medium through which intent travels; and Boyd puts the decisive step in orientation — how each person reads what they see — which never changes in a formal meeting.
1. Stop fighting for the structure and start fighting for the intent. Regional was never the goal; customer proximity was. The Vanguard move is maneuver: concede the structure, win the requirement. Go global, and make customer proximity a condition the global model must carry: a named owner per region, the customer's language and hours, one measure of customer intimacy on the executive dashboard. Now the majority gets its model only by adopting your intent — the same victory, taken from the flank. And if they still refuse, a structure is reversible: ask for that measure and a review date; the evidence reopens it.
2. Neither politics nor courtesy — reconnaissance. Before the room, one by one, a single question: what would you need to see to support customer ownership in the regions? Then enter with the synthesis already built from their answers. The meeting stops being a vote between two camps and becomes the approval of one option everyone recognises as partly theirs.
There is never a promise of victory — it would not be realistic. Your second answers still do not give even a thirty per cent chance, but at least you have entered the search for a win: you fight for it and you give everything. Now you have the sources, and you may ask me questions — I am mentoring you to build a winning strategy with better than thirty per cent odds.
In a case like this the room does not decide wisely. It follows the line of least resistance: whoever is louder, whoever articulates better, whoever has the stronger background of influence. In the end it usually comes down to one person whose influence is the greatest. If winning that person were easy, everyone would do it. You will not win him in one conversation, or in several, but through a series of carefully planned steps — and every step has its what-if, several variants. It often comes down to a personal why, or a founder's goal that this one person knows because the founder told him, and the others do not.
The first volume's maneuver sequence: find the centre of gravity, find the gap, take the position before they see it matters, create the dilemma, exploit it.
who carries the founder's goal. Finance, HR and Operations follow the line of least resistance behind him.
| # | Step | What if |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reconnaissance: learn his personal why and the founder's goal — his lieutenant, his past decisions, the people who worked with him. | If it cannot be learned, test hypotheses in step 2 with questions, not claims. |
| 2 | Do not be the opposition: before the formal process, offer to help his model succeed. | If he already sees you as an opponent, go through someone he trusts. |
| 3 | The gap: the customer risk nobody in the room defends. Bring him, privately, one concrete signal, so that the insight becomes his. | If he dismisses it, offer a pilot in one region, without arguing structure. |
| 4 | The dilemma: tie the risk to his why — a global model without a customer owner in the region endangers his own goal. | If his why is control, give him the single source of truth in full and ask only for customer ownership. |
| 5 | He carries the proposal into the room; you acknowledge efficiency and standards in public. | If the room still refuses, step 6. |
| 6 | The sequel: the customer measure on the dashboard and a review date. | — |
The professor asked the mentor four questions: how to recognise the real centre of gravity from outside the founder's circle; how to reach a goal only one person knows; how much time such a campaign needs; and what the first move would be.
Look at my VIS now. Make four initial hypotheses, and then apply the devil's advocate, Occam's razor and a post-mortem. That will take us a step further. You are on a good path.
The Vanguard Intelligence System asks for several hypotheses instead of one favoured option, tests them against the evidence, and keeps the one the evidence disproves least — not the one it supports most.
The question: why did the person who closed the debate want the global model — what is he really optimising for?
| Hypothesis | |
|---|---|
| H1 | The founder's goal: a scalable company, one that could grow, raise capital or be sold. |
| H2 | Control and visibility: regional leaders had become barons; one source of truth lets him see and steer. |
| H3 | A hard cost or margin target: fewer management positions is the fastest lever. |
| H4 | A personal stake: the global model gives him the larger role; regional heads are rivals. |
| Evidence from the case | H1 | H2 | H3 | H4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finance sees efficiency | + | 0 | + | 0 |
| HR sees fewer management positions | + | 0 | + | + |
| Leadership wants consistent accountability and a single source of truth | + | ++ | − | 0 |
| People seemed comfortable before the formal sessions | + | + | + | + |
| Leadership closed the debate, not the evidence | + | + | + | + |
| Several open discussions, not a decree | 0 | + | 0 | − |
| Standardisation and efficiency delivered; proximity weakened; no reversal | + | + | + | 0 |
Least disproved: H1 and H2.
motive — every manager says "single source of truth". If cost were the whole story, a compromise would have satisfied it; they went all the way. And reading personal ambition into another leader is mirror-imaging: if it is wrong, it poisons the relationship that matters most.
steer and scale — control from inside, scalability from outside.
in the region" sounded like the barons keeping their power. Built on H3, it failed because the cost of lost customers shows next year and the target is this year. Built on H4, it failed because it looked like manipulation.
The finding: in every failure the weak point is the messenger. A regional leader defending the regional model can be heard as a man defending his territory, however good his evidence. The next step: let the risk arrive through a messenger who gains nothing from it — the numbers of finance, the targets of sales — and ask one reconnaissance question of the decision-maker or his lieutenant: what will success of this model look like in two years — what will you show the founder?
We do not know the key yet — not even close — but we have come to a meaningful shepherd's path, because here the dilemma appears twice. The first is the sheep's: clever enough to see that it is fighting a war with little chance of victory, and therefore better not to fight. The second is the shepherd's: he gives the best he can for the company and the tribe, even when the odds are small and it looks like mission impossible. But if the shepherd fights, he must fight as a shepherd and not as a sheep: good research, the right allies — I think that is the key here; the key word is leverage — and then, when he has given everything, the kill switch, and he moves on.
Look in my materials for the NEO Game I invented, and its comparison of chess, high-stakes poker, Go and Ludo.
The mentor's NEO Game plays with four strategic logics. Chess is calculation in full view: a sequence of moves, each answering the last. High-stakes poker is the game of hidden cards: you never see the other hand, you read people, size the bet — and you know when to fold. Go is patience and territory: stones placed long before any fight, influence built quietly until the position decides the outcome. Ludo is the dice: one piece on one straight track, a roll each turn, and every time you are hit you go back to the start. The Vanguard, in the NEO Game, is the player who is not bound to any single one of them.
Read against those four, the shepherd's path draws on the mentor's leverage playbook — four kinds of leverage, with capital always the last to fall:
customers, with language, time zone, who holds the relationship today, the revenue and the renewal date. If renewals fall inside the transition, the risk has a quarter and an amount.
carrying retention targets, the revenue controller in finance, the decision-maker's lieutenant. Not the other regional heads: they have the same messenger problem.
model — a named customer owner in each region, one customer measure on the global dashboard — a system that outlives the debate.
the credibility and a measure that may reopen the decision later.
The professor asked two more questions: whether the kill switch is set before the reconnaissance or after; and whether customers are a legitimate ally in an internal decision.
For me the kill switch comes when I judge that I have given the best I can — three times. Customers are possible allies, but engaging them is also going around the room and alienating the decision-maker — almost certainly, if you engage them — and that puts you at great risk of losing your job. Here you are not a freelancer; you work for the company.
The customer's voice enters only through the company's own channels — satisfaction data, renewals, account reviews — as information, never as an ally. The kill switch is not a condition set in advance but the leader's own judgment that he has given his best three times, from three angles.
1.
First decide whether to fight. A sheep sees the odds and stays quiet; a shepherd fights when the tribe needs it, even at poor odds — but then he fights as a shepherd: not one argument rolled like a die meeting after meeting, but a campaign. Find out what the person who will close the debate is really optimising for. Concede the structure he wants and fight only for what must survive inside it: a named owner for every key customer, one customer measure on the global dashboard. Carry it through people whose own targets depend on it.
And know when to stop. When I have given my best three times — three different angles, not the same argument louder — the kill switch goes. I support the decision in public and ask for the measure and a review date.
Ask yourself: am I rolling dice in every meeting, or playing a campaign I can stop with my name intact?
2.
It is the game itself. The room follows the person with the most influence, and nobody changes that person's mind in one conversation. So the work happens before, one conversation at a time: learn what each person needs, find allies whose own goals are served by what you protect — sales carrying retention targets, finance measuring revenue at risk, the decision-maker's trusted lieutenant — and let the proposal carry their fingerprints.
The line is not the corridor; it is whom the leverage serves. Used for the tribe it is leadership; used for yourself it is the wolf's game. And one line a leader inside a company does not cross: going around the room — to customers, to outsiders — turns the decision-maker against you. You are not a freelancer.
Ask yourself: if everyone saw every conversation I had before the meeting, would they see a shepherd or a wolf?
We have a path, not the key. Fight as a shepherd or do not fight; leverage before argument; a campaign instead of a meeting; information that nobody else holds, allies whose targets are served by what you protect, a system that outlives the debate; the customer's voice only through the company's own channels; and the kill switch after the best three times.
What we do not have yet is the key: the one person's why, the founder's goal that only he knows, and the move that turns it.
Chess, high-stakes poker, Go, Ludo — which game is being played in your room, and which one would you choose to play?
The conversation stays open. The author of the case, the module, and every reader who has sat in such a room are invited to make the next move.
A question for the table, a disagreement, what you would have done. The case lead reads every comment; the ones the table takes up enter the chapter as questions from the room, with your name.