QUORUM
Influencing without authority
“Accountable for everything. In charge of nobody.”
You are the Principal Product Manager for Aperion Vantage, the company's first AI glasses. Northline Optical, the retailer that carries the launch in 1,240 stores, wants a physical camera control before it will stock the device.
You are the Principal Product Manager for Aperion Vantage, the company's first AI glasses. Northline Optical, the retailer that carries the launch in 1,240 stores, wants a physical camera control before it will stock the device. The general manager wants your recommendation by the end of the day, and nobody in the meeting reports to you.
The experienceYou have three options: ship as designed, harden the firmware, or add a physical shutter and miss the holiday launch. Five colleagues hold the facts and the influence. Anika Reddy defends her engineering and Tomas Berg his design, Marcus Oyelaran in supply chain hears things first, Dana Whitfield carries the sales number, and Yusuf Haddad, the trust and safety counsel, is the person nobody else talks to.
Before the meeting you have eighty simulated minutes, about twenty minutes of real time, and that is too little to see everyone and read everything. You type what you say in your own words. Colleagues share what they know when you have earned their trust, brought evidence, or asked about what matters to them. If you push too hard, they stop talking. If you tell two people different stories, one of them will say so in front of the room.
In the meeting the floor goes to whoever most needs to speak, and you get about a dozen chances. Then you write your recommendation and defend it to Claire Sandoval, the general manager, who puts one of her three questions to the colleague least likely to agree with you. The option you choose is not graded, because all three can be defended. You are graded on how you got there, and the debrief names the influence style you fell into under pressure.
- Without formal authority, only expertise and relationships move people.
- Trust is one account across all colleagues. Pushing your own case with one person lowers your standing with all of them.
- People disclose their interests to someone who asks about them. Stated positions reveal much less.
- The decisive fact often sits with the person who has the fewest connections.
- Pressure reveals a person's default style of influence, and a default can be changed with practice.
- Product managers, project leaders, and executives in a matrix all lead without authority. QUORUM lets students practice that condition with colleagues who respond to how they are treated.
- Inquiry is the core skill: asking about interests, listening for what is left unsaid, and finding the person who holds the decisive fact.
- The direct path to a decision spends the relationships that the next decision will need. Students feel that cost in the meeting, when a colleague they pushed stops talking.
- Every student leaves with a description of their default style of influence under pressure, and with one thing to practice.
- Company and role
- Principal Product Manager for Aperion Vantage, with no authority over Anika Reddy (VP, Hardware Engineering), Tomas Berg (Head of Industrial Design), Marcus Oyelaran (Director, Supply Chain), Dana Whitfield (VP, Commercial), or Yusuf Haddad (Senior Counsel, Trust and Safety). General manager Claire Sandoval receives the recommendation
- Discipline
- Leadership and organizational behavior
- Also fits courses in
- Product management, negotiation, general management, corporate product academies
- Format
- Solo, in four steps: Prepare, The Meeting, Recommend, and Sandoval. There are three difficulty presets (Foundation, Standard, Executive) and two paces (Full, Compact). The first run is the assessed run, and later runs are practice with details changed
- Time
- About 65 minutes at Full pace and about 50 at Compact pace. Compact pace fits a 75-minute class with a short debrief
- Advisers and AI
- Five AI colleagues. The AI writes what they say and labels what you said. Fixed rules decide what they disclose and how you are scored, so about eighty percent of the score comes from recorded events and a contested grade can be explained
- How you are scored
- One hundred points on five dimensions: what you found out, whether the room stands behind you, how you handled the floor, whether the recommendation is supported, and whether you know what you do not know. There are four bands from Novice to Distinguished and six influence styles. The Broker is the target style
- Teaching materials
- Student Guide, Instructor Guide with run of show, grading sheet, discussion questions and research notes, a 25-slide debrief deck, and an instructor board that can hold and release scores and export results
- Audience
- MBA programs, executive education, and corporate product programs. Players need no product background
QUORUM beside Change Management: Power and Influence V3
Change Management: Power and Influence V3, from Harvard Business Impact. Judge and Hill, is the simulation most programs already know here. Where ours differs: The student types every word to five AI colleagues, and the grade is on how the student built agreement.
| Change Management: Power and Influence V3 | QUORUM | |
|---|---|---|
| Who plays | One student chooses from 18 change levers | One student, with five AI colleagues |
| Time | One sitting | About 65 minutes at Full pace, 50 at Compact |
Formats and times come from each publisher's own product page, September 2026.
QUORUM comes ready to run in class
Student Guide
Instructor Guide with run of show
Grading sheet and discussion questions
Research notes
25-slide debrief deck
Instructor board that holds and releases scores
Three difficulty presets and two paces
Six influence styles named in the debrief
Bring QUORUM to your classroom
You can check out online in a few minutes. For a campus or a big group, just ask us for a quote.