From Angry Voicemails To A Dog’s Death, These Students Grapple With A Leadership Crisis

The winning MBA team at Michigan Ross’ Leadership Crisis Challenge. A mother of two, Latrece Williams (right) was the CEO of the Crisis Commanders, Team 27.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON: GRILLING BY A TEAM OF JOURNALISTS AT A PRESS CONFERENCE

As it turns out, Team 25 and Team 41 failed to make the finals. But only four of the 60 teams will get to endure the press conference, anyway: a pair of graduate teams and a pair of undergrads. Each of these teams gets to make a two-minute statement, followed by an eight-minute Q&A from five journalists, including reporters from the Associated Press and the San Francisco Chronicle. All the reporters are in the university’s Knight-Wallace Fellowship program.

Now the questions are even more pointed than those asked in the boardroom. Team 27 is up first. Called the Crisis Commanders, the team is led by Latrece Williams, a wife and mother of two who is in her second year of Ross’ full-time MBA program. Her poise and maturity are unmistakable as soon as she stands up at the podium. Before coming to Ross, Williams had spent more than nine years at Phillips 66, the oil and gas company in Houston. In her first year at Ross, she traveled to three countries, worked on a student-led fund, consulted for a startup, and won a VC finance pitch competition. After a summer internship at Procter & Gamble, she came back to the school with a job offer in her pocket and will start at P&G after graduation.

Her team was the fourth to present to Greer’s board, the same board that judged the performance of Team 41. “The Crisis Commanders delivered the most balanced solution to the case, finding ways to acknowledge the humanity of the situation while still funding ways to keep the business afloat, despite a difficult financial situation and reputation crisis,” says Greer. She also believed the team stood out in its “executive presence, quality and innovativeness of its strategic plan, and its impressively rigorous understanding and management of the financial situation.”

‘YOU STILL DECIDED TO LAUNCH EVEN THOUGH YOU KNEW YOU HAD A PROBLEM?’

Coming across as both earnest and serious, firm yet empathetic, Williams explains at the press conference that her team immediately shut down the system and publicly apologized to its customers.

“Were there any red flags you missed as a company that could have prevented this incident?’ asks one of the journalists.

“You still decided to launch even though you knew you had a problem?”

“Can we anticipate any changes in the leadership?”

“Have you paid the ransom?”

CRISIS COMMANDERS IS THE TEAM TO BEAT

When the team concedes that it indeed paid the hacker a ransom, yet another journalist pounces.

“Are you concerned that paying the ransom would create a bad precedent?”

Williams and her team members handle the questions with great clarity and self-confidence.

The remaining teams repeat the process, and it becomes clear that Crisis Commanders is the team to beat.

The group wins the graduate competition and the $4,000 discount on their tuition.

Gribben, the CEO of Team 25, displayed no disappointment at not making the finals. “The level of competition across the teams at the LCC was so impressive,” he says. “It would have taken a nearly flawless performance across all areas of the challenge to have been chosen as one of the top two graduate teams. That was especially evident after seeing the winning team during the press conference.”

His own takeaway is shared by most of the students who competed in the challenge. “While we didn’t hit our ultimate goal, I was incredibly pleased with how Team 25 was able to work together after meeting each other just minutes before the crisis began. We kept our composure when information was being thrown at us from all directions and we had a humble group that made the night go as smoothly as it can in that type of situation.”

DON’T MISS: PROFIT & ROSS: THE LEADERSHIP CRISIS CHALLENGE

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