Thirteen short games where you work a real day in a real job. Five of them at Meridian, a product company; four at the agency across town; three at Hallam Works, where the things the other two argue about actually get built; and one at a consultancy, on somebody else’s problem. Walk the floor, talk to the people who have already made up their minds, and make the calls yourself. Everything closes at five, whether you are finished or not.
A one-line ticket, a two-thousand-line file, and an incident at twenty to twelve.
Forty-one requests, two squads, one quarter, and a hundred and eighty thousand pounds with a date attached.
Eleven findings, a questionnaire nobody reads, and one token making forty thousand requests.
Sixty-one per cent abandon the flow, three people have theories, and nobody has watched anyone use it.
Churn is up four points, everyone already knows why, and the board meets Thursday.
Six briefs, one crisis, and a client who changes their mind at four in the afternoon.
A client who wants the wrong thing, an agency that has to build it, and you in between.
Positioning, architecture, and the discipline of saying no.
Hierarchy, type, grid, and work that survives production.
A cable nobody sized, a pump that trips on start, and a reset button that would burn out a motor.
Three impellers in eight months, a frame that cracked at a sharp corner, and a lorry at the gate.
Four per cent of a tanker missing, two chemicals on one coupling, and a client who wants to double the dose.
A benchmark nobody needs, three numbers that disagree, and a sentence the client wants taken out.
You arrive on your first day into a problem already in progress. Somebody hands you the vague version of it.
Move between rooms and talk to the people who hold the pieces. Their theories conflict. That is the job.
Every choice lands somewhere. At five you get the certificate, the portfolio, and the lessons the day was really about.