How we designed an immersive leadership simulation for 400+ Publicis executives - with WhatsApp voice notes, fictional C-suites, and a 91% recommendation rate.
This wasn't a case study anymore. One hundred and fifty senior leaders from Publicis Groupe's global network - people who spend their days navigating cross-agency dynamics, competing KPIs, and regional friction - suddenly had ninety seconds to respond. The pressure felt real because, in every way that mattered, it was.
Le Grand Studio has developed over 1,500 senior leaders across Publicis's network. But this cohort needed something different. These weren't people who needed to be told that influence matters - they live it daily. What they lacked was somewhere to practice it. Somewhere to stumble, recover, and refine before the stakes were real.
The brief was clear: a two-hour session that would feel nothing like training.
Working alongside Le Grand's leadership team, we designed an immersive simulation that dropped participants into the exact pressure they navigate daily - but with space to think it through.
The session introduced Adaptive Leadership - a mindset for leading when there's no clear answer, no fixed map, and no easy consensus. Less about control, more about mobilizing people to solve hard problems together. The kind of challenges these leaders face daily.
Before the simulation, participants chose their own challenge. Two paths - Sense-Respond-Adapt for when systems shift, or Adaptive Leadership for when people pull in different directions. A voice note dropped them into a real-world scenario: a campaign falling apart, a colleague quietly undermining the new model.
They had to respond out loud, solo, via VideoAsk - no hiding behind text, no time to overthink. Two rounds, quick debrief in the chat. What did you notice about how you lead under pressure?
Then came Horizon - a fictional EV challenger brand with a launch crisis that felt uncomfortably familiar.
In Sprint 1, teams built their approach: influence strategy, pitch team selection, resource allocation. In Sprint 2, the pre-mortem - four challenges designed to surface everything that could go wrong before it does.
Each challenge mapped to a specific Adaptive Leadership framework: The Holding Environment, Individual Brilliance vs. Collective Coherence, From the Dance Floor to the Balcony, Competing Commitments.
We built Horizon from scratch - a complete brand ecosystem with product specs, market positioning, competitive landscape, and a C-suite with distinct personalities and hidden agendas.
One of the Publicis Groupe L&D team called it 'Inception-style': WhatsApp voice notes revealed internal tensions in real time. External pressures arrived mid-challenge with no warning and no pause button, forcing strategy pivots just like the real world does.
Every element was gamified but grounded: constraints that forced real choices, feedback loops that made progress visible, pressure points that felt uncomfortably familiar. Nothing was passive. Nothing felt like training.
Across three cohorts reaching 400+ executives globally, the response was consistent: this felt different. And the approach kept evolving.
The word participants kept using: transformative. Not in the corporate-speak sense - in the 'I forgot this wasn't real' sense.
For Cohort 3, we expanded into a two-sprint format - the first sprint establishing the scenario and initial strategies, the second introducing new pressures and forcing adaptation - along with ‘pre-mortem’.
Interactive voice note modules between sprints deepened the complexity, bringing the quiet politics and shifting alliances that leaders navigate daily.
But the number that mattered most came from the follow-up conversations. People weren't asking what they'd learned. They were asking when they could practice again.
"To work through situations like this in a controlled space - where failure is actually ok - was worth its weight in gold."
Global Account Director, Publicis Groupe
Custom training for The New York Times Audience Insights Group - teaching data storytelling, slide design, and executive communication to turn dense research into compelling narratives.
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