You are the manager responsible for three important software projects. Two of them are highly secret projects—no one but you, the people directly involved, and two of the company’s top executives (including your manager) know any details. Rumours have been circulating in the industry for some months about the Alpha Project. The Beta Project is related, but until recently nobody outside of the company had any knowledge of it. The Kappa Project is unrelated to the other two, but the technology is similar and two of the software engineers on Kappa have worked on earlier stages of Alpha. Being first on the market with these revolutionary products will gain your company a significant competitive advantage. You know that your career is riding on the successful completion and on-time delivery of these projects.

Last week, an article appeared in an industry weekly which gave details not only of Alpha but also of the first hints about the existence of Beta. You are extremely worried that this information will erode current sales and lead to false expectations on the part of your customers. There are also financial implications, and these have begun to affect the price of the company’s stock. Worst of all, the leak implies the possible existence of direct transfer of knowledge to your competitors. There is no possible source of the information other than (1) the people in either group or (2) the former members of the Alpha group now in Kappa. You are even considering the possibility that one of the project leaders may be involved or at least knows who is involved. (The Alpha people know something about Beta and the Beta people know quite a bit about Alpha.) If a project leader is involved, dealing with it will be difficult for you. You handpicked them all and expect one of them to be your successor (although you have changed your mind several times about which one).

The Alpha Project leader is highly creative, charismatic, and energetic, and is known to foster a strong sense of commitment among coworkers. You picked this person to head up Alpha specifically because you needed maximum creativity and openness on the team to guarantee success, and leadership skills were crucial. However, the Alpha leader is a relatively permissive manager, and you are concerned that this person’s unwillingness to push security measures may have led to the leak, although you have no evidence to support this concern.

The Beta Project leader is a highly disciplined manager, strong on scheduling, budgeting, and control. People respect this person’s competence, and you handpicked the Beta Project leader because of these exceptional management skills. However, although Beta Project’s work is always done on time and within budget, the group is not particularly cohesive and enthusiastic about their work.

The Kappa Project leader is younger and in a supervisory position for the first time. You like and respect the Kappa Project leader, and hope that the project’s success will add to this person’s visibility and future career success inside the organisation.

You are about to begin a meeting with your three project leaders. The meeting’s outcome must be a plan to deal with the information leak. Your personal objective is to get the project leaders to agree to a plan, so that they will all stay motivated. You would prefer to rely on your department’s sense of commitment and leadership to resolve this situation. You would be delighted if your project leaders as a group found a way to maintain project security without instituting harsh restrictive measures. However, upper management is exerting heavy pressure to impose much stricter security controls. You understand and share their concern for security, and you are prepared to impose a plan if you cannot get a consensus on other ways to stop the leaks.

Identifying the source of the current leak might be difficult and might antagonise your project leaders. However, embarking on a search for the source of the leak might plug it where it is and minimise the loss of competitive advantage. Even if you choose not to spend time searching for the leak, you know upper management wants to prevent any further leaks about the Alpha and Beta projects.

You must reach a decision in this meeting with your project leaders: you have another meeting this afternoon with top management, and they will expect a report on the steps you have taken.

You are the project leader for the Beta Project, one of three advanced software projects being developed under your boss, the software manager. Your project is linked to the Alpha Project: both are extremely secret and success in getting them to market before the competition is considered a key to the company’s future. You know a great deal about the Alpha Project, since you need to develop Alpha and Beta in relation to one another. The people in your group are also fairly up-to-date on Alpha technology, since they need it to do their work. The Kappa Project, while it uses similar technology, is basically unrelated and, from your point of view, less important since it is not so closely connected to the company’s business strategy.

Your project generally has been coming along very well. You have a very good group of engineers and designers who have really worked hard in a disciplined way to bring Beta to a successful conclusion. You are within a few months of completing the project and expect, if it is successful, that you will be offered the software manager’s job. Your only real competitor is the Alpha Project leader, but you see indications of difficulty between the Alpha Project leader and the software manager. The Alpha Project leader tends to handle group members very leniently, whereas you “run a pretty tight ship.” You think that your management style works very well in this setting and is essential when it comes to highly important secret projects.

Recently a leak of information took place that resulted in an industry weekly printing some details of both the Alpha and the Beta Projects. There were some financial implications, and these have begun to affect the price of the company’s stock. The company executives are very upset and you suspect that they are now putting a great deal of pressure on the software manager to identify and shut down the source of the leak.

The software manager has called a meeting of all project leaders. You would like to be seen by the software manager as influencing the outcome in a skilful way. You expect a call for strict controls to stop the leak, which you would strongly support.

Actually, you believe that the Alpha group, or one of the ex-Alpha people now located in the Kappa Project, is the source of the current leak. The Alpha Project leader tends to have a very loose management style, which fosters a degree of openness that jeopardises security.

Your strength as a manager has always been based on others’ recognition of your competence, and your ability to challenge your people while exercising tight controls. You suspect that upper management—and the software manager—will be looking for tighter security controls on Alpha and Beta. This will not be a problem for you, but will conflict with the working atmosphere in Alpha Project.

You do not wish to jeopardise your working relationship with the Alpha Project leader, who is likely to oppose increased security measures. However, you have been concerned about Alpha leader’s loose management for some time, and occasionally feel as if this person is sacrificing security in order to be a popular manager.