Assignment 3: Executive Strategy Pitch – Resolving Royal Bank Delays
Built for: Executive Boardroom
Delivery Time: 3 Minutes
Objective: Justify urgent action to save the timeline, budget, and client trust
Level 1: Just Action (Dry Checklist)
“To get back on track, we propose daily check-ins with our third-party provider, reallocating two senior team members to support onboarding, and overlapping our testing and debugging cycles.”
Why it’s weak:
No context, no stakes
Sounds like routine updates
No sense of urgency or danger
Level 2: Fact + Action
**“As of today, we’re only 65% done with a project due March 30.
Key issues:
Software vendor missed their delivery by 3 weeks
Two critical team exits caused ramp-down
Testing revealed bugs that’ll take 2 more weeks
This delay costs us ₹8.3L ($10,000) per week.
More importantly — it risks our standing with Royal Bank, which could lead to future contract losses.
We propose:
Daily escalation calls with the vendor
Senior team reallocation for rapid onboarding
Parallelize testing + debugging
These steps will keep us on course — if approved now.”**
Why it’s better:
Numbers are introduced
Pain points are outlined
Still too clinical. Doesn’t feel like a fire yet.
Level 3: Emotion + Fact + Action
**“Let me be blunt — this project is bleeding time and money.
We’re 65% through, but three events have hit us hard:
A critical software update is three weeks late
Two key players walked out mid-sprint
The new hires need four weeks to ramp
And just this week, we discovered major bugs during load testing
Every day of delay = ₹8.3L ($10,000) burned.
But worse? It erodes Royal Bank’s confidence — a client we can’t afford to lose.
They’re watching us. They’re timing us. They’re evaluating us.
If we don’t act now, we risk more than budget — we risk our reputation.
That’s why I’m proposing 3 moves:
Daily calls with the vendor till Feb 25 — zero tolerance
Pulling 2 senior team members to transfer knowledge today
Begin real-time testing and debugging — no more waiting for perfect handovers
With these, we don’t just salvage the timeline — we protect the account.
Let’s get this back on track before it snowballs.”**
Why it works:
Emotion: “bleeding,” “watching us,” “zero tolerance”
Logical path to trust + recovery
Clearly defines what’s at stake
Level 4: Visual Story + Emotion + Fact + Action
**It’s March 31st, and in a few hours our own board will click into the delivery dashboard.
All they’re going to see is three lines that say the project isn’t finished, it’s three weeks late, and it’s already over budget.
They won’t scroll for explanations or hunt for footnotes; the only word they’ll remember is “unreliable,” and that label will stick to us far longer than any slide deck.
Right now we’re about two-thirds of the way through the code, but the last critical workflows are still missing.
Two senior engineers left last week without handing anything over, the new testers are still learning the ropes, and our last load test crashed at peak traffic — exactly the nightmare the regulators warn banks about.
Every week this drags on is costing us around ₹8.3L ($10,000) in vendor overtime, extra infrastructure, and late-night support.
If we let the delay keep growing, the problems won’t stop at one project.
The audit team will flag the whole program as high risk, the CFO will slam the brakes on next quarter’s digital budget, and word will spread through the industry that our tech group can’t land the plane.
That scares off future partners, rattles the talent we’ve got, and gives every competitor an easy talking point when they pitch against us.
One slipped date can snowball into a year of lost deals and résumé polishing.
We can still flip this story, but only if we act today.
First, we set up a daily call with the vendor through February 25th and tell them silence longer than four hours goes straight to procurement.
Second, we pull two of our best engineers off their current tickets and get them sitting beside the new testers so the knowledge gap closes in days, not weeks.
Third, we run testing and bug-fixing in parallel with development — no more “finish then test”; every build gets hammered the same day it’s written so surprises surface fast.
If we move now, we don’t just meet a date on a calendar — we show the board, the bank, and the market that we don’t fold when things get messy; we tighten ranks and deliver.
I need the green light on the vendor calls and the engineer swap before lunch so we can start this afternoon.
Let’s steady the ship and make sure the next time someone opens that dashboard, the only word they see is “delivered.”**
Why this wins:
Starts with client POV + fear of failure
Shows escalation in tone and clarity
High-drama, high-control
Makes leadership feel like approving = saving the account
