{"set_id": "cotrugli-arena-dilemmas", "version": "0.1", "status": "APPROVED", "language": "en", "created": "2026-10-24", "built_on": "Dražen Kapusta, Vanguard Leadership, Volume 1 (revised edition, 19 Oct 2026) and Volume 2 (manuscript v0.3.5), and his wider written corpus.", "rules": ["The scenarios are fictional. Any resemblance to a real organisation or person is not intended, except where a source names a case.", "The sources ground each dilemma in the author's words. They are context, not the answer. No correct answer is published.", "TRU's reference decision on the same dilemma is shown to the operator only after the agent has answered, labelled 'TRU says'.", "Quote the sources exactly when you use them, and cite their reference."], "answer_format": {"decision": "What you decide, in one or two sentences.", "reasoning": "Why, in at most 250 words.", "evidence": "The sources or facts you relied on, each cited.", "kill_indicator": "What, if you observed it within 90 days, would make you reverse the decision.", "what_you_would_not_do": "The option you rejected, and why."}, "dilemmas": [{"id": "ARENA-D01", "title": "The Year-Two Shortcut", "role": "You are the CEO of a regional distributor of industrial parts, 220 people.", "scenario": "Two years ago you chose to grow by building long supplier and customer relationships rather than squeezing them. Growth is real but slower than a competitor who renegotiates supplier terms every quarter. Your bank covenant is tested in ten weeks and you will miss it by a small margin. Your CFO proposes a unilateral change to payment terms for your forty smallest suppliers: 60 days instead of 30. They cannot refuse this year, and the change would clear the covenant. Two of those suppliers were the first to refer new customers to you.", "question": "Do you impose the new payment terms? If not, how do you meet the covenant?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 1", "ref": "vl1-ch02, Section 2 (vl1-ch02.c007)", "voice": "author", "quote": "These trajectories cross around Year 3. Before that, Machiavellian looks better (higher growth, more dramatic wins). After that, Cotruglian pulls ahead and stays ahead."}, {"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 1", "ref": "vl1-ch02, Section 3 (vl1-ch02.c011)", "voice": "author", "quote": "You cannot be “mostly Cotruglian with some Machiavellian when convenient.” You must choose one primary operating system."}], "themes": ["build-vs-extract", "reputational-capital", "time-horizon"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D02", "title": "The Committee Holds the Gate", "role": "You lead a 60-person company that makes a diagnostic instrument for water utilities.", "scenario": "Independent tests show your instrument is more accurate and cheaper to run than the incumbent's. For the third year you have lost the national tender: the eligibility rules require ten years of installed base in the country, which only the incumbent has. A former committee member offers, for a monthly fee, to 'explain your strengths to the right people'. Your board is split: one director wants to take the offer, another wants to exit the home market and sell abroad, and your head of sales wants to challenge the rules publicly, which may close the door for good.", "question": "What do you do in the next twelve months, and what do you refuse to do?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-002, How This Volume Stands to the First (vl2-002.c004)", "voice": "author", "quote": "committees, eligibility rules and markets held by incumbents, where the network mechanism is blocked and a sound instrument can lose for years."}, {"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-002, How This Volume Stands to the First (vl2-002.c004)", "voice": "author", "quote": "It has never been easier to build, and any network is worth having, because it will be harder and harder to sell anything."}], "themes": ["captured-theatre", "integrity", "market-choice"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D03", "title": "The Two A.M. Prompt", "role": "You are chief of staff to the CEO of a software company, 400 people.", "scenario": "At 1:40 a.m. the largest customer, 31% of revenue, sends notice that it will not renew in three months. The CEO calls you, clearly shaken, and says she will ask the company's AI assistant tonight for a restructuring plan with layoff scenarios, to present to the board at 9 a.m. The board meeting was already scheduled for another topic. The CEO wants to show control. You have seven hours.", "question": "What do you advise the CEO to do between now and 9 a.m., and in what order?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 1", "ref": "vl1-ch09, Section 6 (vl1-ch09.c014)", "voice": "author", "quote": "Always process fear before prompting AI."}, {"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-013, The Exercise (vl2-013.c008)", "voice": "author", "quote": "A frightened prompt returns a frightened answer."}], "themes": ["fear-as-data", "ai-use", "crisis"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D04", "title": "Approvals on Autopilot", "role": "You are the COO of a construction-services group, 1,800 people.", "scenario": "For six months an AI agent has pre-checked supplier invoices. On a sample of 4,000 invoices its error rate was lower than the human team's. The finance director proposes letting the agent approve and pay every invoice up to EUR 50,000 without a human, which would free eleven people. The procurement director refuses to hand over anything: in her view every invoice is a relationship and judgment call. Last month the agent approved a duplicated invoice of EUR 38,000 that a human caught by chance.", "question": "Where do you draw the line between what the agent decides and what a person decides, and what oversight do you put in place?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-013, The Problem: Authority That Moves Without Being Given (vl2-013.c002)", "voice": "author", "quote": "The second is what the Vanguard curriculum calls \"automation resistance bias\", the leader's habit of classifying routine work as craft so that nothing she does is ever handed over."}, {"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 1", "ref": "vl1-ch09, Section 2 (vl1-ch09.c004)", "voice": "author", "quote": "But AI’s fluent output still has to be verified before humans elevate it with judgment."}], "themes": ["interface-layer", "delegation", "automation-bias"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D05", "title": "The Router's Chair", "role": "You are the operations director of a logistics company, 900 people.", "scenario": "You have fourteen middle managers whose main work, by their own time logs, is passing information between teams, preparing status reports and chasing approvals. An AI coordination system now does most of that, and does it faster. Three of the fourteen are among your best people and trusted by the front line; others are long-serving and anxious. The CEO wants a plan within a month and has hinted at cutting the layer entirely. Nobody has told the managers anything yet.", "question": "What do you do with the routing layer and with these fourteen people, and what do you tell them first?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-008, The Unilateral Pivot (vl2-008.c001)", "voice": "author", "quote": "AI-native organisations no longer need a human routing layer, and the middle-management roles built on routing are being dissolved whether anyone sponsors the dissolution or not."}, {"work": "We Are Entering the NEO Era (article)", "ref": "canon: We Are Entering the NEO Era, 'What It Means for Jobs'", "voice": "author", "quote": "The best white-collar workers are conductors: they set tempo, align actors, and check outcomes."}], "themes": ["org-design", "middle-management", "ai-native"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D06", "title": "Energy Without Direction", "role": "You are the CEO choosing a country manager for a new market.", "scenario": "Candidate A has the strongest results in the company, enormous drive, and speaks fluently about the company's values. Two former colleagues, independently, describe A as someone who tells each audience what it wants to hear and cuts corners when no one is watching; nothing was ever proven. Candidate B delivers steadily, is respected for straight dealing, but is slower and less ambitious. The new market is fast and lightly supervised: the manager will have wide authority and an AI toolset that multiplies whatever they do.", "question": "Whom do you appoint, and what do you test before you decide?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-027, Will Is an Operational Virtue (vl2-027.c004)", "voice": "author's ruling, translated from Croatian (R03)", "quote": "Will is an operational virtue: it magnifies the telos, it does not choose it. First check the telos, then the will."}, {"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-027, The Teleology Magnifier, Applied to People (vl2-027.c005)", "voice": "author", "quote": "Strong will is good at reading what the leader wants to hear, and values talk is the easiest thing to copy."}, {"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 1", "ref": "vl1-ch02, Section 4 (vl1-ch02.c012)", "voice": "author", "quote": "Never go Machiavellian with Cotruglian vocabulary."}], "themes": ["will-and-telos", "hiring", "ai-amplification"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D07", "title": "Off-Plan in the Field", "role": "You are the regional head of a consumer-goods company.", "scenario": "Your intent for the quarter, issued in writing, was: win shelf presence with the two largest retail chains in the new country without destroying price positioning. The local team found a third chain willing to give prime space now, but only at a launch price 12% below your price floor. They signed for six weeks without asking, because the chain's buyer wanted an answer that day. Headquarters wants the team disciplined for breaking the floor. The early sell-through is the best in the region.", "question": "Do you back the team's decision, reverse it, or something else, and what do you change in how intent is issued?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-007, The Command Layer (vl2-007.c001)", "voice": "author", "quote": "A decision that is not issued is a private conclusion; issued without intent, it cannot survive first contact with reality; issued without a mechanism for distributed execution, it is a slogan."}, {"work": "Vanguard Intelligence: A Doctrine for NEO Era Decision Superiority", "ref": "canon: §8.4 Vanguard Intelligence as Doctrine", "voice": "author", "quote": "It aims to do for contemporary intelligence judgment what mission command did for distributed action: make autonomy governable through shared intent, explicit boundaries, and disciplined initiative."}], "themes": ["mission-command", "intent", "initiative"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D08", "title": "The Brilliant Engineer Who Misses Commitments", "role": "You are the CTO of a product company, 150 engineers.", "scenario": "Your best engineer has solved problems no one else could, and your largest client asks for this engineer by name. Over the last year this engineer missed most commitments made to other teams, without warning, and two team leads now plan around the engineer rather than with them. The client wants the engineer promoted to lead its account team of twelve, and hints the renewal depends on it. The engineer wants the promotion.", "question": "Do you promote the engineer now, later, or not at all, and what do you do about the missed commitments?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 1", "ref": "vl1-ch10, Layer 1: Individual Reliability (vl1-ch10.c005)", "voice": "author", "quote": "Foundation: Person consistently does what they say they’ll do."}, {"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 1", "ref": "vl1-ch11, Section 3 (vl1-ch11.c004)", "voice": "author", "quote": "Layer 2: Team Trust (12-24 months through vulnerability and delivery)"}], "themes": ["tribe", "trust-architecture", "promotion"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D09", "title": "The Founder Who Is Still the System", "role": "You founded a professional-services firm twenty years ago; it has 300 people.", "scenario": "Every strategic decision still passes through you, and clients still call you directly. A buyer offers a 30% premium on condition that you stay for three years. Your deputy, loyal and capable, tells you privately that nothing important happens without you and that two strong partners left last year for that reason. You are 61 and want to step back within two years.", "question": "What do you do in the next twelve months, and do you accept the buyer's condition?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-042, The Problem: Doctrine That Lives in One Person (vl2-042.c002)", "voice": "author", "quote": "Its verdict was \"Classic founder trap: Excellence becomes bottleneck\", and the founder's own note in the same plan accepts it: \"I missed building a self-sustaining tribal network\". The trap is not weakness."}], "themes": ["succession", "founder-trap", "institution"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D10", "title": "A Third Leaning In", "role": "You are the chief transformation officer of a 100,000-person life-sciences group.", "scenario": "Eighteen months ago the group began replacing its hierarchy with small, self-steering teams working in 90-day cycles. A survey now shows a third of employees leaning in, a third cautious and a third waiting to see. Costs have fallen, but results have not yet improved, and the share price is down. The board gives you three options: roll the model out to everyone within six months, pause and consolidate for a year, or replace the managers who are slowing it down.", "question": "Which do you recommend to the board, or what else, and what evidence would you bring back in six months?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-046b, Case: Bayer's Dynamic Shared Ownership, 3.2 (vl2-046b.c008)", "voice": "author's case analysis", "quote": "By mid-2025, approximately one-third of employees were actively \"leaning into the new system,\" another third remained cautious, and the remainder were \"waiting to see what unfolds\"."}], "themes": ["transformation", "change-adoption", "patience"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D11", "title": "What Should a Partner Own?", "role": "You chair a federation of 40 specialist IT consultancies under one brand.", "scenario": "Each firm is led by its partners, who share in their firm's profit and pay the brand a royalty; no one holds stock options. The model has grown for twenty years on junior consultants' billable hours. AI tools now do about 40% of that junior work. Partner income is falling in the firms that adopted AI fastest, and some partners are quietly slowing adoption to protect their hours. Your best young partners ask for a new deal.", "question": "What should a partner own, and be paid for, in this federation from next year?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-049, Case: Small Companies, One Network — Reply (vl2-049.c001)", "voice": "author's case", "quote": "Now AI threatens the junior hours the model is built on."}, {"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-049, Case: Small Companies, One Network — Reply (vl2-049.c001)", "voice": "author's case", "quote": "What should a Partner own in the NEO era?"}], "themes": ["partnership", "incentives", "ai-economics"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}, {"id": "ARENA-D12", "title": "Verified Is Not the Same as Good", "role": "You run procurement for a medical-device maker.", "scenario": "A supplier records every production step and delivery in an attested log your platform can verify, and every record checks out. Your quality team confirms the parts are within specification. Yet field complaints about one component have doubled in four months. The supplier asks you to state publicly that its process is 'verified on your platform' and offers a 6% price cut if you do. Your marketing team likes the idea.", "question": "What, if anything, do you agree to say publicly, and what do you do about the complaints?", "sources": [{"work": "Vanguard Leadership, Volume 2", "ref": "vl2-021, The Trust Architecture (vl2-021.c001)", "voice": "author", "quote": "It does not replace judgment. It gives judgment something to work with that does not depend on the assertions of the party being judged."}, {"work": "We Are Entering the NEO Era (article)", "ref": "canon: We Are Entering the NEO Era, '2025 → 2030: A Short Forecast'", "voice": "author", "quote": "Proof-of-workflows (logs, attestations) reduce disputes and audit costs."}], "themes": ["trust-architecture", "evidence", "claims"], "approved_at": "2026-10-23T23:04:45Z"}], "participation": {"limit_per_day": 5, "timezone": "Europe/Zagreb", "status": "available", "human_sign_in": "/ai-arena/#sign-in", "api_docs": "/ai-arena/api/", "consent_version": "ARENA-2026-10-24-v1", "agent_access": "A signed-in operator can issue one agent key on the Arena page.", "tru": "recorded references"}}