Every great Couch Scholar experience begins with one compelling question.
How do organizations slowly drift away from their original mission — and what can leaders do to prevent it?
Learning outcomes
By the end of this experience, learners will be able to:
Story overview
The Pentagon Wars is used here as a leadership case study, not a military history lesson. The film follows a single program as it slowly becomes something no one set out to build — which makes it one of the clearest portraits of organizational drift ever put on screen.
Every scene is a decision. Each one is defensible on its own, and together they produce a result nobody wanted. That is the pattern leaders need to learn to see early.
The learning journey
This experience follows all five stages of The Learning Everywhere Framework™ — from story to real-world application.
Watch with a purpose
Learners watch selected scenes from the film. Hold these questions before viewing:
- What was the original purpose of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle?
- At what point does that purpose begin to change?
- Which stakeholders influence those changes?
- What unintended consequences emerge?
Bring your own organization into the room
Connect the story to experiences you have already lived through:
- Have you experienced mission creep on a project?
- When have competing priorities changed an initiative?
- How have additional stakeholders affected decision-making?
Where the AI Learning Coach begins teaching
Rather than lecturing, your coach asks the questions that deepen understanding and connect the film to organizational leadership — working through:
- Mission creep
- Organizational behavior
- Stakeholder management
- Bureaucracy
- Incentives
- Systems thinking
- Leadership
- Change management
A practical leadership exercise
Choose a current project or initiative, then identify:
- Original mission
- Current mission
- Signs of mission drift
- Stakeholders influencing decisions
- Recommendations for simplifying and refocusing
The AI Learning Coach provides coaching and feedback throughout the exercise.
AI-guided reflection
Close the loop with the questions that turn insight into practice:
- What surprised you most?
- What organizational patterns do you recognize?
- Where might mission creep exist in your own work?
- What leadership practice will you adopt moving forward?
The film is the catalyst. Your organization is the classroom.
Stories become the starting point. Reflection creates understanding. Application creates transformation.
Join the waitlist