Architect the Leadership Journey — Re-engineer 'Leading Through Complexity'

A four-round, advanced executive-education design simulation set inside Méridien Executive Education, the leadership-development faculty group of a major European business school near Paris (EUR 19M portfolio, ~1,400 participants/year, 70 faculty). Its flagship six-month 'Leading Through Complexity' (LTC) program scored a brilliant 4.6/5 on enjoyment but its transfer-to-work rate collapsed to 41% (target ≥65%): sponsors say 'people loved it but nothing changed at work', 360-behaviour uplift is only +0.4 (target ≥+0.8), and learning-outcome attainment sits at 62% (target ≥80%). Three corporate sponsors funding EUR 1.4M of LTC revenue have put renewal on review and a rival school is winning with a more experiential model. Playing the academic director, you must re-architect the journey inside a locked calendar — 6 months, 18 contact days, 144 faculty-days — that you can only re-allocate, never extend. Across four rounds you (1) diagnose this as an APPLICATION/transfer gap, not a knowledge or training gap, ranking the five leadership outcomes and naming the structural weaknesses (no spaced practice, no on-the-job application, no outcome mapping); (2) re-sequence the modules and set the theory-to-experiential ratio, using spacing and reflection across the three intensives and constructive alignment so every module maps to an outcome; (3) allocate the 144 faculty-days and 18 contact days against the fixed envelope, deciding whether to fund the 20-faculty-day action-learning project (the single biggest transfer driver, +15 points) and what to cut to afford it, while protecting coaching and reflection time; and (4) present the re-architecture to the Dean and lead sponsor, defending engagement against the over-stretch risk (an experiential pilot once scored 3.2/5 and people stopped attending), handling faculty resistance, and committing to behaviour-change measurement at 3 and 6 months. The math rewards the discipline the concept teaches — application over more content, spacing over front-loading, funding the action-learning project, holding stretch and engagement together, and building measurement in — and measurably punishes the five classic errors. Final KPIs track Transfer-to-Work %, Engagement, Outcome Coverage, faculty-days used against the 144 cap and the EUR 1.4M sponsor block secured or lost.