Breaking the Ceiling — Marta Solé's Path to the Executive Committee

A four-round, intermediate corporate-strategy simulation set inside Ibérica Materials Group (IMG), a Madrid-headquartered industrial and circular-economy materials company (EUR 2.6 billion revenue, 9,800 employees across Spain, Portugal, France, Mexico and Poland). IMG's executive committee is eleven people, one of them a woman, even though women are 44% of the workforce; the CEO has publicly committed to change that ratio within three years. A VP seat opens on 31 January 2027 and the nominations committee decides in eight weeks. You advise Marta Solé, 43, Director of the International Circular Materials division — she has grown her unit +22% yet sits THIRD on an informal three-person succession slate, behind two male peers being assessed on 'potential' while she is held to 'proven readiness'. Her starting position: sponsorship strength 3/10, network reach 40% into the committee, board presentations 1 in twelve months versus her peers' 5 and 4. Across four rounds you (1) diagnose why a top performer is third — separating real from perceived readiness and naming the single biggest gap; (2) spend a fixed pool of Marta's time and political capital on evidence-based advancement moves — converting a mentor into an active sponsor, engineering substantive board visibility, joining the cross-business steering group, claiming credit without backlash, and extending reach toward the decision-makers; (3) decide whether to take, scope or decline the EUR 180M Mexico–Poland circular-economy integration stretch assignment, and if she takes it, negotiate resources, authority, timeline and an explicit success metric so it is a credible promotion case and not a glass cliff; and (4) assemble the committee case, project the four KPIs to the decision date, and commit to a pipeline action that widens the ceiling for the women behind her. The scoring rewards the evidence base — sponsorship over mentorship, substantive over performative visibility, a structured stretch over both reckless acceptance and timid refusal — and measurably penalises the five common errors of relying on results alone, collecting mentors but no sponsors, avoiding the stretch, taking it unstructured, and treating it as one woman's individual game. Final KPIs track Promotion Readiness (perceived), Sponsorship Strength, Network Reach, and the Negotiated Outcome of the stretch.