Co-Creating the Programme — Trinity Quad Executive Learning

A four-round, advanced executive-education simulation set inside Trinity Quad Executive Learning, the custom-programmes unit of a leading UK business school in Cambridge (£14.2M revenue, 32% contribution margin, NPS 71, 60% repeat revenue). On 14 September 2026, Helvern Industrial Group — a £3.8bn FTSE-250 engineering firm — signs a £680,000 custom contract to build strategic leadership capability across 90 senior managers (3 cohorts of 30) ahead of a restructuring, and wants cohort 1 live in 10 weeks. As Custom Programmes Director you must (1) diagnose the real challenge from a one-paragraph brief and three conflicting sponsor views — the CEO means post-restructuring strategic alignment, the CHRO means high-potential retention, line directors mean project-delivery discipline — before designing anything; (2) co-configure a tailored learning journey within the £680k envelope, choosing pedagogy mix, faculty from a scarcity-and-cost grid (only 2 of 5 preferred senior faculty are free; core faculty £2,200/day vs star practitioners £4,500/day), and a delivery format whose cost swings £90,000; (3) defend the price premium against procurement's £5,500/participant benchmark (27% below the £7,556 as-designed cost) and commit to or renegotiate the £68,000 (10%) impact-linked success fee; and (4) deliver cohort 1 through a faculty drop-out and patchy attendance, then design the impact-measurement approach (reaction, behaviour or results, on the Kirkpatrick ladder) that releases the success fee and decide whether to run cohorts 2–3 (worth £453,000). The math rewards diagnosing before designing, 70-20-10 journeys that embed action-learning and coaching, defending value rather than discounting, Behaviour/Results-level measurement, and treating resourcing as a quality decision — and punishes the five classic errors. Final KPIs track Diagnosis Fit, Impact Credibility, Client Trust, and contribution Margin against the £680k cap.