Custom Build — Scope & Design Aurora Health's Leadership Programme

A four-round, advanced executive-education simulation set inside Lakeshore Executive Education, the custom-programmes unit of a top-ranked North American business school in Ann Arbor, Michigan ($38M revenue, 90 faculty, 71 NPS — but only a 38% proposal win rate).

On 5 October 2026 Aurora Health Networks, a $9B hospital system with a new CEO, issues an RFP with a 3-week clock: develop 180 senior clinical and operational leaders who 'manage budgets but cannot lead change.' You play the Exec-Ed Director against two rival schools, with a fixed $1,200,000 budget (~18 faculty-days, 2 residency weeks), a 4-month launch deadline, a 9-month run, four cohorts of ~45, a 30% margin floor, and a 3-year, $4,000,000 renewal riding on Year-1 evidence.

Across four rounds you (1) scope the REAL challenge — translate the wish-list 'strategy, finance, innovation, resilience' into the single diagnosed need (competent operators who have never led change through others) rather than building four content tracks; (2) design the learning architecture backward from outcomes, choosing the experience-to-content ratio with 70-20-10 logic and immersive-residency principles, plus a four-wave cohort plan; (3) allocate the $1.2M and 18 faculty-days across marquee tenured faculty ($22k/day) vs professors of practice ($9k/day), a bespoke change-leadership simulation ($60k), an action-learning project, and a coaching pool ($450/hour) while protecting a 30% margin and faculty sustainability; and (4) set Kirkpatrick L3/L4 success metrics — change-readiness pre/post, a live improvement project per leader, manager-observed behaviour, a target NPS — and pitch the CEO, who probes for over-promising and unverifiable metrics.

The math rewards diagnosis-first, experience-weighted, margin-protected, L3/L4-contracted design and punishes the five classic errors: designing from the wish-list, curriculum over-stuffing, prestige over pedagogy, smile-sheet metrics, and winning at the expense of delivery. Final KPIs track Client-Needs Fit, Budget Utilisation & Margin, Learner Impact, and NPS against the 71 benchmark.

An advanced simulation for participants used to working with the main frameworks and trade-offs of the subject, designed for executive education and experienced professionals.