You are Ingrid Halvorsen, director of Atlas Global Business School's Global Executive MBA, based in Barcelona with residencies in São Paulo and Singapore. Your three largest sponsors want measurable ESG content in writing before they renew their seats, and you have six weeks to lock the September programme. Before you move a single hour, you must give your team the rule it will redesign by.
The situation
It is Tuesday, 14 April 2026. Two days ago a business-school ranking published its first responsible-leadership sub-index, and your programme came 41st. The letter is signed by all three sponsors at once: they fund 31 of the 72 seats, 43% of the cohort, worth EUR 4.05 million over the next two intakes. Unless they see a structural change, they will fund single-year seats only.
The programme bills EUR 9.4 million a year at a 22% margin. It has 480 contact hours, fixed by accreditation and by how long an executive can be away from work: 320 of core management, 70 of ESG and sustainability, and 90 of regional and elective content. The core scored 4.6 out of 5 with the outgoing cohort, and you cannot cut it lightly. Every hour you win for one thing comes out of another.
The outgoing cohort gave a Net Promoter Score of +47, above the +40 floor agreed with the sponsors, but its open comments say that "ESG felt bolted on" and that the three residencies carried "too much overlap". Your five-person team does not agree on what needs fixing: the academic dean, the director of corporate relations, the ESG lead and the director of participant experience each read the letter their own way.