You are Renata Cole, a program director at Catalyst Learning Partners in Miami. Your second-largest client is giving you one chance to renew: a flagship program for 120 leaders, inside a fixed budget cap. It has handed you three problems and refuses to choose. Choosing is up to you.
The situation
It is a Monday in March 2026. Meridian Energy, a $6 billion utility and a $1.6 million, three-year account for Catalyst, has frozen all learning spend. Its new chief HR officer offers one way back: a single program for 120 leaders, for $480,000 all-in (about $4,000 a head), launched within ten weeks, that shows in a report four months later that it changed something real. Renewal is decided thirty days after that report.
The letter names three problems and ranks none: recently promoted leaders who must exert influence beyond their own function; managers who are slow to use the analytics and AI tools they already have; and business units whose silos are stalling a major grid-modernization effort. The CHRO has told you plainly: she will not choose.
Catalyst has more than an account at stake. Two years ago it promised what few competitors put in writing: every custom program ships with a measured report on whether behavior changed and whether the business felt it, not just a satisfaction score. You have already spent $90,000 of design time before the contract, unrecoverable if Meridian says no. And your ninety-day behavior-change index starts at 12 out of 100, against a renewal-grade threshold of 60.