Co-Creating Change — Win the Veridian Transformation Mandate

A four-round, advanced executive-education and corporate L&D simulation set inside Atelier Cadence, the custom exec-ed unit of a mid-sized French business school in La Rochelle (EUR 11.4M revenue, 18 programme staff, 140 affiliated faculty, 28% average contribution margin against a 22% approval hurdle). Two years ago the unit lost a EUR 1.6M leadership academy because it was designed FOR the client, not WITH them — high satisfaction, near-zero behaviour change, contract not renewed. Now Veridian Mobilité, a EUR 2.3B French mobility-and-charging group pivoting from hardware to subscription services, invites Atelier Cadence to co-design a transformation programme for 300 managers across 6 countries, 4 languages and 3 seniority bands. The conditions punish: a hard EUR 840,000 cap the CFO claws back on overrun, a 16-week launch with first-cohort completion in 9 months, a divided steering committee (the CHRO buys behaviour change, the COO buys commercial revenue lift, the CFO buys completion and cost-per-participant), and a cheaper off-the-shelf consultancy bid that Veridian defaults to if no signature lands inside 4 weeks. Playing the Executive Education Director you (1) diagnose the REAL transformation need — dismantle legacy-P&L resistance and build services conviction — rather than order-taking the stated 'train 300 managers' request; (2) co-design the architecture under the cap using 70-20-10 logic, choosing the format mix and the co-creation mechanism that puts Veridian's own SMEs and leaders in the design room; (3) reconcile three conflicting sponsor KPIs into one balanced scorecard and defend scope against the cheaper bid; and (4) commit, build the 3/6/9-month impact-measurement plan and renewal logic, and de-risk the 16-week launch. The math rewards genuine, co-created, 70-20-10, multi-sponsor, measured design and punishes the five classic errors — order-taking, designing in-house with no co-creation, single-sponsor (usually CFO) optimisation, blowing the EUR 840k cap or buying satisfaction-only smile-sheets, and launching with no measurement. Final KPIs track Transformation Impact, Sponsor Alignment, Co-Creation Index and the contribution margin against the 22% hurdle and the EUR 840k cap.