Designing the Program — Whitfield Learning Partners & the Brackenmoor Mandate

A four-round, advanced executive-education design simulation set inside Whitfield Learning Partners Ltd, the GBP 18M custom development arm of a UK business school. Whitfield's commercial differentiator is measurable business impact: 20% of every contract fee is contingent on hitting agreed metrics six months after delivery. On 2 February 2026 its largest client, Brackenmoor Industrials plc (a GBP 4.1bn engineering group, 22% of Whitfield's turnover), issues an urgent brief after a profit warning: ~180 newly promoted mid-level operations leaders are escalating every decision, safety incidents and project overruns are climbing, and the CEO blames a 'leadership capability gap'. Brackenmoor will fund GBP 1.8M (~GBP 10,000 a head, 26% below Whitfield's GBP 13,500 flagship price), wants a programme contracted in 90 days and proof of impact within 9 months, has GBP 360,000 of fee staked on the result, and is quietly evaluating two competing providers. Playing the Programme Director, the team (1) diagnoses the gap — separating the CEO's presenting 'leadership skills' problem from the underlying structural reality of unclear decision rights, no delegation mandate and a blame culture, and naming the portion no classroom can fix; (2) designs the intervention within the GBP 1.8M cap, trading reach against depth and building explicit transfer mechanisms — manager reinforcement, application projects and accountability, not contact hours; (3) builds a Kirkpatrick/Phillips measurement model spanning reaction, learning, behaviour and results, staking the at-risk fee on an attributable leading behavioural indicator rather than an operational outcome the programme cannot move alone in 9 months; and (4) pitches and defends the business case to a sceptical CEO and HR director, committing to an ROI grounded in a real attribution method. The math rewards a rigorous diagnosis, transfer-driven design within budget, level 3-4 measurement on an attributable metric, and an honest attribution-backed ROI — and punishes the five classic errors: accepting the sponsor's diagnosis, designing beyond budget, measuring only reaction and learning, loading contact hours with no transfer, and staking the fee on an unattributable outcome. Final KPIs track Diagnostic Rigour, Transfer Strength, Impact Credibility and whether the GBP 360,000 at-risk fee is secured against the GBP 1.8M budget cap.