The Program Architect — Northline Exec-Ed

A four-round, advanced executive-education simulation set inside Northline Executive Education, the custom-programs arm of a major Toronto business school (≈40 engagements/year, CAD 14M revenue at a 22% contribution margin, a slipping 61% renewal rate, and a client survey that found nearly half of buyers cannot name what their last program achieved). On 8 June 2026 a strategic client, Cascadia Energy (a CAD 4.2B utility mid-restructuring), issues a brief: leadership development for ~150 mid-level managers, a fixed CAD 750,000 budget (CAD 5,000/participant, no overage), launch this quarter (≈90 days), and a CEO who wants to see results. Cascadia's last Northline program was a generic three-day course the CHRO now calls “lovely, and we have no idea what it did for us.” A boutique competitor has quoted the same scope at CAD 540,000. Playing the newly appointed Program Director, you (1) reframe the vague content request into a real business need — surfacing that the restructuring is stalling because mid-level managers won't decide in the new structure — and pick the metric the CEO would accept as proof; (2) choose a delivery format mix (in-person cohorts, blended, cohort-online, simulation-led, action-learning, manager-as-coach) that fits CAD 5,000/participant AND launches in 90 days, trading richness against scale, speed and cost; (3) build a Kirkpatrick measurement architecture with a pre-program baseline, committing to behaviour (Level 3) and business-results (Level 4) metrics rather than a Level-1 happy sheet, and defending the headline metric's attributability; and (4) pitch the engagement to a facilitator-played CEO and CHRO, holding Northline's CAD 750,000 price over the boutique's CAD 540,000 on demonstrable outcomes — not price. The math rewards diagnosis-before-design, a feasible format that hits budget and deadline, a baselined behaviour-and-business measurement plan, an honestly-attributed headline KPI, and a confident outcomes-based defence of the premium — and punishes the five classic errors: re-selling last year's course, designing a bespoke build that can't launch in 90 days, blowing the CAD 5,000/participant budget, measuring only satisfaction/completion, and discounting to match the boutique. Final KPIs track Engagement Margin (CAD), the Impact Case (0–100), Feasibility (0–100), and Renewal Confidence (0–100).