The ambiguous acquisition
You receive contradictory due-diligence reports and must recommend proceed, renegotiate or walk away within forty minutes. The data deliberately triggers confirmation bias — the question is whether you notice it happening.
Executive training that changes how you think under pressure
Most leadership programmes hand you frameworks you already know. We put you inside live decision scenarios drawn from behavioural economics, cognitive science and real boardroom crises — then we debrief what your instincts actually did. Cohorts of twelve. Eight weeks. No filler.
Reserve your seat in the next cohort
847
Leaders trained since 2019
94%
Report improved decision speed
12
Participants per cohort
8 wk
Programme duration
Four phases, zero passive lectures
Each phase builds on the last. You cannot skip ahead, and you cannot coast on seniority. The programme is designed to surface the cognitive biases that quietly shape every decision you make.
Phase 1 — Diagnostic immersion
In the first two weeks, you face a battery of real-time simulations: resource-allocation crises, stakeholder conflicts, ambiguous data sets. We record every choice. A behavioural scientist maps your default decision patterns and identifies your personal blind spots — anchoring bias, sunk-cost fallacy, overconfidence calibration — so the rest of the programme targets what actually needs fixing.
Phase 2 — Cognitive reframing
Weeks three and four introduce structured debiasing techniques drawn from Kahneman, Tetlock and Klein. You practise pre-mortem analysis, red-team dissent protocols and probabilistic forecasting in pairs. Every session ends with a written reflection that your cohort peers critique — not your coach.
Phase 3 — Pressure testing
Weeks five and six ramp up the stakes. You lead simulated board meetings with incomplete information, hostile questioning and time constraints. We measure how well the reframing techniques survive stress. Most participants discover their defaults reassert under fatigue; the debrief sessions after each simulation are where the deepest learning happens.
Phase 4 — Transfer and accountability
The final two weeks bridge the gap between training and real work. You bring a live strategic decision from your own organisation and run it through the full protocol with your cohort acting as advisory board. You leave with a documented decision audit and a peer-accountability partner for the following six months.
What you will actually do in the room
These are not case studies you read. They are situations you navigate in real time while your cohort watches and your facilitator tracks every micro-decision.
The leadership vacuum
A CEO has just resigned. You chair an emergency board session with three directors who each want the role. Your job is to build consensus on an interim plan while managing ego, incomplete succession data and a ticking media clock.
The budget paradox
You must allocate a reduced capital budget across five divisions. Each division head presents compelling data — but the numbers have been seeded with framing effects. The scenario tests whether you anchor to the first pitch or evaluate independently.
The reputational crisis
A product failure has gone viral. You have ninety minutes to draft a public response, brief your legal team and decide whether to recall. The scenario forces trade-offs between speed, transparency and legal exposure.
The innovation bet
Two R&D proposals compete for a single funding slot. One is incremental and safe; the other is transformative but uncertain. You present your recommendation to a panel that will challenge every assumption.
The ethical dilemma
A profitable client relationship conflicts with your organisation's stated values. There is no clean answer. The scenario measures how you weigh stakeholder interests, articulate trade-offs and live with ambiguity.
Grounded in published research, not opinion
Every technique we teach traces back to peer-reviewed work. Here are four of the studies that inform our curriculum design.
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Pre-mortem analysis reduced overconfidence in strategic forecasts by 30% across 200 project teams in a controlled trial.
Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review, 85(9), 18–19. -
Superforecasters trained in probabilistic reasoning outperformed intelligence analysts with access to classified data by 30%.
Tetlock, P. E. & Gardner, D. (2015). Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. -
Red-team dissent protocols improved the quality of strategic decisions in military and corporate settings by forcing leaders to argue against their own preferred option.
Kahneman, D., Lovallo, D. & Sibony, O. (2011). Before you make that big decision. Harvard Business Review, 89(6). -
Deliberate practice with immediate feedback accelerates expert-level performance acquisition far beyond passive instruction or unstructured experience.
Ericsson, K. A. (2008). Deliberate practice and acquisition of expert performance. Academic Emergency Medicine, 15(11).
What people ask before they commit
The programme is built for C-suite executives, general managers and senior directors who already have significant leadership experience but recognise that their decision-making defaults may be limiting them. We do not accept participants below director level because the simulations require strategic authority context to be meaningful.
Expect roughly six hours per week: a three-hour live session (held in person or via secure video link), plus two to three hours of pre-reading, reflection writing and peer review. We deliberately keep the load manageable because our participants are running organisations at the same time.
Both. Our Sydney-based cohorts meet in person at our Fort Abbyhaven facility. We also run fully remote cohorts for leaders based interstate or overseas. The simulations, debrief protocols and peer interactions are identical in both formats — we invested heavily in our virtual facilitation infrastructure to ensure parity.
Pricing depends on whether you enrol as an individual or your organisation is sponsoring multiple seats. We share detailed pricing during the intake conversation because we want to understand your context first. There are no hidden fees — the quoted price covers all materials, simulations, facilitator time and six months of post-programme peer accountability support.
We administer a calibrated decision-quality assessment at the start and end of the programme, measuring anchoring susceptibility, probabilistic accuracy and speed-accuracy trade-off. Participants also complete a self-report on real-world decisions made during the eight weeks. We share aggregate outcome data in our annual impact report.
Start the intake conversation
Tell us about your role and what you hope to change. We will respond within two business days with next steps and cohort availability.
7686 Anderson Boulevard, Fort Abbyhaven, New South Wales 7756, Australia
