Cultivating an Agile Culture in a Virtual Environment
How will you maintain your Agile culture while everyone is remote and distributed?
Imagine a flashback in your digital life – the year is 2001. Netflix is still mailing DVDs, Google is just getting started, and Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook don’t exist. Only 50% of people in the United States have cell phones, and the iPhone is still six years away.
At this time, 17 software developers met in Snowbird, Utah, to create what they called the Agile Manifesto, a set of values and principles outlining how organizations and teams can better work together to deliver business solutions. Since its advent, the Agile Manifesto’s principles have revolutionized the way people work and collaborate.One such principle is co-location. While the benefits of teams working in the same location are numerous, from developing trust, to learning from “osmosis” (by hearing colleagues collaborating), to seeing shared progress, 2020 has forced leaders to revisit how to achieve these benefits without actually being in person.The good news is that much has changed since the Manifesto was written.
Advancements in technology have created a wide array of opportunities for leaders to guide their teams to be Agile in a virtual environment.
How to Enable Virtual Co-Located Teams
The first value of the Agile Manifesto states “Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools.” However, remote Agile teams need both effective technology and tools to emulate a co-located experience. Fortunately, there are a number of options available today that are free or low cost. As a leader, it is important to ensure that your team has access to core enabling tools that facilitate work management, brainstorming, and ideation.It’s likely your team interactions in a virtual environment are going to need some enhancements, particularly during this extended time of remote work. Here is what you should focus on first:
Create Your Agile Working Agreements
As teams shift to remote work, team members and companies will need to reconsider many of their working agreements. Team members will need to discuss how they want to engage using technology, such as expectations about responsiveness to messages and whether or not to always use video during video conferences.This might mean considering whether companies provide budget for high-speed internet, efficient and ergonomically appropriate workspaces, and how to support employee childcare needs. For employees, it will likely be necessary to create some working agreements in your household on how to manage noise levels, interruptions, take breaks, and the frequency of your visits to the pantry.Companies should also be reimagining their employee perks. Onsite gyms can become memberships to Peloton or Steezy, instead of onsite cafeterias, DoorDash or UberEats can offer alternatives. Companies can also start tracking the positive environmental impact of not having employees drive to work.
Are We Having Fun Yet?
Agile also emphasizes creating a work environment that includes having fun as a way to keep teams engaged. Ice cream retrospectives, jigsaw puzzle areas, and plushy talking sticks were signature features of Silicon Valley’s Agile teams, but in today’s environment, how do you insert fun into a virtual team setting?Try using easy to learn, team-oriented games accessible from phones, tablets, and computers such as one from Jackbox.tv. Another way to increase social interaction would be through a virtual pot luck with the team and encourage everyone to share what dish the prepared for the party. Another idea is a multi-player jigsaw game or creating a Guild in an online game like World of Warcraft. You can even invite a llama to a team meeting through Goat-to-Meeting and support a community farm. Encourage the team to offer their own ideas too.
Three Moves You Can Make Tomorrow
Agile can and will work in a virtually distributed environment. Here are three steps you can take to shift your team in this direction:
- Create your Agile technology stack: Check in with your team and make sure they have all the necessary tools to effectively work remotely. This means making sure your people not only have the right technology, but are also set up from an ergonomic perspective. Investing in keyboards, chairs, and lighting can create big returns in productivity for your people.
- Enable your team’s Working Agreements: Set aside time to create Working Agreements within the team on how you will engage with each other and technology. Be sure to set expectations on what you will be doing when and how frequently you will be doing it. Then, take these agreements and lead the charge on living these values.
- Lastly and most importantly don’t forget the fun! Invest in culture initiatives that make a difference for your people – whether it’s home exercise, meal delivery, or facilitated coworker bonding, ensure your culture remains intact and strong as you shift away from face-to-face.
The shift to remote working has already occurred in most organizations. But maintaining an Agile way of working while physically separated is a new challenge that organizations must face. Through the proper planning, communication, and working agreements, your organization can get ahead of the curve by maintaining your Agile way of working, even while virtual.
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From top-down to judgment all around: The AI imperative for organizations
Each business revolution has reshaped not only how businesses operate, but how they organize themselves and empower their people. From the industrial age to the information era, and now into the age of artificial intelligence, technology has always brought with it a reconfiguration of authority, capability, and judgment.
In the 19th century, industrialization centralized work and knowledge. The factory system required hierarchical structures where strategy, information, and decision-making were concentrated at the top. Managers at the apex made tradeoffs for the greater good of the enterprise because they were the only ones with access to the full picture.
Then came the information economy. With it came the distribution of information and a need for more agile, team-based structures. Cross-functional collaboration and customer proximity became competitive necessities. Organizations flattened, experimented with matrix models, and pushed decision-making closer to where problems were being solved. What had once been the purview of a select few, judgment, strategic tradeoffs, and insight became expected competencies for managers and team leads across the enterprise.
Now, AI is changing the game again. But this time, it’s not just about access to data. It’s about access to intelligence.
Generative AI democratizes access not only to information, but to intelligent output. That shifts the burden for humans from producing insights to evaluating them. Judgment, which was long the domain of a few executives, must now become a baseline competency for the many across the organization.
But here’s the paradox: while AI extends our capacity for intelligence, discernment, the human ability to weigh context, values, and consequence, is still best left in the hands of human leaders. As organizations begin to automate early-career work, they may inadvertently erase the very pathways and opportunities by which judgment was built.
Why judgment matters more than ever
Deloitte’s 2023 Human Capital Trends survey found that 85% of leaders believe independent decision-making is more important than ever, but only 26% say they’re ready to support it. That shortfall threatens to neutralize the very productivity gains AI promises.
If employees can’t question, challenge, or contextualize AI’s output, then intelligent tools become dangerous shortcuts. The organization stalls, not from a lack of answers, but from a lack of sense-making.
What organizations must do
To stay competitive, organizations must shift from simply adopting AI to designing AI-aware ways of working:
- Build new learning paths for judgment development. As AI replaces easily systematized tasks, companies must replace lost learning experiences with mentorship, simulations, and intentional development planning.
- Design workflows that require human input. Treat AI as a co-pilot, not an autopilot. Embed review checkpoints and tradeoff discussions. Just as innovation processes have stage gates, so should AI analyses.
- Make judgment measurable. Assess and develop decision-making under ambiguity from entry-level roles onward. Research shows the best learning strategy for this is high-fidelity simulations.
- Start earlier. Leadership development must begin far earlier in career paths, because judgment, not just knowledge, is the new differentiator.
What’s emerging is not just a flatter hierarchy, but a more distributed sense of judgment responsibility. To thrive, organizations must prepare their people not to outthink AI, but to out-judge it.
BTS acquires Nexo to strengthen its position in Brazil and Latin America
P R E S S R E L E A S E
Stockholm, May 5, 2025
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN – BTS Group AB (publ), a leading global consultancy specializing in strategy execution, change, and people development, has agreed to acquire Nexo Pesquisa e Consultoria Ltda., Nexo, a boutique consulting firm headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil.
Nexo has been growing continuously since it was founded in 2017. With revenues of approximately 12 million Brazilian Reales (approx. 2.1 million USD) in 2024, and a highly capable team of 21 members, Nexo has built a strong reputation for delivering transformative projects in strategy, innovation, leadership, and culture.
Nexo collaborates with a great portfolio of clients across sectors such as financial services, consumer goods, and technology, assisting both local and global companies in navigating uncertainty, unlocking creativity, and activating strategy through people. Their work encompasses culture transformation, leadership development, employer value proposition, innovation culture, and vision alignment – supported by proprietary methodologies and frameworks.
BTS currently operates in Brazil servicing both local and multinational clients with a team of 13 employees. By acquiring Nexo, BTS not only increases the Group’s footprint in Brazil but also adds significant capabilities in culture and transformation services. Nexo’s client base has limited overlap with BTS, creating strong growth potential and synergy opportunities.
“Nexo is known for helping leaders and organizations tackle some of the most complex, human-centered challenges with creativity, empathy, and strategic clarity and the Nexo team is loved by their clients,” says Philios Andreou, Deputy CEO of BTS Group and President of the Other Markets Unit. “Their products and services complement and elevate our existing offerings, especially in culture transformation, and we are thrilled to welcome the Nexo team to BTS.”
“We’re excited to join BTS. We’ve long admired BTS’s approach and unique portfolio to support large organizations and leaders in connecting strategy with culture across the organization,” says Andreas Auerbach, co founder of Nexo. “Becoming part of BTS, allows us to scale our impact and bring more value to our clients while staying true to our values and culture,” adds Mariana Lage Andrade, co-founder of Nexo.
Upon completion of the transaction, Nexo’s business and organization will merge with BTS Brazil. Nexo’s founders will assume senior management roles in the joint operation.
The acquisition includes a limited initial cash consideration. Additional purchase price considerations will be paid between 2026 and 2028, provided Nexo meets specific performance targets. A limited portion of any such additional purchase price considerations will be paid in newly issued BTS shares. The transaction is effective immediately.
BTS’s acquisition strategy continues to focus on broadening our service portfolio, expanding our geographic reach, and enhancing our capabilities to support future organic growth in a fragmented market.
For more information, please contact:
Philios Andreou
Deputy CEO
BTS Group AB
philios.andreou@bts.com
Michael Wallin
Head of investor relations
BTS Group AB
michael.wallin@bts.com
+46-8-587 070 02
+46-708-78 80 19
High-performing teaming
Work today is too complex for individuals to succeed in isolation. Almost every critical decision, innovation, or transformation depends on teams working effectively together. Leaders rely on their teams to deliver results. Teams, in turn, rely on their leaders to create the conditions where performance is possible. This exchange, what leaders need from their teams, and what teams need from their leaders, sits at the heart of what we call teaming.
When teaming is strong, leaders get what they need from their teams [creativity, resilience, execution] and teams get what they need from leaders [direction, support, and the conditions to thrive]. It’s how strategy becomes action, how uncertainty becomes opportunity, and how businesses stay competitive in a fast-changing world.