How to make culture your M&A secret weapon

Updated April 2025
More is at risk now than ever in the world of mergers and acquisitions. According to a 2024 report by Fortune, which analyzed over 40,000 M&A deals spanning 40 years, 70-75% of these transactions ultimately fail.
What makes most M&A integrations fall short of expectations? More often than not, the challenge is the people and culture. People are the way business objectives will be met, cost reductions will be achieved, and the promise of the new organization will be realized in the timeframe promised. Often, the assumption going in is that people will somehow go along to get along during an M&A because so much is at stake. The reality is much different.
When people can’t see themselves fitting into an integrated culture, they assume they can’t or won’t succeed. As a result, they leave and take their talent and knowledge with them. Or they passively resist integration and cling to their legacy ways of working and thinking. This leaves the organization scrambling to find new talent with the right expertise. They face friction in the system, slowing progress towards goals.
Let’s be realistic. There are millions of details, considerations, and decisions to make after the decision to acquire a new company. Like the transaction itself, those details can feel structural, policy and process focused. They are driven by operational synergies that have been promised to shareholders as part of the deal. It is not that M&A integrations do not focus on people and culture. They just leave the people and culture challenge until much until too late in the integration process when the business is already facing problems.
The three biggest people and culture missteps that derail M&A success
At a very basic level, the biggest people and culture-related M&A integration missteps fall into three buckets.
1. Over rotation on first impressions of synergies with the other company.
Humans have an amazing tendency to become so committed to an action that they don’t see problems or differences. In an integration, we see leaders move forward under the assumption that both companies have the same operational processes. Many leaders even assume that organizations use the same language and fail to look below the surface at the embedded mindsets driving behavior. It’s no wonder that clashes happen.
In our work with one global network infrastructure company knee-deep in the M&A process, both companies used the term “escalation” during decision-making. However, one company escalated decisions to manage risk. The other company escalated all decisions based on a certain level of historical criticality. The new, much larger post-integration company required faster decision making to keep up with shifting customer expectations. To get decision making right, it was critical for the organizations to address the disconnect on the meaning of “escalation” and its implication for the decision-making process. Otherwise, this difference in language would have become a major hindrance to executing at scale together.
2. The assumption that only one company has to change.
In an integration, leaders often assume that if their entity is the acquirer, they remain safe from massive change. That’s not true. An integration will always cause flux. Assuming the acquirer will not experience change is naïve. It causes significant lost time and money as managers have to learn to operate at new scale, lead new employees and teams, and integrate new assets and offerings into their operations.
3. The belief that a change in information will result in a change in behavior.
This is rarely the case in practice. Research shows that people engaged in the process of integration, such as providing input into the future direction and determining the “how” around processes and defining supporting actions, are much more likely to engage in and own the new direction.
Take action: three steps to make culture your M&A secret weapon
The solution to these concerns is to make sure that your people, culture, and strategy are clearly aligned and strategically considered from the beginning of the M&A process. Below are three steps to help organizations focus on their people so they can realize the successful promise of an impending integration.
- Pin down potential cultural derailers early
Culture is the deeply held organizational mindsets that shape organizational identity and how people in the organization do things. Up front, you need to prioritize the effort to uncover, analyze, and understand the mindsets in the two organizations. This enables your leaders to make conscious decisions about the best ways to achieve the company’s new integrated goals and serve customers. To do this, engage people at all levels of the organization to provide a rich and human picture of how the companies operate. Company culture is experienced differently by each level of the organization, function, and region. Be honest in your observations. One company is not all right and the other all wrong. And often, the analysis shows that one or both cultures is out of sync with industry trends, the speed at which customers need to work, and the aspirations of the current workforce. Collecting the data will allow you to identify and focus on the biggest cultural derailers and points of leverage first.
- Get practical in your language and approach
Culture seems amorphic, theoretical and a bit “kumbaya.” What we are really taking about is how organizational mindsets determine ways of working such as: how to navigate conflict, make decisions, escalate issues, respond to customers, and address and manage risk. The data on organizational mindsets will help you identify potential points of culture clash and proactive actions to redefine how best to work together across all of these elements. The key is to break this down to a level that makes it real for people. This requires leaders to think about the daily moments where these ways of working show up and then speak about them in clear and straightforward terms.
During the integration phase of one communications company merger, we identified a critical “way of working” moment that related to how they made decisions around products. At one company, the organization launched products as if they were hardware, and would never ship a product before it was ready. The other company approached product launches more like releasing software and were fine with sending routine updates or upgrades as they were released. Spotting these operationally critical differences early on allowed the newly formed entity to set a formal policy to cover these moments. This allowed them to hit the ground running together, rather than suffer through the friction and misfires of clashing in terms of how they got products to market.
- Allow people to let go of the past and own the future
On the surface, mergers are full of opportunity, growth, and excitement. But that does not mean that people can or will easily let go of the past. Without intentionally honoring and letting go of the past, new priorities are heaped on top of old ones, and new habits are built around the old ones. This doubles the human and organizational burden of change and leads to layers of dysfunction that hinder the new entity.
Instead, give people a chance to honor how the old ways of working that served them in the past and reflect on which ones may no longer serve them to achieve the future direction. There may also be ways of working from one or both organizations that people want to adopt or lean on more. This exercise helps align people on what they can stop doing. It also creates a way for them to prioritize a shorter, more focused list of what to do now. Research and experience show that people can be surprisingly resilient and much less resistant to change when they’re included and allowed to make their own conclusions and define how to turn their new reality into action. Once you have defined the newly integrated organization’s directional aspirations and biggest pain points, engage your teams in defining how they will work together in new ways. Resist the powerful temptation to tell them how to do so. Your teams typically have a better idea of how ways of working manifest than the executive team. With clear direction and ownership, your teams will take this new way of working to the next level of detail and make sure it gets off the ground.
Acquisitions are daunting no matter how synergistic the companies appear on paper. Even the most experienced leaders struggle with M&A. Executive teams are understandably consumed with meeting bottom-line revenue targets – it is how they are measured, after all. However, people and culture are what will make or break the merger’s success. Putting people’s needs and considerations at the front and center of your M&A integration strategy will set the stage for a faster, better, more satisfactory integration for all leaders, employees, and shareholders.
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You already know strategy matters. You’ve likely spent months—maybe years—crafting one that’s bold, clear, and built to win. But when progress stalls, the issue often isn’t the strategy itself—it’s whether the organization can move with it.
That’s where culture comes in.
The culture that once fueled your success may no longer be fit for what’s next. And even if things look fine on the surface, early signals might be telling a different story—signs your culture isn’t accelerating your strategy the way it used to.
Culture is what turns intent into impact. It’s not the values on the wall or the message at a town hall—it’s the unwritten rules that shape how people decide, collaborate, and lead. It’s how things really get done.
When those patterns align with your direction, momentum builds. When they don’t, even the best strategy struggles to stick.
→ Let’s chat about leveraging culture to manage change fatigue at your organization.
You see it in:
- The stories people tell about what gets rewarded
- The choices teams make under pressure
- The habits that show up when no one’s watching
And in the everyday:
- How decisions get made
- How people collaborate
- How accountability is managed
- How change is received
If your strategy has shifted but progress still feels stuck—or strained—it’s worth asking:
Is your culture still serving your business, or is it starting to slow you down?
A case in point
Two years ago, BTS partnered with a global organization that had just launched an ambitious growth strategy. Excitement was high—but results didn’t follow.
Leaders were frustrated by a lack of speed and ownership. Employees said they didn’t feel empowered. The word that kept surfacing? Bureaucracy.
That term became a catch-all for inefficiency, but no one could quite define it. So we helped them unpack what was really going on:
- Unclear decision rights
- Too many committees for too many decisions
- Outdated knowledge-sharing systems
- Manual processes slowing everything down
We visualized the findings in a “bureaucracy tree” to connect the dots. That clarity helped leaders prioritize where to focus first. And that’s when momentum returned.
The power of pivotal moments
The breakthrough didn’t start with a bold new initiative. It started with a shift in focus—from broad ideas to specific moments.
We worked with leaders to identify the everyday situations where culture is shaped and signaled: subtle, unscripted moments that reflect what’s truly expected and rewarded.
- A decision point with no obvious answer: do we act, or wait for perfection?
- A team member hesitates: do we jump in to solve, or create space for them to step up?
When leaders could name these moments, they could begin to shape them—making small, deliberate choices that sent a different signal. These weren’t one-time actions. They were repeatable patterns, practiced consistently.
And they’re just as available to you. Start by asking: where are the moments I tend to default to safety, silence, or control? And how could I begin to respond differently to shift the story?
Breaking old habits and building new ones
With these pivotal moments in mind, the leadership team reflected on their own patterns. How were they showing up? What were they reinforcing?
They focused on three shifts:
- Stop reinforcing slow, complex decision-making
- Start modeling clarity, ownership, and speed
- Shift systems that quietly rewarded caution over empowerment
These weren’t abstract goals. They were grounded in real behaviors:
- How many people are involved in a decision?
- Are roles and responsibilities clear?
- Are our tools helping—or slowing us down?
By focusing on what people could see, track, and practice, change became tangible. It gave people something to act on—and believe in.
Scaling change through experimentation
The organization didn’t treat culture change as a campaign. They treated it as a learning process.
Top leaders ran small, coordinated experiments—turning abstract values into visible behaviors.
In one experiment, leaders committed to returning authority to managers who had “delegated decisions up” to them. In another, they redefined decision rights to cut through ambiguity and accelerate action.
These weren’t pilots. They were deliberate repetitions of new behaviors, designed to build muscle memory across the organization.
The results:
- Decisions moved faster
- Long-stalled initiatives were shut down
- A new product feature launched in half the usual time
- Employees reported feeling more empowered and accountable
If you’re wondering what this could look like for your organization, start here: What’s one behavior you could test out—or let go of—for a week? What’s one decision you could delegate? One moment you could coach instead of solve?
That’s how momentum builds—quietly, visibly, and fast.
Four common patterns to surface
Now that you’ve seen how small cultural habits shape (or stall) strategy, the next step is to spot where those habits are hiding in your organization. Here are four patterns we often see when momentum is missing—along with what they may be signaling.
Element of Culture What It Shapes What It Might Look Like Today Why It Might Be Time to Rethink Decision making Speed, ownership, and accountability Teams slow down not because the path is unclear, but because they’re unsure who’s empowered to choose it. Decisions stall in ambiguity—or escalate unnecessarily. Legacy approval structures often reflect yesterday’s risks. Today’s pace requires alignment over consensus, and trust in judgment at every level. Meeting norms Focus, decision velocity, and participation Meetings are packed with updates, but few decisions get made. Real conversations happen in sidebars—after the meeting ends. When meetings become status dumps, they signal that the real work happens elsewhere. Reclaim meetings for collaboration and visible decisions to shift how teams show up—and move with more speed. Leadership modeling Credibility and cultural integrity Leaders talk about agility or empowerment—but in high-stakes moments, default to control, caution, or top-down decisions. Culture isn’t shaped by slides—it’s shaped by what leaders do when it counts. If words and actions diverge, people follow the behavior. Find misalignments and try a new tack. Feedback Learning, adaptability, and momentum Leaders see something misaligned—but let it go to avoid discomfort or protect relationships. Feedback is delayed, diluted, or disappears. Without feedback, small misalignments calcify. Cultures that learn fast don’t wait—they normalize feedback as a lever for shared growth.
Which one shows up most in your team? That’s your next pivotal moment.
Shining a flashlight on your invisible “monsters”
When it comes to culture, the hardest part is often what you can’t see—or don’t know how to name.
Think back to childhood. Most of us, at some point, were convinced there was a monster in the closet or under the bed. In the dark, a pile of clothes becomes something menacing. A shadow turns into something to fear.
But then the light comes on. You see clearly. The fear fades. What once felt huge and scary becomes harmless—even a little silly.
That’s what culture can feel like inside an organization. Bureaucracy. Resistance. Complexity. These forces seem big and hard to define. They slow us down and sap momentum. But more often than not, they’re just old habits and assumptions lurking in the dark.
When leaders learn to spot the subtle, pivotal moments that shape behavior, they turn the light on. What felt intangible becomes specific. What felt impossible becomes actionable.
You don’t need a total reinvention. You need clarity—a way to see what’s really happening and where to shift, simply and deliberately.
When to bring in reinforcement
Not every culture challenge needs an outside partner. But some moments call for reinforcement—especially when change needs to stick at scale.
At BTS, we help organizations turn invisible cultural friction into visible forward motion. Whether you’re shaping a new strategy, integrating after a merger, or building a leadership culture that unlocks ownership—we help leaders shift from insight to impact.
Here are a few signs it might be time to partner
- You’ve named the strategy—but execution keeps stalling.
- You see the issues—but can’t align on how to shift behaviors.
- Leaders are bought in intellectually, but behavior hasn’t changed.
- Teams say the right things—but culture feels stuck in old habits.
If you’re facing one of these moments, it’s not a failure—it’s a signal. The good news? You don’t have to tackle it alone.
Let’s talk about what it would take to move from insight to sustained culture change.

5 make-or-break moments that shape the success (or failure) of Mergers and Acquisitions
Analysts say 2025 will be the year that the multi-trillion-dollar Mergers and Acquisition floodgates will open once again.
For us at BTS, these key moments are an exciting opportunity to witness how strategy, culture and leadership play together. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) represent some of the highest-stakes decisions an organization can make. Analysts scrutinize billion-dollar deals, executives promise ambitious synergy targets, and employees at all levels must adapt to new realities that are often thrust upon them. The success of your integration doesn’t just depend on strategy—it hinges on the ability of thousands of individuals to embrace new teams, tools, structures, and ways of working.
The human side of integration is often underestimated, yet plays a crucial role in the success or failure of mergers and acquisitions.
Recent research shows that 70% of successful M&A deals involved a proactive approach to managing cultural differences.
Why? Beneath the surface, overlooked factors such as differing beliefs, cultural tensions, and a lack of real strategic alignment often derail even the best-laid plans. From years of guiding organizations through these transformations, we’ve identified five make-or-break moments that define whether an acquisition thrives—or falls short.
1. The “first impression” moment
When two companies come together, senior leaders often reduce first impressions to oversimplified assumptions: “They’re just like us” or “We share the same customer-first mentality.” While these statements may calm initial concerns, they often ignore deeper operational and cultural differences that can create friction later.
- An example: A communications company acquiring a company of similar size to expand their portfolio and reach. Both claimed to be “customer-centric,” but their definitions were fundamentally different. The organization being acquired prioritized the customer no matter the cost, while the acquiring company prioritized the customer within clear economic boundaries. This subtle but critical difference nearly derailed key decisions in customer crisis moments, where both organizations’ approaches clashed.
At BTS, we’ve seen success when organizations use a more thorough and objective culture diagnostic early in the M&A process to get ahead of possible differences like these, surfacing how work actually gets done, rather than providing a commentary on employee sentiment. Differences can then be worked through proactively before real customer value is on the line.
2. The “communicating the deal rationale” moment
Acquisitions are ripe with uncertainty, especially for employees of the acquired company, who often fear layoffs or cultural upheaval. Without clear communication of the reasons behind the merger, mistrust can take root, damaging morale and productivity.
- An example: An oil and gas company learned this the hard way during its acquisition of a smaller regional competitor. Despite leadership's intent to streamline and grow operations in the region, employees of the acquired company assumed the deal was purely to squeeze out cost and sell it to the highest bidder. Distrust spread quickly, undermining cooperation and progress.
- Another example: In contrast, a technology company that made a large acquisition took a radically transparent approach. Leaders engaged employees from both organizations early, co-creating a narrative that focused on shaping the future together and emphasizing shared innovation goals. By addressing concerns directly and collaboratively, they built buy-in and enthusiasm on both sides, setting the stage for a seamless transition.
3. The “bringing senior teams together” moment
Initial meetings between teams from merging companies are often fraught with tension. Often, the bias many leaders have towards action leads to a singular focus on tactical planning—hammering out integration checklists and deliverables—while overlooking the human dynamics in the room.
- An example: In one case, two food and beverage companies merging to take advantage of their complementary product portfolios approached their first meeting with a different focus. Instead of diving straight into strategy, the leadership teams spent the first day exploring cultural alignment, discussing their values and histories, and building personal connections.
This intentional shift paid dividends. As one CEO later remarked, “If we hadn’t started with the culture and leadership conversation, we never would have made so much progress on our strategy.” By fostering trust and understanding, the two teams created a foundation for productive collaboration and accelerated progress on their shared goals.
4. The “let’s activate new ways of working” moment
Senior leaders can align on a vision, but translating it into daily actions across thousands of employees is where integrations often stumble. Over-reliance on one-way communication—announcements and emails—leaves employees unclear on how to work together.
- An example: A biopharma company that acquired a tech firm to enhance patient outcomes was clear about the rationale for the acquisition, but did not spend enough time working through what this combined organization would look like in execution. Two years later, both organizations were still operating as two separate units, unable to deliver on their shared vision.
- Another example: In contrast, a global manufacturing company took a proactive approach during its acquisition. Leaders hosted cross-functional workshops, guiding employees through real-world collaboration scenarios. These sessions surfaced key operational gaps and helped teams align on practical ways to achieve their vision. As a result, integration accelerated, and the combined teams quickly launched a suite of new, co-developed products.
5. The “turning resistance into momentum” moment
As an integration progresses, some organizations try to quickly get to “business as usual”. Senior leaders, who typically have had more time to get ‘on the bus’ of the integration are often keen to move on from the integration. While this impulse is understandable, the challenge is that ceasing to pay attention to evolving dynamics and culture challenges can cause leaders to ignore small signals that can ultimately foreshadow bigger problems. Indeed, proactively seeking out and engaging with resistance can unlock new potential for growth.
- An example: Consider a software company that acquired a cloud-services provider to expand its portfolio. Early friction arose as teams struggled to reconcile their differing approaches to customer support. Instead of letting the tension fester, the leadership teams paused, brought the issues to the surface, and co-created a new customer engagement model.
By openly addressing challenges and aligning on shared practices, the companies not only resolved their differences but also built a stronger, unified approach. Without this intervention, the integration could have been frustrated by years of lingering inefficiencies and resentment.
Greater than the sum of parts: Achieving success beyond the merger
M&A deals are extraordinary opportunities to accelerate growth, redefine industries, and create lasting value. But the statistics don’t lie: up to 90% fail to meet expectations. The difference often comes down to overlooked intangibles—cultural alignment, trust, and the willingness to navigate tough conversations.
The organizations that succeed understand this. They don’t just manage checklists; they embrace the human elements of integration. They foster trust, build alignment, and co-create a shared future.
The real value of M&A lies in these make-or-break moments. When leaders approach integration with intentionality and openness, they unlock the potential for their organizations to be truly greater than the sum of their parts—and deliver on the promise of the deal.
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The landscape of leadership is evolving as newer generations challenge traditional hierarchies. Outdated practices, focused on a top-down power dynamic, have fostered an “us vs. them” mentality, stifling collaboration, slowing innovation, and hindering sustained growth.In response, Future Relevant Organizations are adopting "next practices" that recognize and celebrate contributions, influence, and impact of contributions at all levels of the organization. Central to this shift is the movement from “leading others” to “leading with others,” recognizing that leadership isn’t confined to those in senior positions.“Leading with others” encourages a more inclusive, collaborative approach by:
- Encouraging employees to lead and influence across boundaries.
- Inspiring shared purpose and accountability toward collective goals.
- Prioritizing well-being, fostering psychological safety, and enabling open idea-sharing.
- Viewing vulnerability as a strength, recognizing that no one has all the answers.
- Maintaining focus and thoughtful engagement amidst uncertainty.
A biopharma company with a historically top-down leadership structure offers a clear example of the transformative power of this shift. While the company had enjoyed impressive growth, it faced competitive and pricing pressures from disruptive innovation, regulatory challenges, and supply chain vulnerabilities, all of which called for a fresh approach to leadership. Innovation and expansion were crucial to sustaining success.Recognizing the need for change, the company embraced the idea that leadership and influence aren’t confined to those at the top. Here’s how this new approach reshaped their organization:
- Empowering all levels: Leadership became less about titles and more about fostering a culture where every employee felt valued and capable of contributing. Through well-crafted experiences, 5,000 employees enhanced their self-awareness, challenged established norms, and adopted a long-term perspective aimed at collective growth.
- Redefining leadership: Leadership shifted from micromanagement to empowering others to make meaningful contributions. Employees were given greater agency and ownership, leading to increased adaptability in a dynamic market.
- Building trust through vulnerability: The organization encouraged vulnerability, quickly building trust across teams in an evolving, loosely connected environment. This strengthened team dynamics and established a supportive community ready to face new challenges.
Next practices: Shared leadership responsibility
The shift toward “leading with others” is not simply a change in leadership style; it is a strategic imperative. By embracing diverse perspectives and treating leadership as a collective responsibility, organizations gain more valuable insights that drive better decision-making and innovation. Companies that adopt this approach are better prepared to adapt to change, seize new opportunities, and build a culture where everyone is engaged in shaping the future.
“Leading with”: A more inclusive path forward
Adopting a “leading with others” mindset requires more than just structural changes—it calls for a fundamental shift in how leadership is understood at all levels. Leaders must actively create environments where contributions from all employees are expected, not optional. This inclusive leadership approach fosters a deeper sense of ownership and accountability, empowering employees to align their actions with the organization’s long-term goals.As the business landscape continues to evolve, organizations that embrace this collective approach to leadership will be better positioned not only to navigate uncertainty but also to thrive in the future ensuring future relevance.
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This article was originally publish on Rotman Management
IN OUR CONSULTING WORK with teams at all levels—especially senior leadership—my colleagues and I have noticed teams grappling with an insidious challenge: a lack of effective prioritization. When everything is labeled a priority, nothing truly is. Employees feel crushed under the weight of competing demands and the relentless urgency to deliver on multiple fronts. Requests for prioritization stem from both a lack of focused direction and the challenge of efficiently fulfilling an overwhelming volume of work. Over time, this creates a toxic cycle of burnout, inefficiency and dissatisfaction.
The instinctive response to this issue is to streamline, reduce the number of initiatives, and focus. While this is a step in the right direction, it doesn’t fully address the problem. Prioritization isn’t just about whittling down a to-do list or ranking activities by importance and urgency on an Eisenhower Decision Matrix; it also requires reshaping how we approach work more productively.
In our work, we have found that three critical factors lie at the heart of solving prioritization challenges: tasks, tracking and trust. Addressing these dimensions holistically can start to address the root causes of feeling overwhelmed and lay the foundation for sustainable productivity. Let’s take a closer look at each.

You’re buckling in for an overseas flight in a brand-new Boeing 777. The pilot comes on the PA: “Ah, ladies and gentlemen, our flight time today will be six and a half hours at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet. And I should mention that this is the first time I have ever flown a 777. Wish me luck.”
Before setting foot in the real world, pilots, military personnel and disaster response teams use intense simulations to learn how to respond to high-intensity challenges.Why should we place corporate leaders and their teams in situations without first giving them a chance to try things out? The risks are huge — new strategy investments can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. BTS offers a better way to turn strategy into action: customized business simulations.
‘Now I Know What it’s Like to be CEO’
A customized business simulation of your enterprise, business unit or process, using real-world competitive dynamics, places leaders in a context where they step out of their normal day-to-day roles and gain exposure to the big picture. Participants make decisions in a risk-free environment, allowing them to experience critical interdependencies, execution best practices and the levers they can use to optimize their company’s key performance indicators. It takes the concept of a strategy and makes it personal, giving each individual the chance to see the direct impacts of their actions and the role they play in strategy execution.
Leading corporations are increasingly turning to business simulations to help build strategic alignment and execution capability when faced with the following business challenges:
- Key performance objective and new strategy implementation.
- Accelerating strategy execution and innovation.
- Improving business acumen and financial decision making.
- Transforming sales programs into business results accelerators.
- Leadership development focused on front-line execution.
- Implementing culture change as tied to strategy alignment.
- Modeling complex value chains for collaborative cost elimination.
- Merger integration.
Within minutes of being placed in a business simulation, users are grappling with issues and decisions that they must make — now. A year gets compressed into a day or less. Competition among teams spurs engagement, invention and discovery.
The Business Simulation Continuum: Customize to Fit Your Needs
Simulations have a broad range of applications, from building deep strategic alignment to developing execution capability. The more customized the simulation, the more experience participants can bring back to the job in execution and results. Think about it: why design a learning experience around generic competency models or broad definitions of success when the point is to improve within your business context? When you instead simulate what “great” looks like for your organization, you exponentially increase the efficacy of your program.
10 Elements of Highly Effective Business Simulations
With 30 years of experience building and implementing highly customized simulations for Fortune 500 companies, BTS has developed the 10 critical elements of an effective business simulation:
- Highly realistic with points of realism targeted to drive experiential learning.
- Dynamically competitive with decisions and results impacted by peers’ decisions in an intense, yet fun, environment.
- Illustrative, not prescriptive or deterministic, with a focus on new ways of thinking.
- Catalyzes discussion of critical issues with learning coming from discussion within teams and among individuals.
- Business-relevant feedback, a mechanism to relate the simulation experience directly back to the company’s business and key strategic priorities.
- Delivered with excellence : High levels of quality and inclusion of such design elements as group discussion, humor, coaching and competition that make the experience highly interactive, intriguing, emotional, fun, and satisfying.
- User driven: Progress through the business simulation experience is controlled by participants and accommodates a variety of learning and work styles.
- Designed for a specific target audience, level and business need.
- Outcome focused , so that changes in mindset lead to concrete actions.
- Enables and builds community: Interpersonal networks are created and extended through chat rooms, threaded discussions and issue-focused e-mail groups; participants support and share with peers.
Better Results, Faster
Well-designed business simulations are proven to significantly accelerate the time to value of corporate initiatives. A new strategy can be delivered to a global workforce and execution capability can be developed quickly, consistently and cost-effectively. It’s made personal, so that back on the job, participants own the new strategy and share their enthusiasm and commitment. This in turn yields tangible results; according to a research report conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by BTS, titled “Mindsets: Gaining Buy-In to Strategy,” the majority of firms struggle to achieve buy-in to strategy, but those that personalize strategy throughout their organization significantly outperform their peers in terms of profitability, revenue growth and market share.
Business Simulations: Even More Powerful in Combination
Comprehensive deployment of business simulation and experiential learning programs combines live and online experiences. The deepest alignment, mindset shift and capability building takes place over time through a series of well-designed activities. Maximize impact by linking engagement and skill building to organizational objectives and by involving leadership throughout the process.
Putting Business Simulations to Work
Simulations drive strategic alignment, sales force transformation, and business acumen, financial acumen and leadership development, among other areas. A successful experiential learning program cements strategic alignment and builds execution capability across the entire organization, turning strategy into action. Results can be measured in team effectiveness, company alignment, revenue growth and share price.
Learn more about business simulations
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I recently read an HBR article discussing why the traditional approach to leadership development doesn’t always work.
It stated that instead of traditional methods, the best way to identify, grow and retain leaders to meet today’s demands is to “Let them innovate, let them improvise and let them actually lead.”
Over the past 30 years, as we’ve partnered with clients facing a vast range of challenges, we’ve seen the truth behind this – that people learn best by actually doing. That’s why business simulations are such a powerful tool: they allow people to do and lead within a risk-free environment, and condense years of on-the-job learning experience into a few days, or even hours.
We also know that learning is not just a “one and done” situation – it is a continuous experience. In many cases, a learning journey, which blends a variety of learning methodologies and tools over time, is the most powerful means of shifting mindsets, building capabilities and driving sustained, effective results.What a learning journey looks like depends entirely on the context of your organization. What challenges are you addressing? What results are you driving for? What does great leadership look like for your organization?

To bring this to life, imagine the following approach to a blended learning journey for aligning and developing leaders – in this scenario, within a financial services firm: Financial technology has “transformed the way money is managed. It affects almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management. Startups are re-imagining financial services processes, while incumbent financial services firms are following suit with new products of their own.”
For a leading financial services company, this disruption has led to a massive technology transformation. With tens of thousands of employees in the current technology and operations group, the company will be making massive reductions to headcount over the next five years as a result of automation, robotics and other technology advances.
This personnel reduction and increased use of technology is both a massive shift for the business as well as a huge change in the scope of responsibility that the remaining leaders are being asked to take on moving forward. As such, the CEO of the business unit recognizes the need to align 175 senior leaders in the unit to the strategy and the future direction of the business, and give them the capabilities that they need to effectively execute moving forward.
To achieve these goals, BTS would build an innovative design for this initiative: a six-month blended experience, incorporating in-person events, individual and cohort-based coaching sessions, virtual assessments and more. Throughout the journey, data would be captured and analyzed to provide top leadership with information about the participants’ progress – and skill gaps – on both an individual and cohort level, thus setting up future development initiatives for optimal success.
The journey would begin with a two-day live conference event for the 175 person target audience, incorporating leader-led presentations about the strategy. The event would not just be talking heads and PowerPoint slides, but rather would leverage the BTS Pulse digital event technology to increase engagement and create a two-way, interactive dialogue that captures the participants’ ideas and suggestions. Participants also would use the technology to experience a moments-based leadership simulation that develops critical communications, innovation and change leadership capabilities, among other skills.
romAfter the event, participants would return to the job to apply their new learnings. On the job, each participant would continue their journey with four one-on-one performance coaching sessions, in addition to a series of peer coaching sessions shared with four to five colleagues. They also would use 60-90 minute virtual Practice with an Expert sessions to develop specific skill areas in short learning bursts, and then practice those skills with a live virtual coach. Throughout the journey, participants would access online, self-paced modules that contain “go-do activities” to reinforce and encourage application of the innovation leadership and other skills learned during the program.
As a capstone, six months after the journey has begun, every participant would go through a live, virtual assessment conducted via the BTS Pulse platform. In three to four hours, these virtual assessments allow live assessors to evaluate each leader’s learnings from the overall journey and identify any remaining skill gaps. The individual and cohort assessment data would then lead to and govern the design of future learning interventions that would continue to ensure the leaders are capable of implementing the strategy.
As you can see, this journey design leverages a range of tools and learning methodologies to create a holistic, impactful solution. It’s not just a standalone event – each step of the journey ties into the one before, and the data gathered throughout can be used well into the future in order to shape the next initiative .
Great journeys or experiences like this can take many forms. In addition to live classroom and virtual experiences, there is an ecosystem of activities, such as performance coaching, peer coaching, practice with an expert, go-dos, self-paced learning modules, and more, that truly engage leaders and ensure that the learnings are being reinforced, built upon, practiced and implemented back on the job. We find that these types of experience rarely look the same for every client. There are many factors that determine which configuration and progression will make the most sense. There is one common theme that we have found throughout these highly contextual experiences, however – that the participant feedback is outstanding and the business impact is profound.
