How to make culture your M&A secret weapon

Alex Amsden explores how organizations can focus on their people and realize the successful promise of a merger and acquisitions integration.
November 9, 2022
5
min read
Subscribe to the BTS newsletter
Follow us on Linkedin
Follow BTS on Linkedin
Authors
No items found.
Share

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.

  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.

Get the report
Download the report

Related content

Blog Posts
May 20, 2025
5
min read
Demystifying culture change to unleash your momentum in the market
Is culture accelerating your strategy—or slowing it down? Learn how leaders turn invisible habits into momentum in this guide to culture change.

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:

  1. Stop reinforcing slow, complex decision-making
  2. Start modeling clarity, ownership, and speed
  3. 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.

Blog Posts
December 17, 2024
5
min read
5 make-or-break moments in Mergers and Acquisitions
Explore the 5 critical moments that make or break Mergers and Acquisitions to overcome cultural and leadership challenges for success.

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.

Blog Posts
October 16, 2024
5
min read
Leading with others: Embracing a new era of leadership
Explore how 'leading with others' redefines leadership as a collective responsibility, fostering collaboration, innovation, and resilience.

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.

Related content

Insights
April 20, 2026
5
min read
The myth of more: why coaching needs structure
This blog explores why intentional design, built on consistency, continuity, and completion, is what turns scalable coaching into lasting leadership development.

Organizations have long wanted to scale coaching, but have been limited by cost and capacity. With AI, that's beginning to change —new platforms are making coaching more accessible, flexible, and available on demand, extending support beyond a select group of leaders to entire populations.

For talent leaders, this shift creates both opportunity and complexity. With greater reach comes a new set of trade-offs: how to balance access with depth, flexibility with accountability, and efficiency with meaningful development.

The limits of unlimited (coaching)

Unlimited coaching sounds like the obvious answer. Remove the barriers, give everyone access, let people engage on their own terms. What's not to like?

In practice, quite a bit.

When coaching has no defined structure or cadence, engagement tends to become episodic - people show up when something feels urgent and step back when it doesn't. The coaching relationship never quite deepens. Conversations cover ground but don't build on it. And the development that was supposed to happen keeps getting pushed to the next session, and the next.

Three patterns emerge:

  1.  Sporadic engagement over sustained development. Without a rhythm to anchor the work, coaching becomes reactive. Clients bring whatever is most pressing that week rather than working toward something larger. Progress happens in bursts, if at all.
  2. Insights that don't compound. Great coaching reveals patterns over time - things a client can't see in one session but can't unsee after several. Without continuity, and without a consistent coaching relationship to hold the thread, each conversation starts close to zero.
  3. Outcomes that are hard to measure. No milestones. No defined endpoint. No clear way for the organization, or the client, to know whether it's working. Activity fills the gap where impact should be.

The result is a model that's easy to scale and hard to defend. Which is exactly the problem talent leaders are navigating right now.

The relationship is the lever

Decades of research into what makes coaching work keeps arriving at the same answer: it's the relationship. Not the platform, not the methodology. The relationship.

When a coach and client build trust over time — developing shared language, returning to the same themes with increasing depth — something shifts. Conversations get more honest. Insights stick. The client starts doing the work between sessions, not just during them. That's when coaching becomes genuinely transformative, and it can't be rushed or replicated in a one-off session.

The ICF and EMCC are clear on this: continuity is what dives outcomes. The coaching engagements that produce lasting change are the ones where each session builds on the last, not the ones that simply offer more access.

Three principles make that possible: Consistency, Continuity, and Completion.

1. Consistency

The foundation everything else is built on.

The temptation when designing a coaching program is to treat flexibility as a feature — let people book when they want, swap coaches freely, engage on their own schedule. But frequent coach changes reset the clock. Every new coach has to earn trust, learn context, and find their footing with the client. That's time spent getting started, not getting somewhere.

A stable coaching relationship works differently:

  • The coach starts to see around corners — patterns the client can't see themselves
  • The client stops performing and starts being honest
  • The relationship itself becomes a source of accountability, not just the sessions

Consistency doesn't constrain the work. It's what makes the deeper work possible.

2. Continuity

What turns a series of sessions into genuine development.

Without continuity, coaching tends to be additive at best- each session offers something useful, but nothing compounds. With it, the work builds on itself in ways that can't happen in isolated conversations.

What continuity makes possible

  • A limiting belief surfaced in session three becomes a thread that runs through the rest of the engagement
  • A behavioral pattern the client couldn't see at the start becomes impossible to ignore by the end
  • Space opens up for the harder work - the kind that requires sitting with discomfort across multiple sessions, not resolving it quickly and moving on

That slower, deeper work is where lasting change actually happens. It doesn't come from more sessions. It comes from the right sessions, in the right order, with the same person.

3. Completion

The most underrated principle of the three.

In a world of unlimited access, there's no finish line, and without one, it's surprisingly hard to know what you're working toward, or whether you've gotten there. A defined endpoint changes the entire shape of an engagement.

A clear endpoint

Creates urgency and focuses every session on what matters most

  • Shifts the question from "what should we talk about this week?" to "what do we need to accomplish before we're done?"
  • Gives both coach and client a body of work to look back on, not just a log of conversations

For talent leaders, this is also what makes coaching legible as an investment. Sessions logged is an activity metric. A cohort of leaders who completed a structured engagement and can articulate what changed, that's a result.

Don't just scale it, design it (here’s how) 

The opportunity in front of talent leaders right now is significant. The organizations that will get the most from this moment are the ones that treat coaching design as seriously as coaching delivery.

Practical design decisions

  • Define the arc before you launch: set the number of sessions, the cadence, and the goals upfront, not after people have already started booking
  • Protect the coaching relationship: Make coach switching the exception, not the default, and design your program to discourage unnecessary re-matches
  • Build in milestones: create structured check-ins at the midpoint and end of each engagement so progress is visible to both the coach and the organization
  • Separate on-demand support from developmental coaching: Use AI-enabled tools for in-the-moment guidance, and reserve structured engagements for the deeper work
  • Measure completion, not just activation: Track how many people finish an engagement, not just how many start one

Questions to pressure-test your design

  • Does every participant know what they're working toward before their first session?
  • Can your coaches see enough context about a client's journey to pick up where they left off?
  • Would you be able to show, at the end of a cohort, what changed, and for whom?

Access opened the door. Intention is what makes it worth walking through.

Insights
April 29, 2026
5
min read
Why we didn't wait: A CEO's field notes from two years of applied AI
AI value is compounding, not linear. BTS CEO Jessica Skon shares how experimentation fuels flywheels, and how breakthrough “AI diamonds” emerge and scale.

Three decisions that changed everything.

Two years ago, we made three deliberate decisions about how BTS would move with Applied AI.

We would become our own Customer Zero.

While others were building strategies, defining governance, and waiting for clarity, we made a different call: we decided not to wait. Not because the stakes were low, but because they were high. And because in a space evolving this quickly, clarity wouldn’t come from planning. It would come from movement.

So instead of starting with a roadmap, we started with three principles:

  1. No top-down mandate. The people closest to the work figure it out.
  2. IT must evolve from gatekeeper to enabler - leading AI trials and fast experimentation.
  3. Don’t wait for certainty.

We set the organization in motion, and once we did, things started to move quickly.

What if we started this company today?

Waiting for certainty is itself a choice, and it’s costing companies more than they realize.

We started where we knew the work best: our simulations. No perfect plan, just teams moving, trying, and iterating.

Simulations are core to who we are at BTS. Companies that simulate don’t just make better decisions; they execute faster and build more engaged cultures.

The team asked a simple question:

"What if we were to start our company today?”

That question started the flywheel.

They asked IT for a few licenses and started building - vibe-coding, writing agents, and testing tools - moving at a pace that would make any VC-backed start-up smile.

The messy middle.

At first, the team was underwhelmed.

The early reports were blunt:

“Not good with math.”

“Poor graph capabilities.”

The team wasn't discouraged. They kept tinkering - jumping between tools, staying on top of new releases, experimenting constantly.

This was a small team, across 24 countries, building off each other’s ideas. Laughing at crazy creations. Breaking things. Iterating in a sandbox alongside real clientwork.

Each cycle produced something:

  • A sharper scenario
  • A faster build
  • A more powerful simulation

The flywheel was turning, and it was generating something real.

When the diamond appeared.

Then something shifted.

The team moved into client trials across five countries. They figured out ISO compliance and built the architecture to handle the complexity, the “spaghetti.”

And what emerged wasn’t incremental:

  • What used to take weeks started happening in days.
  • Limited creativity started to feel like unlimited innovation.
  • Clients became self-serving.
  • Agentic simulations were built directly into client systems for real-time updates and preparation.

This was our first AI diamond - a high-impact outcome created by many cycles of experimentation compounding into real value.

It only appeared because we kept the flywheel turning, each cycle increasing the odds that something would break through.

95% adoption in eight weeks.

Then it was time to take the AI diamond global.

BTS is decentralized and highly entrepreneurial. We operate across 24 countries and 38 offices, where local teams have real autonomy.

And historically? That’s meant a low appetite for adopting something built somewhere else and pushed from the center.

So we expected resistance.

Instead, something surprising happened.

In the first eight weeks, we saw 95% adoption across our global footprint.

It felt completely different from our own digital initiatives, ERP implementations, top-down rollouts of the past.

This moved on its own. Why? 

We realized it didn’t start with a framework or a model, it started with a feeling.

The feeling of being at the leading edge of one’s craft and profession.

  • Joy
  • Excitement
  • Pride

As we watched this play out across teams it stopped feeling like isolated wins.

There was a pattern to it. A repeatable, organic, innovation motion.

And the flywheel didn’t stop with simulations.

It spread across finance, sales enablement, legal, operations, and client delivery. Some cycles led to small improvements, and others revealed new diamonds.

Not becausewe planned for them, but because we built the conditions for people to find them.

The question I'd ask any CEO right now: Is your flywheel turning, or are you still waiting for the perfect plan?

In part 2, I’ll share the key success factors behind the breakthrough, and what we’re now seeing across more than 120 global clients.

Insights
March 17, 2026
5
min read
Conversazioni incentrate sul cliente abilitate dall’IA
Perché la maggior parte delle riunioni di vendita non riesce a creare valore e come costruire intenzionalmente urgenza, fiducia e slancio in ogni conversazione.

La maggior parte delle riunioni di vendita non fallisce.
Semplicemente non porta a una decisione.

Ed è lì che si perde valore.

I clienti di oggi sono più informati, più selettivi e hanno meno tempo.
Non hanno bisogno di altre presentazioni di prodotto.

Hanno bisogno di conversazioni che li aiutino a stabilire le priorità, decidere e andare avanti.

Eppure, il 58% delle riunioni di vendita non riesce a creare valore reale.
Non perché i venditori manchino di capacità, ma perché le conversazioni non sono progettate per far avanzare le decisioni.

“I clienti non agiscono su ogni esigenza che riconoscono.
Agiscono quando qualcosa diventa una priorità.”

In questo breve executive brief scoprirai:

  • Perché la maggior parte delle conversazioni informa… ma non porta all’azione
  • Cosa spinge davvero i clienti a stabilire priorità e muoversi
  • Come creare urgenza senza compromettere la fiducia
  • Il passaggio dal presentare soluzioni al facilitare decisioni
  • Cosa distingue le conversazioni che si bloccano da quelle che accelerano il progresso

Se i tuoi team stanno affrontando trattative bloccate, decisioni ritardate o un pipeline lento, questo brief ti aiuterà a capire il perché e cosa fare in modo diverso.

Scarica l’executive brief e scopri come progettare conversazioni che portano davvero a decisioni.