Resilience: The leadership antidote for our current crisis
On Friday March 20, the DJIA closed at 19,174. That was down more than 35% from its peak in February. For a point of reference, this is about the same decline that we experienced in all of 2008, in just one month. The impact has been equally large and dramatic in just about every aspect of how we live and work. Never has it been more clear that we live in a VUCA world. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that acronym, it is a concept that originated with students at the U.S. Army War College to describe the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the world after the Cold War. At this point, the Cold War looks like child’s play compared to our current situation.
Why resilience matters
Resilience is the antidote to our VUCA world. Now, more than ever we need to rely on, and continue to develop, our resilience to help our companies and our teams navigate in this crisis. Resilience is what allows leaders and teams to be calm, steady, and resolute in times of challenge or crisis. It provides for greater agility and flexibility. It enables us to keep our eyes and energy on a better future. It gives us the opportunity to collaborate even more effectively with our colleagues.Resilience can be easy to see and understand when we think about people like Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, and Albert Einstein – who was told by a teacher that he “would never be able to do anything that would make sense in this life.” We’ve seen it in many business leaders like Steve Jobs, Akiro Morita and Henry Ford – who went broke 5 times before starting the Ford Motor Company. If you look closely enough, you see it all around – especially today with the tens of thousands of healthcare providers who are working overtime to keep us healthy.If you look even closer, you will see your own resilience. One of the interesting facts we learned in studying resilience in the workplace is that most of us have a great deal of grit, determination and strength.
How resilience can help in times of crisis
In 2012 I co-authored a book on the topic: “Lemonade, The Leader’s Guide to Resilience at Work.” We researched thousands of business leaders and developed a model of resilience that includes 15 leadership behaviors that can help leaders to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.
My favorite of these resilient behaviors is reframing.
Reframing is the ability to find a silver lining no matter how dire the situation. It is the ability to choose how you talk about the facts and create a context for yourself and for others to see them differently. For instance, if you live in Mauritius, you can call it “a small, insignificant island.” Or you can call it “the largest ocean state in the world.”In the context of our current crisis, you could be talking about how “physical distancing” is creating a feeling of isolation. Or you could talk about the opportunities it presents for us all to learn to use collaboration technologies to both get our work done and not feel so isolated. Both are actually “true” in some objective sense. But the ability to reframe a problem or challenge into the more positive perspective makes it more possible for people to take action. In this example, your team will be able to see and embrace the opportunity more readily in learning the new technologies and feel less fear as they sit in their new home offices with no context besides the news.Think of the benefits of applying this to thinking about how to pivot the business to weather the storm. What new business models, markets, partnerships might be out there waiting for you to uncover?
Reframing as a business imperative
The ability to reframe reminds me of an executive I advised a few years ago. Scott was (and still is) a very experienced and successful leader in his organization. He had a reputation for turning around projects and programs that were underperforming. He had a strategic mind, a keen attention to detail and very high standards for performance. Scott was seen as potentially one of the organization’s senior-most leaders in the future. But something was holding him back. His high standards and intense drive translated into zero tolerance for mistakes.When mistakes happened, as they always do, Scott adopted a rigid and unyielding attitude. He simply could not see the learning opportunity that mistakes can present. The people who worked most closely with Scott learned to follow his lead. Some of his people were actively hiding or ignoring mistakes out of fear of Scott’s reactions. This created a dynamic that suppressed any kind of productive problem solving and Scott was operating in the dark about problems cropping up.This all came to a head when the company lost one of its biggest customers. This customer moved its business to another supplier because in their own words, “you kept making the same mistakes and you haven’t kept up with changes in our business.” This was shocking to Scott, who hadn’t realized there were problems with this customer, and that his team didn’t have the capability to solve the problems. This proved to be a much-needed wake-up call for Scott. He was forced to learn to view mistakes differently, to reframe them as learning opportunities. In doing so, he created a different mindset in himself and his team. He went on to become an even more successful and accomplished leader. His mantra became a quote from one of his heroes, General Omar Bradley, who said, “I learned that good judgment comes from experience and that experience grows out of mistakes.”
How to reframe
There is a simple practice you can use to build your own ability to reframe. You can even invite colleagues or your team to join you in this exercise. Try this the next time you encounter a problem.
- Draw a line down the center of a page.
- On one side the headline is “challenges.”
- On the other is “opportunities.”
- Your task is to re-write the problems as possibilities.
Doing so will give you, and those you are tasked with leading, more energy to get through and even to accelerate through this unprecedented crisis.
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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.