Strategies for leading a successful culture transformation
In the ever-evolving business landscape, maintaining a cultural edge is crucial for success. At BTS, we say, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
An organization's culture defines its identity and sets the tone for its performance, innovation, and growth. Culture transformation is the journey from the current culture to the aspirational culture the organization seeks.
Senior leaders often grapple with how to drive effective culture shifts amidst resistance, skepticism, and a marketplace that scrutinizes an organization's integrity. The challenge is not merely to introduce new cultural values but to embed them into the company's DNA.
What is Culture Transformation?
Before diving into the 'how,' it's essential to understand the 'what' and 'why.' Culture transformation is a conscious and deliberate shift in the cultural attributes of an organization. It's a strategic process aimed at changing beliefs, values, and behaviors across all levels. This transformation is crucial for organizations that are:
- Adapting to market shifts or digital transformations
- Fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace
- Breaking away from legacy habits and practices
- Undergoing a merger or acquisition
These scenarios often signal a need to recalibrate company culture to thrive in new environments.
Culture Change Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate
Culture change isn't a top-down directive that can be issued and obeyed. It's a grassroots movement requiring buy-in at every level. The transformation must be inclusive, participatory, and sustained over time.
To initiate such a movement, leaders must genuinely connect to the new cultural vision. Visibility, storytelling, and leading by example are critical. Employees are more likely to align with new values when they see leaders embodying them consistently.
4 Strategies to Build a High-Performing Company Culture
Creating lasting culture transformation is strategic and systematic. Here are four interconnected strategies to guide your organization toward a future-ready culture.
- Define Your Core Values
The cornerstone of robust company culture is a well-defined set of core values. These values serve as the cultural north star, guiding behavior, decision-making, and interactions. A company that knows and lives its core values creates a strong identity for employees and customers.
- Foster Open Communication
High-performing companies thrive on open dialogue. Communication is the conduit for trust, innovation, and collaboration. Cultivate an environment where every team member is encouraged to voice their thoughts.
- Invest in Employee Development
Investing in employee growth pays off with enriched capabilities, higher engagement, and greater loyalty. This reflects a culture that values its people as its primary asset.
- Recognize Employee Efforts
Acknowledgment is a powerful motivator. Celebrating employee contributions reinforces behaviors that align with company objectives, transforming abstract concepts like hard work and innovation into tangible rewards.
Conclusion
Creating a thriving organizational culture requires deliberate effort and strong leadership. By defining core values, fostering open communication, investing in employee development, and recognizing efforts, leaders can effectively drive meaningful change.
A successful culture transformation builds a sense of belonging, purpose, and unity, aligning everyone towards shared goals. This enhances employee experience, boosts performance, and fosters innovation. In a competitive world, a strong, cohesive culture is your ultimate advantage, guiding your organization toward sustained success and growth.
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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.