What now, recession?
Most CEOs are revising downward their forecasts for business, though they remain reluctant for the moment to declare a recession is at hand. Within the current administration, and in congress, there is broad disagreement about what to do to head it off. This uncertainty is wreaking havoc on business planning. Chief Executive reported in June that 300 CEOs downgraded business forecasts for the next 12 months to 5.6 out of 10. CEOs are telling their people to prepare recession plans.
At the start of the 2020 pandemic, we also lacked foresight to imagine the dramatic swings in the fortunes of companies. There were big winners like technology, retail, financial services, and home entertainment; there were big losers like travel and tourism, hospitality, and energy. The massive shifts in the global business landscape rendered strategic plans out of date and useless.
So, what now? How do we navigate the next big, bad thing?
In 20 years of advising CEOs and senior executives on strategy execution, we’ve learned that during crisis, some teams rise to the occasion, while others are less resilient and more susceptible to doubt, which prompts reaction in the moment and can foster a chaotic sense of doom. While there are winners and losers in industry sectors, it is also true that some defy the odds, look around corners, seize opportunities, and keep steady hands at the wheel.
What kind of leaders weather tough times?
Through a review of our data on leaders and teams, we’ve discovered that inevitably there are qualities of both that drive growth and innovation, even in the most challenging times. These qualities are not always intuitive. In fact, in shorter supply your team is stretched thin, exhausted, and too busy to stop the whack-a-mole game to think clearly and provide direction to others. What do these leaders and their teams do right?
They tap into the stabilizing power of composure and restraint
Leaders who demonstrate a high level of composure and restraint in challenging times create an environment where it is safe to make mistakes, and to tell others when things are not working. Leaders are then able to foster discussion in a calm environment and resolve small issues before they become bigger ones. These leaders get a read on the fast-changing environment and quickly problem-solve with colleagues.
They dial up their antennae of awareness and concern
Awareness and concern are two additional qualities that go hand-in-hand in times of change and uncertainty. As people struggle to navigate the pressures and volatility, it’s more important than ever to know what your team is thinking and feeling, and to be aware of the pulse of the organization. If a downturn is ahead, you may be glad that not every position post-Pandemic is filled. However, the reality for most companies is that their best talent is most at risk and likely to leave. Staying aware helps you shore up your best defense against threats to growth.
They ramp up their curiosity and interactivity
These are two leadership qualities that work together beautifully when you need to solve problems. During challenging times, many leaders turn inward to try to shoulder the burden of solving problems with a ready-fire-aim approach. They hear about an issue and move immediately into action. They may ask for input, but not in group settings. Thus, they put spokes in wheels and their best people are talking only to them; not to one another.
It may feel counterintuitive, but when you can be intentionally curious and convene smart people, you learn that they can solve the problem better and faster than you can. Because they’ve authored the solution, they claim ownership of it and put all their energy behind it. As you move through uncertainty, they begin to feel more confident of their own agency in managing turbulence. As Ken Blanchard once said, “All of us are smarter than any of us.”
They focus on unleashing the capabilities of their interdependent, interconnected teams
Virtual and hybrid work have already laid bare the hidden, destructive issues that can derail relationships and teams. Teams that had less face time and more conflict found the challenge of misunderstanding and unresolved conflict even greater. It isn’t only each team but your network of teams, and how they operate together, that makes your organization resilient.
The performance of teams is vastly more important to the future of work than individual performance. Teams are really the new heroes of organizations. When you see unresolved conflict between teams, you can diagnose, with absolute certainty, the role that the friction is playing in creating drag. As you try to pivot in a recession, it’s time to prioritize how teams in your organization are actively engaging with one another, aligning on the goals, and working with enterprise focus.
Our research on teams has found that in challenging times, trust, support, candor, and curiosity lay the foundation of team culture. Make it a priority to bring people together and resolve trust issues by encouraging candor and looking for solutions. Do this by first being curious yourself, and then encouraging others on your team to seek to understand. Take the time now to ensure that your teams are performing at their best, and you’ll reap the rewards today and well beyond any recession or downturn.
What now?
I remember a CEO that I know telling the story of the commitment he made to retain all of his employees during a downturn, even though he predicted a 20% revenue loss in the first year. That decision, while risky, turned out to be fortuitous, as the economy pivoted and demand soared long before expected. Competitors who had let go of employees struggled, while this company recovered quickly and remains above capacity today.
The decision he made was informed by the values and qualities of leadership that defined this company’s culture. The CEO led by example, demonstrating composure and restraint that others modeled. They spent time talking with their employees about the decisions that they were making and why. They demonstrated concern for their well-being when demand picked up and they were under pressure to deliver.
Take a lesson from this CEO and what we’ve learned about leadership and teams. Keep these three approaches in mind as you move forward:
- Stay focused on what works – good leadership will get you through.
- Double down on your people and your teams – listen, learn, respond, and invest to make sure they have the knowledge, support, and tools to do their best.
- Bring your leaders and teams together to navigate the uncertainty together – forget being a hero and instead draw in your organization to collaborate, cooperate, and invent the future – you will all be stronger as a result.
As the next months unfold, we can all prepare to be better leaders by reflecting on what we already know about leading in uncertain times. Think about what worked and didn’t work over the last two years. Ask yourself: what is the lesson and how can we apply it now?
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Want To Build A More Resilient Organization? Start Here
During turmoil, the business community tends to focus on continuity — emphasizing efficiency in turn. Both are critical. If you were to take any lessons away from the financial crisis of 2008, however, it might be wiser to think about how resiliency is key to long-term success.
Even in the depths of that recession, resilient companies showed a 25-point higher EBITDA than “nonresilient” counterparts and enjoyed markedly better recovery. A large part of this was due to business preparedness, as “resilients” took measures to reduce nonperforming assets, strengthen balance sheets, cut costs and prioritize customer-focused investments.
However, building a successful company involves more than business-oriented resilience (think cutting costs or shifting processes). It also involves organizational resilience: the strength of your people and how they’ll manage and lead moving forward.
4 Tactics for building organizational resilience
Covid-19 reinvigorated the need for both business and organizational resilience. Those at the helm of a business need to not only find ways to lead through uncertainty and anticipate change, but also foster companywide resilience. If you’re looking to do so, focus on these areas:
1. Leadership
Crises often hit companies in many areas at once, whether that’s with teams, communication, or operations. Without the right mindset, leaders struggle to find true north to help everyone see past the present moment. Immersing leaders into similar experiences (through simulations and scenario-planning) can help provide insights into how to ameliorate crises, set clear objectives, and take action holistically — which research suggests has become increasingly important for leaders. Besides this, leadership groups can also encourage an open exchange of ideas and establish new networks.
2. Individuals
Even with Covid-19 out of the equation, there’s no shortage of stressors in employees’ lives. Three-quarters of people admit to experiencing job burnout, with 40% connecting it to Covid-19. Similarly, more than one-third of workers have clocked longer hours recently. To support overall organizational resiliency, companies must start from the ground level by ensuring their employees are fit to work.
With this in mind, offer opportunities to connect with professional coaches. Provide access to platforms or apps (such as TaskHuman) that allow for diverse personalized support. You could also introduce mindfulness training and equip managers with the skills to help them better engage in personal conversations.
3. Teams
Shifting from a hierarchical to a flat structure has been beneficial in many organizations. Zappos adopted a holacracy back in 2014, for instance, and its team members decided to manage themselves as internal “small businesses.” You don’t need to reorganize as radically as Zappos, but it helps to rethink the corporate structure to encourage teamwork. Additionally, invest in collaborative tools like Slack or Yammer, and encourage employees to reach out to colleagues they normally wouldn’t to bring more knowledge into the mix.
4. Talent
Covid-19 brought talent management and business continuity into sharper focus as employees “left the building” — many for good. One CEO at a leading Chinese insurance company utilized a Business Continuity Planning Software and took steps to address job dissatisfaction by investing in employee training and development, reasoning that continued learning will boost growth once the pandemic subsides. This is a solid starting point, but take things a step further and make cultural changes that generate, engage, and empower talent. Focus on solidifying talent in employees in their day-to-day lives — not just through periodic training.
Organizational resilience is a critical component to ensuring success through crisis, and it can only be accomplished by focusing on your most important asset: people. Invest in the right tools, provide the necessary support, and make talent development a priority. Your operations are only as resilient as your leadership.
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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.