Why "messy" leaders are the future
Originally published by Entrepreneur here.
For leaders, 2020 was a troublesome year. The global health crisis brought swift (and sometimes painful) changes to the way we work and live. This meant leaders had to help employees manage historically high levels of stress and respond to challenges more quickly than they ever thought possible.
To better understand what organizations needed from their leaders, my company interviewed dozens of top decision-makers about how they responded to the economic crisis and determined their organization’s future approach. Interestingly, that research demonstrated that many previously successful leaders were struggling. In fact, 2020 acted seemingly like an accelerator; traits that were found only in the minority of leaders were seen more broadly — and arguably became essential to thriving in our new normal.
But why? The answer is simple: 2020 demanded that leaders be empathetic, engage in hot-button issues, look outside their company to society at large, relinquish processes, trust their employees and respond to changes in a moment's notice. Before March 2020, leaders with these traits made up a minority of leaders. And though more traditionally-minded leaders often struggle to embody these qualities, they’re now a requirement for future success.
Last year brought an entire host of issues to their boiling points, with racial injustice, economic inequality and a mental health crisis among them. This has created a demand for more inclusive cultures, greater diversity in buying choices and a shift toward a workforce that’s increasingly global and virtual-first.
The future will bring even more unpredictable change at a breakneck pace, so leaders must prepare to face vexing challenges in the coming years. Here's why the following traits — which can be seen as endemic in “messy” leaders — could also bring success.
1. They prioritize compassion over old-school professionalism
According to a Gallup poll, reports of daily worry among full-time workers increased from 37 percent in 2019 to 60 percent in 2020.
The old “we only talk business here” leadership approach might work during stable times. But when employees are struggling emotionally and perhaps financially, it comes across as out of touch and cold. Our team of researchers found that leaders who struggled to cope during the lockdown and 2020’s racial-justice reckoning were those with a tendency to use professionalism as a shield to avoid difficult but necessary conversations. Regardless, we’ve reached a point where organizations can no longer sidestep sensitive topics such as race and mental health. Employees are demanding to have these conversations, and many leaders feel exposed.
By contrast, the leaders who fared well were those with the courage to talk about emotional (and even controversial) topics, thereby engaging their employees on a decidedly personal level. They reached into the void because it was important to their people. They understood that change starts with broaching tough subjects.
To mirror these messy leaders’ traits, key players should consider how to reach out to support their employees and their communities. They should prioritize compassion over professionalism and get comfortable engaging in personal conversations without any agenda other than deepening their own understanding. They might find it difficult to initiate these talks with many employees still working from home. Instead of waiting for chance interactions, however, they might find that these conversations need to happen during specific meetings rather than between them.
2020 was also the year in which leaders felt accountable for societal impact in a way they’d never felt before. Before 2020, it was possible to work within a relatively loose set of ethical aspirations, but leaders generally worked off the assumption that decisions should be made primarily through a commercial lens. Last year demanded that leaders deeply understand how their business decisions impact the world at large.
We saw this in action in the varying ways businesses responded to the pandemic: For instance, Wisconsin craft distilleries made news when they converted part of their production lines toward making hand sanitizer. Many of these companies offered hand sanitizer for free at a time when their businesses were struggling, but they already had such strong ties to their local communities that they understood the importance of taking positive action anyway.
Related: Emotional Intelligence is the Secret to Leadership in Times of Crisis
2. They focus less on processes and more on outcomes
One of the common characteristics of leaders who struggled to find their footing in 2020 was an overreliance on processes that slow down change. When the crisis hit, these leaders looked to the past for cues about the future, and they attempted to “manage” the change the way they always had.
This approach was problematic for two reasons: First, most of us had never seen widespread lockdowns triggered by a pandemic, so the past didn’t offer any helpful models for predicting the future. Second, traditional change management assumes that change is a linear process with a clear beginning, middle and end, but CEOs are increasingly being forced to lead in an environment where change is constant.
The leaders who have thrived in the unpredictable environment created by this global health crisis are those who were already change-ready. These are the “messy” leaders who care more about outcomes than processes, allowing them to respond rapidly to changing conditions.
Case in point: The Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center was able to drastically ramp up its telehealth capabilities in a matter of weeks, even though its data models suggested it would take several years. In our own study, another leader told the story of moving 14,000 staff members out of a head office to work remotely. If the company had even contemplated such a change under normal conditions, it would’ve spent months in the assessment and implementation phases. Without time to spare, however, leaders set goals, trusted their staff and made the switch in just five days.
Now, CEOs are recognizing that the biggest barriers to boldness and speed aren’t technical limitations. Rather, preconceived mindsets about what’s possible, processes that slow things down and bottlenecks created by chains of command are the true limiting factors. To succeed in a future where the next crisis is always looming, leaders must accept change as a constant.
When they always expect that conditions could change, leaders can replace traditional forecasting processes with fast-cycle experimentation. Leaders should stop trying to plan and predict future scenarios. Instead, they should take the actions that are most appropriate in the moment and adjust their approach as data emerges.
Related: 5 Essential WFH Tools for the New Remote Employee
3. They embrace the power of not knowing
We found that leaders who struggled the most during the crisis were those who fell victim to “superhero syndrome,” or wanting to put on a brave face for their employees to project strength and expertise. Leaders who were well-respected in normal times found their people looking to them for guidance, but this only created bottlenecks and inhibited creativity. When the pace of change became too fast for them to lead from the front as they always had, many tried to compensate by working longer, unsustainable hours.
In contrast, the leaders who were able to weather the crisis best were those with the confidence to take themselves out of the driver’s seat and admit that they didn’t have all the answers. They were willing to let go of their attachment to driving outcomes — choosing, instead, to embody vulnerability, humility, and trust.
Letting go of the need to project strength and be all-knowing creates acceptance to working differently. It allows teams to take ownership of change and respond with greater speed. This doesn’t mean leaders should succumb to the impulse to fall apart. Rather, it means gathering all the smartest people in the room and asking, “How do you think we should handle this?” When leaders aren’t busy trying to hold the world on their shoulders, it frees them up to focus on the things that matter.
2020 permanently changed the business landscape, and consequent responses will likely impact how organizations deal with every pitfall in 2021 and onward. The world will stay messy, meaning leaders must learn to lead in a messy way. They must shift from a wait-and-see mindset to a test-and-learn approach to business. Those who always expect change, lean into the unknown, and take a distinctly human approach will be perfectly positioned for whatever the future might bring.
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Last night I started reading a book by Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who has written several novels that I’ve loved. But right now I’m reading something different—a book of short lessons he’s learned from many years of working with patients.
Early in his career, Yalom was inspired by something he read. The gist of it was that all people have a natural tendency to want to grow and become fulfilled—just an acorn will grow up to become an oak—as long as there are no obstacles in the way. So the job of the psychotherapist was to eliminate the obstacles to growth.
This was a eureka moment for Yalom. At the time, he was treating a young widow. Suffering through grief for a long while, she wanted help because she had a “failed heart”—an inability ever to love again.
Yalom had felt overwhelmed. How could he possibly change someone’s inability to love? But now he looked at it differently. He could dedicate himself to identifying and eliminating the obstacles that kept her from loving.
So they worked on that—her feelings of disloyalty to her late husband, her sense that she was somehow responsible for his death, and the fear of loss that falling in love again would mean. Eventually they eliminated all of the obstacles. Then her natural ability to love—and grow—returned. She remarried.
Reading this story made me think of the responsibility of leaders toward the people they need to develop—and for the growth and learning that leaders themselves require to be the best that they can be.
Many leadership development challenges seem overwhelming—even impossible. The leaders that we coach usually have a list of areas where they want to get better, but how? How do you “build better relationships with your peers and direct reports”? How are you supposed to “get out of the weeds and demonstrate enterprise-wide thinking” or “build executive presence”? All of these goals are as abstract as they are huge.
So the best approach is to not focus on the huge and fuzzy goal. What we try to do is to break these goals down into concrete actions through working on real-time business problems. To put it simply, though, we do just as Yalom does: We identify the obstacles and work toward knocking them off, one at a time.
Leadership development is not usually a quick fix. You’re not going to develop executive presence through a half-day workshop or a one-time meeting. If you’re interested in meaningful, lasting growth—whether for yourself or for those who work for you—it’s a commitment.
But don’t ever forget that we’re all capable of growth throughout life and our careers. The trick is to find the right coach or mentor who will guide you through that obstacle course.
Feedback is one of the most powerful tools a leader has, shaping both individual and organizational culture. Yet, despite its value, it’s often met with apprehension—seen as judgment rather than an opportunity. Instead of fueling growth, it can create tension, leaving recipients feeling exposed and defensive.
This reaction is natural. Feedback touches on identity, competence, and self-worth. When framed as a verdict rather than an insight, it sparks defensiveness instead of openness. But what if feedback wasn’t about judgment? What if it was a tool for gathering better data—both for the recipient and the leader?
When leaders make feedback a habit, not a performance review, they gain sharper insights, model continuous improvement, and create a culture where learning thrives. The shift from evaluation to empowerment turns feedback into fuel for growth. And at the heart of this shift? Curiosity.
Leading in a MESSY world: Why feedback matters more than ever
Leaders today operate in constant disruption and complexity. They must move beyond assumptions and seek new perspectives. At BTS, we call this operating in a MESSY world:
- M – Making sense of the broader ecosystem
- E – Establishing emotional connections to build trust
- S – Seizing momentum to stay ahead
- S – Sensing the future amid uncertainty
- Y – Yielding ego to create space for others to grow
Feedback is critical in helping leaders navigate these challenges. It’s not just a tool for correction but a catalyst for innovation and collaboration. But without structure, feedback can fall flat. That’s where the AFIRM Model comes in.
Reframing feedback: From evaluation to exploration
Great feedback moves beyond transaction into mutual discovery. When leaders model effective feedback, they foster deeper connections and unlock insights that drive performance.
Curiosity plays a crucial role in this transformation. When leaders approach feedback with genuine curiosity—asking open-ended questions and actively listening—they shift conversations from critique to shared learning. Curiosity also provides leaders with better data on how they show up, helping them refine their approach and model the kind of feedback culture they want to create.
Balancing feedback with efficiency is essential. The AFIRM Model provides a structured approach that makes feedback actionable and constructive while keeping curiosity at the center.
Structure feedback for impact with the AFIRM model
AFIRM enables structured yet flexible conversations—ensuring feedback drives results. It provides a roadmap for leaders to create meaningful, productive discussions that foster growth and accountability. Here’s how it works:
A – Agenda
Set clear intentions. Define the purpose and desired outcomes upfront. A prepared conversation leads to honest, productive dialogue and signals that feedback is a shared responsibility rather than a one-sided critique.
F – Facts, Observations, Evidence
Keep it objective. Base feedback on data and observations to minimize bias. Stay neutral and constructive. Providing fact-based feedback ensures conversations remain focused and prevents emotional reactions that derail progress.
Curiosity fosters deeper dialogue—ask questions, seek perspectives, and pave the way for growth. Instead of assuming why something happened, ask “What led to this?” or “What challenges were you facing?” to create space for honest reflection.
I – Impact
Clarify effects. Who was affected? What were the consequences? Centering feedback on impact builds trust and accountability. Highlighting the broader implications helps individuals understand why feedback matters and how their actions contribute to team success.
R – Request
Co-create a path forward. Define actionable, SMART next steps (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound). Encourage collaboration by asking “How do you think we can move forward?” or “What support do you need?” Keeping the dialogue open ensures accountability while fostering autonomy.
M – Mutuality
Feedback is a partnership. Success requires shared ownership and commitment to growth. A strong feedback culture thrives when both parties see feedback as a two-way street—leaders should also invite input on how they can better support and enable success. Take time to ask “What feedback do you have for me?” to reinforce that feedback is a mutual learning process.
Creating feedback-driven growth
Imagine an organization where feedback fuels engagement and connection. When framed as a tool for growth rather than judgment, conversations shift from evaluation to exploration. Everyone is on the same team, with the same goals.
Great leaders don’t just give feedback—they seek it, reflect on it, and use it to sharpen their approach. By modeling curiosity and making feedback a daily habit, they foster a culture where feedback is normal, constructive, and empowering.
Feedback isn’t about fixing. It’s about discovering what’s possible. By approaching it as a shared learning opportunity, we move from judgment to collaboration, growth, and transformation.
What’s one question you could ask today to spark a meaningful feedback conversation?
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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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Technology choices are often made under pressure - pressure to modernize, to respond to shifting client expectations, to demonstrate progress, or to keep pace with rapid advances in AI. In those moments, even experienced leadership teams can fall into familiar traps: over-estimating how differentiated a capability will remain, under-estimating the organizational cost of sustaining it, and committing earlier than the strategy or operating model can realistically support.
After decades of working with leaders through digital and technology-enabled transformations, I’ve seen these dynamics play out again and again. The issue is rarely the quality of the technology itself. It’s the timing of commitment, and how quickly an early decision hardens into something far harder to unwind than anyone intended.
What has changed in today’s AI-accelerated environment is not the nature of these traps, but the margin for error. It has narrowed dramatically.
For small and mid-sized organizations, the consequences are immediate. You don't have specialist teams running parallel experiments or long runways to course correct. A single bad platform decision can absorb scarce capital, distort operating models, and take years to unwind just as the market shifts again.
AI intensified this tension. It is wildly over-hyped as a silver bullet and quietly under-estimated as a structural disruptor. Both positions are dangerous. AI won’t magically fix broken processes or weak strategy, but it will change the economics of how work gets done and where value accrues.
When leaders ask how to approach digital platforms, AI adoption, or operating model design, four questions consistently matter more than the technology itself.
- What specific market problem does this solve, and what is it worth?
- Is this capability genuinely unique, or is it rapidly becoming commoditized?
- What is the true total cost - not just to build, but to run and evolve over time?
- What is the current pace of innovation for this niche?
For many leadership teams, answering these questions leads to the same strategic posture. Move quickly today while preserving options for tomorrow. Not as doctrine, but as a way of staying adaptive without mistaking early commitment for strategic clarity.
Why build versus buy is the wrong starting point
One of the most common traps organizations fall into is treating digital strategy as a series of isolated build-vs-buy decisions. That framing is too narrow, and it usually arrives too late.
A more powerful question is this. How do we preserve optionality as the landscape continues to evolve? Technology decisions often become a proxy for deeper organizational challenges. Following acquisitions or periods of rapid change, pressure frequently surfaces at the front line. Sales teams respond to client feedback. Delivery teams push for speed. Leaders look for visible progress.
In these moments, technology becomes the focal point for action. Not because it is the root problem, but because it is tangible.
The real risk emerges operationally. Poorly sequenced transitions, disruption to the core business, and value that proves smaller or shorter-lived than anticipated. Teams become locked into delivery paths that no longer make commercial sense, while underlying system assumptions remain unchanged.
The issue is rarely technical. It is temporal.
Optimizing for short-term optics, particularly client-facing signals of progress, often comes at the expense of longer-term adaptability. A cleaner interface over an ageing platform may buy temporary parity, but it can also delay the more important work of rethinking what is possible in the near and medium term.
Conservatism often shows up quietly here. Not as risk aversion, but as a preference for extending the familiar rather than exploring what could fundamentally change.
Licensing as a way to buy time and insight
In fast-moving areas such as AI orchestration, many organizations are choosing to license capability rather than build it internally. This is not because licensing is perfect. It rarely is. It introduces constraints and trade-offs. But it was fast. And more importantly, it acknowledged reality.
The pace of change in this space is such that what looks like a good architectural decision today may be actively unhelpful in twelve months. Licensing allowed us to operate right at the edge of what we actually understood at the time - without pretending we knew where the market would land six or twelve months later.
Licensing should not be seen as a lack of ambition. It is often a way of buying time, learning cheaply, and avoiding premature commitment. Building too early doesn’t make you visionary, often it just makes you rigid.
AI is neither a silver bullet nor a feature
Coaching is a useful microcosm of the broader AI debate.
Great AI coaching that is designed with intent and grounded in real coaching methodology can genuinely augment the experience and extend impact. The market is saturated with AI-enabled coaching tools and what is especially disappointing is that many are thin layers of prompts wrapped around a large language model. They are responsive, polite, and superficially impressive - and they largely miss the point.
Effective coaching isn’t about constant responsiveness. It’s about clarity. It’s about bringing experience, structure, credibility, and connection to moments where someone is stuck.
At the other extreme, coaches themselves are often deeply traditional. A heavy pen, a leather-bound notebook, and a Royal Copenhagen mug of coffee are far more likely to be sitting on the desk than the latest GPT or Gemini model.
That conservatism is understandable - coaching is built on trust, presence, and human connection - but it’s increasingly misaligned with how scale and impact are actually created.
The real opportunity for AI is not to replace human work with a chat interface. It is to codify what actually works. The decision points, frameworks, insights, and moments that drive behavior change. AI can then be used to augment and extend that value at scale.
A polished interface over generic capability is not enough. If AI does not strengthen the core value of the work, it is theatre, not transformation.
What this means for leaders
Across all of these examples, the same pattern shows up.
The hardest decisions are rarely about capability, they are about timing, alignment, and conviction.
Building from scratch only makes sense when you can clearly articulate:
- What you believe that the market does not
- Why that belief creates defensible value
- Why you’re willing to concentrate risk behind it
Clear vision scales extraordinarily well when it’s tightly held. The success of narrow, focused Silicon Valley start-ups is testament to that.
Larger organizations often carry a broader set of commitments. That complexity increases when depth of expertise is spread across functions, and even more so when sales teams have significant autonomy at the point of sale. Alignment becomes harder not because people are wrong, but because too many partial truths are competing at once.
In these environments, strategic clarity, not headcount or spend, creates advantage.
This is why many leadership teams choose to license early. Not because building is wrong, but because most organizations have not yet earned the right to build.
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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