Building a pipeline of high-performing general managers in aviation
Related content
Client need
To continue competing and winning in a complex industry, a multinational energy corporation recognized the need to change its ways of working. To achieve sustainable success for its Australian branch, the organization needed to shift from a project-focused operation to a unified business culture.
To make this transformation a reality, the organization identified a need for aligned enterprise mindsets, enabling leaders to internalize the new strategy and develop new leadership behaviors.
Solution
In service of this need, BTS and the organization co-created an immersive, in-person simulation experience. The experience projected a customized business portrait 30 years into the future, designed to:
- Guide leaders on optimization strategies.
- Foster relationship-building.
- Encourage personal development.
- Portray realistic, on-the-job challenges while coaching solutions.
The project team developed the program over three phases to ensure maximum effect, turning themes and objectives gathered from stakeholder interviews and pilot-test feedback into tangible, experiential materials and activities including:
Scenario-based roleplaying
- Cohorts compiled of leaders from diverse backgrounds and skillsets were provided with case study scenarios reflective of their real-life roles, tasked with developing effective strategies against common restraints like time, budget, client profiles, and geopolitics.
- Through this activity, players learned decision-making through collaboration and healthy competition, balancing short- and long-term goals in a simulated environment encouraging trial-and-error.
- Each simulation round was followed by debrief sessions, allowing teams to reflect on how their individual and group strategies affect business operations—a vital component for sustainable growth.
Behavioral guides
- Leaders were provided with helpful resources for navigating the company’s operation transition, promoting enterprise thinking through industry surprises like timeline alterations, decision-making under pressure, and prioritizing quality over targets.
- A Leadership Q&A event was held to address concerns, provide clarity, and reinforce the company’s vision and values to empower and engage leaders mid-journey.
Coaching sessions
- Amidst team leadership building, coaches offered individual, personalized guidance for participants following each simulation round.
- Presented opportunities for performance and lesson reflection, as well as goal-planning and application back on the job.
Results
The program’s ROI was measured by performance data, behavioral assessments, and participant feedback, with an NPS score of 80, surveyed across 500 leaders from 15 cohorts.
Post-journey, participating leaders credited the simulation for:
- Strengthened decision-making skills.
- Broadened business fluency.
- Heightened knowledge and resilience of industry complexities.
- Overall enjoyment of collaborative, game-like medium.
Testimonials
“Excellent fundamentals about impact across value chain of decision making and clearer understanding of levers used by management.”
“An excellent course, this really cemented in my mind the value chain and the necessity to consider all elements of this together. Shining a light on the complexity of the business and the many drivers, metrics, and desired outcomes needed to be balanced or traded-off was very enlightening.”
“Great job on asking people to represent other parts of value chain. This put all of us in a more uncomfortable place and we had to rely on each other.”
“Really enjoyable course that had a great balance of simulation, discussion, and humor. Sessions were well set up and managed.”
“The simulation reinforces the value of cross functional collaboration, which, along with specific insights into other areas of the business, I will continue to promote within my team.”
Client need
A leading international oil and gas company wanted to align its top 5,000 managers to its new leadership framework. The company wanted to ensure that its top 400 executives became “change leaders” by facilitating sessions for their people in the flow of work.
The solution
The organization partnered with BTS to create a solution that:
- Leveraged BTS’ Digital Cascade Tool to craft an interactive digital meeting-in-a-box.
- Allowed senior leaders to facilitate sessions themselves easily, locally, virtually and effectively in an engaging way far more impactful than merely distributing a PDF or presenting a slide deck.
- Included a discussion on the case for change, exploration of pivotal leadership moments, self-assessment on the framework, and commitment to actions to be implemented on-the-job.
- Enabled the client to cascade the framework and rapidly drive behavior change while also harnessing data to gain insights from the global deployment to 5,000 managers within six months.
Results
After a successful pilot phase, the organization expects to reach the top 5,000 leaders within 6 months.Based on the pilot results, participating leaders will enact tens of thousands of “go-dos,” actions tobe implemented on-the-job, in their daily work, to live the new culture.Following the early success, the company launched a similar initiative to cascade customer centricity to an even wider audience.
Creating a holistic assessment based on real context, people acumen, and business expectations
Challenge
A multinational biopharma company needed to identify, develop, and support their key talent by better understanding their capabilities against core leadership expectations and behaviors. They partnered with BTS to co-create a customized solution that provided both individual and actionable feedback, both accelerating development and providing insights to inform critical role succession planning.
Approach
A multi-component assessment informed a holistic picture of the leader by identifying insights on performance, strengths, and development opportunities, followed by executive coaching.
Assessment:
- Career Inventory Assessment: The self-assessment provoked individual reflection on key professional experiences and goals, self-identifying strengths and opportunity areas for focus.
- Moments and Capability 360 interviews: Customized interviews evaluated current performance in pivotal job moments based on feedback from the participant, peers, direct reports, managers, and key stakeholders.
- Hogan Assessment Inventories: The Hogan assessment consisted of three inventories: development; personality; and motives, values, and preferences.
Coaching:
- Participants engaged in executive coaching sessions to address the development needs uncovered during the assessments.
Results
With this output, key findings focused development efforts to accelerate individual development and inform critical decisions for succession planning.
For the business
- Measurable feedback on individual leaders against the competencies considered critical for success.
- Aggregate level insights on the business unit’s key talent to aide in succession planning.
- Feedback on how the business can support critical talent today and accelerate future role development.
For the individual:
- Feedback session with a BTS Coach: Individual feedback reports integrated results from the assessment components and outlined strengths, development opportunities, and recommendations. The output was reviewed with a BTS Coach, to create targeted action plans and ensure follow through.
- Continued Development: Individual executive coaching sessions commenced, where participants worked with their BTS Coach on action plans informed by the assessment and aligned with their Manager. At the end of the coaching engagement, participants met with their direct manager, BTS Coach, and HRBP for a Development Team Meeting to discuss key insights and align on the plan for development post-experience.
Related content
.jpg)
Client need
For a 175-year-old technology company, competitive advantage isn’t just built on technical innovation: it’s built on leaders who know how to get the best thinking from every person around them. That culture of drawing out ideas, developing people, and driving innovation through engaged teams had been a defining feature of the organization for generations. And it depended on having the right infrastructure to keep developing frontline leaders at scale.
In 2020, that infrastructure was disrupted. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the organization to pivot its in-person development to virtual almost overnight, risking the erosion of frontline leadership capability while simultaneously needing to navigate the broader shocks of the pandemic: supply chain volatility, shifting materials costs, and a workforce managing profound uncertainty.
Stalling frontline leadership development meant risking productivity, employee engagement, talent retention, job performance, and downstream impacts on quality and operating margin, at a moment when the organization could least afford it.
The question now was how to reimagine frontline leader development to equip thousands of global leaders to continue supporting their teams through disruption, and to ensure the next generation of managers could help their people do their best work under any conditions.
Solution
The client partnered with BTS to reimagine frontline leader development from the ground up, equipping leaders globally with the practical skills, tools, and mindset shifts needed to support their teams in doing great, innovative work.
The partnership began in 2019, and over five years has reached over 1,600 frontline leaders capturing 700+ documented behavior change actions. In 2022, BTS collaborated with the organization to refresh the program to reflect their evolving strategy and develop a sharper focus on supporting a culture of continuous improvement and innovation with coaching and feedback.
The blended program experience combined the following elements:
- Immersive leadership simulations: Scenario-based experiences placing leaders in realistic situations, surfacing Multiplier and Diminisher tendencies in real time and making the learning immediately personal and actionable
- Multipliers and Diminishers framework: A structured exploration of how leaders either amplify or diminish the intelligence of those around them, including specific “experiments” leaders could use to better understand their own leadership approaches
- Custom leadership frameworks: Including a structured, step-by-step process for having significant feedback conversations, a tool to understand and flex to communication preferences, and a coaching approach designed to help leaders guide team members toward their own solutions, building capability and long-term ownership.
- Structured application sessions — on-the-job practice components designed to bridge the gap between the program experience and day-to-day behavior, giving participants specific frameworks to apply immediately with their teams
- Peer networking and breakout groups — cohort-based learning that participants identified as a standout feature, both for deepening the learning and for building cross-functional relationships that extended beyond the program
- A commitment-capture platform integrated into the program to log participant actions and reinforce behavior change after the program ended; over 670 participant actions were captured across the program’s delivery
Throughout the program, leaders examined the impact of their own behaviors, recognizing where they were unintentionally diminishing their teams, and built new habits around challenging, creating space for mistakes and learning, listening, questioning, giving developmental feedback, and creating ownership. The feedback model gave participants a practical process for the positive and constructive conversations that actually change performance.
Results
More than 1,600 frontline leaders and individual contributors have participated in the program—the population closest to daily execution, quality, and operations. A recent impact study told a clear story about the effects of the program across participants:
100% of participants reported actively applying what they learned. 59% reported producing significant, measurable business impact, with concrete evidence to describe it.
The results weren’t theoretical. One engineering leader restructured how his team developed project plans, creating space for debate and ownership instead of coming in with the answer. His team exceeded their quality target by 10 percentage points and accelerated the project timeline by +4 months.
One production leader used the feedback model to coach a struggling supervisor and cascade the process across his entire leadership layer. His unit reached #1 performance in its division, improving a key quality KPI by more than 18% year-over-year. A department head with over a decade in leadership set new production records after learning to flex his communication style and draw out quieter team members. And a development lab supervisor used the program to clarify her leadership identity, earn a promotion, and coach her direct report to one as well.
The study also confirmed that when managers actively supported participants post-program, the likelihood of significant business impact increased substantially, shaping the organization’s next phase of reinforcement and cohort follow-up.
For an organization whose competitive advantage rests on the innovation and intelligence of its people, the program gave its leaders something technical training rarely delivers: the confidence, the tools, and the self-awareness to make everyone around them better.
Testimonials
“The program gave me greater confidence to try new things as a leader. It helped me realize what I do and what I don’t do.” - HR Leader
“The skills I learned in the training helped me be more efficient. It helped me do the right thing, right away.” - Production Manager
“Feedback is very important to create a positive environment; and how to [give] feedback is a specific skill I learned from this training and how to share constructive feedback.” - Production Leader
Client need
A large U.S.-based health insurance organization operating at the center of a complex national ecosystem had already made a serious investment in enterprise AI. Leadership was not experimenting at the edges. They were leaning in.
Capability and commitment existed across the organization, but unevenly. Some teams were already pushing boundaries. Others hadn't yet found their footing. Most of the gains had come in personal productivity. Valuable, but the core work itself had not yet fundamentally changed. The opportunity was to go deeper, to move from AI-assisted individuals to AI-reinvented workflows.
Across the health insurance landscape, pressure was intensifying. Medicaid and government program contracts were becoming more competitive. Decision cycles were faster and more analytics-driven. Clinical evidence was evolving rapidly. Regulatory scrutiny was high. Security risks were constant. AI was no longer a future conversation. It was a present expectation.
Inside the organization, world-class experts were still constrained by manual processes.
Specialized teams were synthesizing large volumes of complex, fast-moving information, working to keep pace with an environment where the inputs never stopped changing. The work required deep expertise and judgment, and it also demanded repetitive processing that consumed days when it needed to take hours.
Other teams faced pressure where speed and precision directly influenced competitive outcomes. Manual approaches were creating lag at exactly the moments when faster insight mattered most.
Across functions, the pattern was consistent. Highly trained professionals were spending valuable time on low-leverage tasks, stitching together data, transforming files, and correlating inputs that AI could handle.
Leadership understood that AI licenses alone would not create advantage. To compete in an increasingly analytics-driven insurance environment, expertise had to scale. Insight had to move faster. Teams needed to reinvent how core work happened.
Solution
BTS partnered with the organization to move from AI access to AI application.
Through a series of focused design sprints, intact teams worked on their highest-value workflows using our GROUNDING → EXPERIMENT → BUILD → AMPLIFY methodology. The structure was simple and disciplined. Set context. Experiment quickly. Build against real work. Create a path to scale.
Participants brought their actual work into the room. Analytical frameworks. Competitive and operational documents. Risk and intelligence inputs. Data pipelines.
No generic demos. No abstract hypotheticals.
The turning point came when AI began working on their actual content.
Research syntheses that previously took days began structuring themselves in minutes. Competitive analysis that once required manual review surfaced patterns instantly. Data transformation workflows streamlined in real time.
Skepticism shifted to possibility.
We positioned AI as augmentation, not replacement. In a sector defined by professional expertise and accountability, that framing was critical. The goal was to elevate expert judgment, not automate it away.
Some teams left with working prototypes. Others left with detailed blueprints aligned to enterprise privacy and security requirements. Another team took away a re-prioritized set of additional tools to incorporate into a HIPAA-compliant environment. Every team left with a redesigned workflow.
Results
In five days, more than 100 leaders advanced 30 priority use cases tied directly to operational performance and competitive growth.
Early outcomes included:
- Significant reduction in manual research synthesis and data preparation
- Faster, more structured competitive intelligence to support high-stakes decisions
- Clear implementation pathways aligned to security and regulatory constraints
- A scalable model for continued AI-enabled workflow reinvention
Just as important was the mindset shift.
Participants stopped viewing AI as a tool sitting outside their work and began treating it as embedded infrastructure for how work gets done.
“This showed immediate relevance to our work.”
“Now I understand what’s actually possible for my team.”
“We just accomplished in two hours what used to take us two months.”
In a U.S. health insurance market where insight, speed, and precision directly influence who wins and who grows, the organization moved decisively from AI access to AI advantage.
Client need
Safety in the transportation industry has often been treated as a set of rules to follow and boxes to check. But one Spanish railway organization saw an opportunity to redefine safety as something far greater, a core value embedded into the culture of their company at every level.
This bold vision demanded more than compliance. It required a cultural transformation to challenge outdated behaviors, inspire teams, and empower leaders to embrace and model a safety-first mindset. For years, the organization had been working to foster a culture that prioritized protection over profit, setting new behavioral standards across the industry.
To accelerate this shift, the organization partnered with BTS to design a leadership development program that dismantled old practices and equipped leaders with the tools, insights, and behaviors needed to bring their vision to life.
- Deconstruct existing mindsets to enable cohesive change.
- Identify barriers preventing progress.
- Equip leaders with practical behavioral knowledge and tools.
Solution
BTS partnered with the organization to design a leadership journey that would reshape not just processes but perspectives, fostering a workplace where physical and psychological safety were paramount. Over eight months, the project team conducted interviews with leaders and focus groups to uncover critical behavioral insights and tailor the program to the organization’s unique needs.
Participants explored essential themes, including:
- Embedding safety into daily decision-making.
- Cultivating greater awareness of safety risks.
- Understanding the influence of their leadership on safety outcomes.
- Leading by example to set a cultural standard.
- Building trust, commitment, and open communication within their teams.
The program unfolded in three distinct phases to drive lasting behavioral change:
- Workshop preparation
Participants began with a self-assessment to uncover personal “safety blind spots” and mind traps. This phase, delivered through a custom online platform, helped leaders reflect on their current practices and prepare for the transformational journey ahead.
- Safety workshop
The one-day, immersive workshop was designed to spark deep conversations about safety culture, challenge ingrained mindsets, and equip participants with actionable strategies for change. Leaders engaged in real-world scenarios to explore the implications of their decisions and practice new behaviors. The day concluded with collaborative debrief sessions, leaving participants with practical tools to implement their insights immediately. - Implementation in action
To sustain momentum, the post-workshop phase extended over six months, offering six targeted activities. These activities reinforced key lessons, encouraged team collaboration, and provided ongoing support for integrating safety-first behaviors into daily routines.
The leadership program was delivered to 1500 participants over 66 workshops in seven locations across Spain.
Results
To measure results, the project team created a resource map evaluating progress.
Average completion rate of Activities One–Three: 57 percent. (One: 78.21%; Two: 53. 01%; Three: 40.57%)
A post-workshop survey was sent to participants, reporting on the following metrics:
- Average satisfaction — 4.7/5.
- Trainer’s evaluation — 4.9/5.
- NPS — 82 percent.
- “Saw improvement in safety alignment” — 93 percent.
- “Integrated safety tools in daily roles” — 82 percent.
- “Identified new initiatives for improving safety” — 77 percent.
- “Mitigated team/peer mind traps” — 93 percent.
- “More aware of risk in daily roles” — 98 percent.
- “Identified a normalized risk to work on” — 92 percent.
Testimonials
- “Many of the methodologies and tools not only help to improve safety but can also be used to improve operational or organizational processes.”
- “It has put us in front of the mirror of how we are today in terms of safety culture, opening our eyes to our development areas. Very participative and practical.”