Cultivating alignment in the face of large-scale change

Client need

A global professional services firm delivering risk advisory and insurance solutions to companies, institutions, and individuals was undergoing a strategic transformation to accelerate growth, increase operational efficiency, and prepare for the future. To succeed, this transformation would require investments to streamline processes and platforms, along with a shift in how people work. To improve operations, the organization had already segmented the business and reduced layers, attempting to drive simplicity, transparency, and distributed decision making across the firm. However, adapting to the new operating model would require systemic change.

The organization’s chief human resources officer (CHRO) engaged BTS to help jumpstart the strategic transformation. BTS collaborated with the organization to create a program that would align the broader leadership team, comprised of everyone below the executive committee, to this transformation. The goals of the program was to help leaders translate the new strategy into something meaningful and actionable at their departmental level, and also to catalyze the broader leadership team’s strategy execution.

BTS created a highly contextualized business simulation, including presentations, facilitated discussions, and focused training, all of which were customized for the organization.

Solution

BTS began the design process by interviewing 18 senior executives across the organization. These senior executives included the CEO, COO, CHRO, and presidents of regional divisions. They were selected to provide a broad representation of and perspective on the organization. The goal of this research was to define two broad topic areas:

The Business – understanding the organization's business model, the markets in which it operates, and the unique challenges and opportunities it faces.

The People and Leadership – understanding the behavioral and mindset shifts the organization wanted to see in its people, leadership, and culture.

Following the interviews with top-level executives, BTS conducted eight additional interviews with mid-level executives. This allowed for insight into specific business units and challenges referenced in the previous set of interviews.

Interview responses were distilled into a list of themes and organized into an “impact map.” The map defined the business impact envisioned by the organization and linked it to the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and mindsets the organization sought to foster.

The organization’s steering committee reviewed the impact map with the goal of gaining alignment on their key challenges, desired behavioral shifts, and key business results.

To achieve these behavioral shifts, the company collaborated with BTS to design a business simulation modeled after the company’s business. The simulation created a risk-free, engaging, and fun way to achieve learning objectives, and was composed of three rounds experienced over a two-day program. Each round had a theme with distinct learning points.

Round one was designed for leaders to learn how to optimize today’s business in service of driving long-term profitable growth. This involved gaining an understanding of the business landscape, as well as familiarity with the decisions and trade-offs that such growth requires. Round Two focused on the client, becoming a strategic advisor to clients, and enhancing leaders’ abilities to execute. Round Three prepared leaders for a future of making long-term investments in order to develop a sustainable competitive advantage.

Leaders were divided into teams of five at the beginning of the program. Each team included participants from a diverse array of functional and geographic sections of the organization. The experience was composed of seven main elements:

1. Pre-Work and Introduction – Participants received a pre-start date reading assignment: a detailed case study featuring a fictitious company in a fictitious market environment. The company and market environment described were very similar to the organization and its environment. BTS facilitators kicked off the program by making a case for change, highlighting shifts in the market environment. Participants then broke off into pairs to reflect on those shifts and discuss what the changes meant for them as leaders. Then, BTS facilitators led a discussion wherein participants shared their reflections with the entire group.
2. Strategy Session – In teams of five, leaders came up with a strategy for how they would lead the simulated company.
3. Running the company - In their teams of five, leaders ran their simulated company by making over fifty critical decisions. Each team had their own designated breakout room where they would debate their decisions and enter them into a live digital-simulation platform. Periodically, teams would receive a “Wobbler,” which was an unexpected event that they had to respond to in real time (usually a competitor action, a client issue, or a talent issue). Their decisions impacted their KPIs and market share for each market and segment. Participants “ran the company” for three rounds, which represented a three-year timeframe.
4. Know-Hows – After each round of running the company, participants came back to the main room for a teach-piece or “know-how,” which were skill or knowledge gaps identified as needing to be addressed. After Round One, the topic was “effective decision-making.” For Round Two, it was “future-proofing.” Round Three’s topic was “feedback culture.”
5. Debriefs — With the entire group present, BTS facilitators reviewed the results for each team, linking the decisions that teams made to their performance. Each of the three rounds had a theme, and facilitators emphasized key takeaways related to these themes. At the end of each debrief, facilitators revealed where teams ranked against each other. Participants also received a report showing their team’s annual financial performance, along with another that summarized the competing teams’ performance.
6. Application Session – During these sessions, participants committed to post-program actions, recording them using an electronic tool. Following the completion of the program, participants received follow-up reminders of their commitments at a scheduled cadence.
7. Reflection Sessions — Solo reflections and team reflections were interspersed throughout the two-day program. During the solo reflections, which followed the know-how sessions and debriefs, participants reflected on what they had learned. After the “running the business” segments, participants reflected on their team dynamics. At the end of each day, BTS facilitated short discussions during which participants would share their reflections with the larger group.

To date, ten cohorts have gone through the program since its launch. Each cohort had 25 participants, all just below the C-suite.

At least ten more cohorts, each with a similar number of participants, plan to attend the program next year.

Results

Overall, the program was a great success. The CEO of the Italy division of the company concluded that the BTS program was “much better than any other session of its kind.” The CHRO and the executive team were enamored, and continued to communicate this in subsequent discussions. The organization also extended the original agreement to roll out even more programs.

In the application session section of the program, participants were asked to choose and commit to post-program actions related to on-the-job behaviors. Most frequently, they committed to actions around making informed decisions, prioritizing growth opportunities, and focusing on client relationships. These actions were aligned with the changes that the organization set out to make:

72% of participants stated or planned to have “tough conversations with colleagues about performance and/or with leaders about the business.”

74% of participants stated or planned to “focus on the broader client relationship and anywhere else you can solve risk for the client and align our value proposition.”

54% of participants stated or planned to “prioritize talent development, grow from within, and recruit externally when appropriate.”

Participant testimonials

“I thought this was the best training I’ve ever done. The learning from our team interactions was very illuminating. I loved the risk storming / pre-mortem methodology.”

“It was very useful for me, very genuine, and corresponded with reality. It was entertaining as well.”

“The simulation exercise was an outstanding learning tool. I would be very disappointed never to experience a similar exercise again AND would recommend that our company regularly use the software to measure learning.”

“The simulator tool was very comprehensive and intuitive. Enjoyed the cadence of mixing up sim time and organizational behavior group sessions in different teams. The feedback session was very useful. Excellent team of facilitators.”

Client need

A leading fashion retail company found itself at a crossroads post-spin-off from its larger parent company. With a new CEO at the helm, the executive team was determined to usher the company to a better, stronger future. In recent years, the company’s brand perception has taken a hit and loss favorability in the marketplace. With the momentum of a new CEO and strategy, the company turned to BTS to help address culture challenges and chart a path forward.

The client need:

• Evolved corporate values: The organization needed to redefine their values and codify their new aspirational culture.
• Executive alignment: The newly appointed executive team needed to align on the company's direction and values.
• Brand perception: The company was challenged with shifting the public perception of the brand, thus requiring a strategic approach to rebuild trust with the market.

Solution

At the beginning of the engagement, BTS assembled the executive team to participate in a series of alignment sessions designed to create an aligned vision about shaping the future culture, values, and ways of working across company. The goal of these sessions was to foster a shared vision amongst the leadership team on what needed to shift culturally to transform the company and regain the hearts and minds of the market.

Elements of the executive team alignment journey:

1. Culture assessment: An assessment designed to collect data on the existing culture to give the team an honest and real perspective on how the current culture is experienced across the organization.
2. Values re-articulation: A series of executive alignment sessions and focus groups conducted to shape the company's values and ensure they reflected the desired culture.
3. Leadership commitments: A set of leadership commitments, or expectations, aligned with the organization’s values to drive behavioral change at all levels of the organization—making the values practical and tangible.
4. Playbook creation: Crafting playbooks for both leaders and individual contributors that outline the critical moments and behaviors necessary for cultural transformation.
5. Engagement of the organization: To shift way of working and create the conditions for the values to stick, a series of digital engagement experiences was designed for leaders to cascade and engage their teams’ in the new values.

As a result, the organization would achieve a more cohesive and streamlined organizational dynamic, successfully reduce ambiguity, and cultivate a shared understanding.

Results

At the end of this journey, the organization was proud to have achieved the following:

1. Enhanced leadership alignment: The executive team was aligned on the new values and commitments, fostering a unified vision for the company.
2. Cultural embedding: The new values were integrated into talent processes and business operations, creating a consistent cultural foundation.
3. Positive perception shift: The organization experienced a positive shift in brand perception, with the executive team receiving overwhelming support from the board.
4. Simplified performance management: The values were seamlessly integrated into performance management, influencing talent acquisition and selection processes.

While the full impact of the culture transformation is still unfolding, early employee feedback is strong. The new values have already started shaping daily activities, emphasizing a sense of purpose, collaboration, and accountability throughout the organization.

The new CEO and the board of directors also expressed immense satisfaction with the transformation, noting that the new values perfectly captured the essence of the company's new vision and charted a clear and concise direction for the future.

Client need

A leading financial services company identified leadership alignment as a key strategic goal. They aimed to widen their leaders’ perspectives of the business and their strategic decisions. Additionally, the organization wanted to address critical leadership skills gaps, enhance trust and empowerment levels, and cultivate a talent development mindset.

Solution

The organization partnered with BTS to design and deliver a customized learning journey for their SVP and high potential Director and VP populations.  The solutions, depending on leader level, were between eight and 12 weeks long, and included:

• An Enterprise simulation in which participants compete in teams to build a strategy and run the bank using the strategy over a three-year simulated timeline.
• A moments-based leadership simulation based on Liz Wiseman's Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, which helps leaders tap into their teams’ natural genius to produce better business outcomes.
• A series of small group coaching sessions that:
• Create shared learning and act as follow-up for leaders’ commitments to operate as Multiplier Leaders.  
• Challenge participants to recognize the “signals” they send that may make it harder for other leaders to operate as Multipliers.
• Go deeper on adjacent topics like trust and driving a culture of Multipliers.

Results

The results of the organization’s engagement survey showed that participant’s teams rated their leaders more favorably in the following areas:  

• 11 percent improvement in the "opportunity to learn."
• 10 percent improvement in the "safe to speak up" factor.
• 9 percent boost in "effective collaboration."
• 6 percent increase in the overall employee engagement index.

Furthermore, most of the leaders’ managers (81 percent) rated their employees' performance improvement as a result of the learning journey as “high” or “very high.” Due to the program’s success, the organization decided to expand the use of Multipliers, incorporating it more deeply into the organization.

Participant quotes

“Having the team debate the issue, trying to see both sides, discussing, then all agreeing to a solution led to higher collaboration, more buy-in, and better execution.”

“I have noticed progress in the way that the team presents issues to me now. It is no longer just a presentation of facts and then a pause while they wait for me to suggest a solution. They come in prepared with their own views and we talk though each item.”

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:

1. 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.

3. 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.
4. 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.”

‍