Developing leaders into coaches: Transforming culture using coaching

Client need

A large U.S.-based health insurance federation operating at the center of a complex national ecosystem, covering tens of millions of Americans, 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. Bid 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.

The Medical Policy team was synthesizing evidence across hundreds of policies, working to keep pace with FDA approvals and evolving clinical guidelines. The work required rigor and judgment, and it also demanded repetitive synthesis that consumed days when it needed to take hours.

Market intelligence teams were reviewing competitor RFPs manually in markets where competitive pressure was tightening and millions of covered lives were at stake over the next several years. The opportunity was significant, but so was the risk of falling behind in insight and speed.

Actuarial and security teams faced similar friction. Highly trained professionals were spending valuable time stitching together data, transforming files, and correlating inputs across systems.

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 own work into the room. Medical policy frameworks. RFP responses. Threat intelligence reports. Actuarial 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 RFP 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. The IT 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 bids
• 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.

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Client need

A leading global aluminum manufacturer faced a pivotal challenge: how to create a unified, empowered workforce in a highly decentralized organization. Each business unit operated autonomously, making it difficult to align global learning with local needs. The company recognized the need for enterprise-wide development programs that supported its business and HR strategies while preserving local flexibility.

To meet this challenge, the organization launched a Corporate Learning University—a multi-year initiative to transform its approach to employee development. BTS collaborated with HR and L&D leaders to co-create a comprehensive portfolio of programs tailored to different roles and career stages across the enterprise.

Solution

The transformation began with a clear vision: align learning with strategic outcomes to unify and empower a decentralized workforce. BTS worked with the company to create an impact map linking business priorities—financial performance, safety, and employee engagement—to the behaviors and skills required at each level of the organization.

The map established three key learning objectives:

• Foster unity and collaboration across a decentralized structure.
• Strengthen business acumen to improve contribution and decision-making.
• Build a shared leadership identity aligned with company values.

Using these objectives as a foundation, BTS and the client designed programs for every stage of the employee journey.

For mid-level leaders, a nine-month Leadership Development Program combined two in-depth workshops with an online learning journey:

• Leading Self: Introduced Liz Wiseman’s Multipliers framework, enabling leaders to expand their teams’ capacity through role-plays and practical exercises.
• Leading the Business: A three-day custom business simulation where participants acted as CEOs, balancing profitability, safety, and customer satisfaction across simulated fiscal years.

The learning ecosystem expanded beyond mid-level management to include: Frontline leader training focused on operational excellence and people management.

Executive development sessions designed for senior leaders to strengthen strategic alignment and culture building.

By embedding strategy directly into every program, the company built a cohesive, enterprise-wide learning culture that reinforced leadership capability, collaboration, and business impact.

Results

The co-created programs delivered measurable, strategic outcomes across safety, engagement, and financial performance.

Key results included:

• Financial performance: Optimized production schedules and reduced inventory, improving cash flow.
• Operational efficiency: Empowered managers to focus on asset utilization and controllable budget items.
• Cultural transformation: Embedded the Multipliers framework to drive collaboration, daily CapEx reviews, and safety-oriented onboarding for new hires.
• Leadership excellence: Increased coaching and feedback frequency, improving communication and alignment across teams.

These initiatives not only elevated employee engagement but also positioned the company as an industry leader in workplace culture and performance.

By integrating business and HR strategy into a unified learning ecosystem, BTS helped the manufacturer achieve its vision of becoming the most exciting place to work and invest—demonstrating the power of tailored, results-driven leadership development.

Client need

The snack industry is undergoing a profound shift. Changing consumer preferences, increased focus on sustainability, and the dominance of digital engagement are transforming how brands operate. For a leading multinational snack company, incremental adjustments were no longer sufficient. They needed a bold, strategic transformation in how Revenue Growth Management (RGM) was deployed across the organization to stay competitive in this evolving landscape.

The company recognized that to grow sustainably, they needed to equip their teams with the skills to drive stronger insights and greater agility. It wasn’t just about optimizing operations—it was about empowering employees to make data-driven decisions that would:

• Manage a diverse product portfolio effectively
• Expand market share while driving net revenue and profitability
• Broaden their consumer base without compromising relationships with existing consumers

This upskilling initiative would align their workforce with both immediate market shifts and long-term growth objectives.

Solution

The organization partnered with BTS to design a comprehensive program aimed at building Revenue Growth Management competencies and aligning team members with the company's new RGM strategy and execution. This long-term investment focused on equipping employees at all levels with the skills needed to navigate a complex and competitive market.

The program consisted of three levels of courses, with each level tailored to the participants’ roles within the company. These levels ranged from foundational RGM concepts to specialized, hands-on learning experiences:

Level 1 and Level 2 courses included:

• A simulated university setting that immersed participants in interactive, high-fidelity storytelling and real-world business narratives.
• Two self-paced modules where leaders engaged with real-world shopper scenarios, reinforcing their understanding of smart pricing, price pack architecture, investment optimization and budget allocation by customer.
• Practical lessons on managing product portfolios and maximizing profitability, designed to connect employees' day-to-day roles with broader organizational objectives.

Level 3 advanced certification for senior leaders involved a deeper level of mastery through a two-day simulated experience:

• Participants completed pre-work, incorporating research data and strategic insights from the first two levels.
• Teams developed fictitious business plans in a controlled, risk-free environment, allowing them to apply new skills and test strategies in real time.
• Leaders built a strategic PPA to foster long-term RGM thinking.
• A final application assessment judged by a panel of facilitators, evaluating the participants' ability to drive desired business outcomes.

The Level 1 and 2 courses were delivered virtually via Workday, enabling the project team to track key metrics and engagement in real time. The Level 3 course was delivered in person at a global summit. To ensure maximum impact, local market leaders played an active role in tailoring communication and engagement plans, targeting regional business units effectively.

Results

The impact of the Level 1 and 2 programs were immediate and measurable. Just two weeks after completing their courses, participants were tested on their learning, and nearly all of them met or exceeded the certification threshold:

• 4,000 leaders completed the entry-level training by April 2024.
• 74% of participants earned their certification with a passing score of 80% or higher.
• The program achieved a 98.5% average pass rate, with the remaining 25% representing those still in the process of completing their certification.

Participants who completed the program reported:

• Greater confidence in applying their financial skills to optimize decision-making and support the company’s growth objectives.
• Enhanced ability to contribute to both organizational success and their own professional development.

The advanced-level training for executive leaders is currently underway, featuring a two-day simulated experience designed to further embed Revenue Growth Management capabilities at the highest levels of the organization. Through this upskilling initiative, the company is building a more agile, financially savvy workforce ready to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing industry and sustain long-term growth.

Client need

A large U.S.-based health insurance federation operating at the center of a complex national ecosystem, covering tens of millions of Americans, 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. Bid 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.

The Medical Policy team was synthesizing evidence across hundreds of policies, working to keep pace with FDA approvals and evolving clinical guidelines. The work required rigor and judgment, and it also demanded repetitive synthesis that consumed days when it needed to take hours.

Market intelligence teams were reviewing competitor RFPs manually in markets where competitive pressure was tightening and millions of covered lives were at stake over the next several years. The opportunity was significant, but so was the risk of falling behind in insight and speed.

Actuarial and security teams faced similar friction. Highly trained professionals were spending valuable time stitching together data, transforming files, and correlating inputs across systems.

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 own work into the room. Medical policy frameworks. RFP responses. Threat intelligence reports. Actuarial 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 RFP 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. The IT 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 bids
• 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.

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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.”

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Over the years, BTS has expanded its global footprint through thoughtful acquisitions and collaborations, bringing new creative capabilities and local expertise into the fold. From digital design studios to leadership consultancies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, we’ve built a community that blends shared values with local perspective. That diversity has become one of our greatest strengths, shaping how we design and deliver learning that feels deeply personal everywhere we work.

Whether someone is in a leadership journey in Singapore, a coaching program in São Paulo, or a strategy workshop in Stockholm, the goal is always the same: to make the experience feel like it was made just for them.

Many of those experiences live on Momenta, BTS’s digital experience platform, powering journeys like Coaching, Multipliers, and other core programs.

As those experiences grew, so did the need for nuance. Every journey had to feel local, not just sound translated. Tone, humor, and cultural context have always been central to the BTS approach, and as demand expanded across formats and regions, our translation model was ready for its next evolution.

In early 2024, the team began exploring how AI could help. Rather than treating technology as the destination, we saw it as a catalyst, a way to rethink translation and deliver richer, more customized client experiences at scale. That curiosity sparked one of BTS’s most ambitious AI-first experiments, led by our Global Product Enablement Function team in partnership with our global network of linguists and translators.

Shifting to AI-first

The next step was finding the right place to experiment. Enter Phrase, a cloud-based translation management platform that quickly became our test lab. Phrase brings every part of the translation process into one place, from machine translation engines to human review, terminology management, and workflow tracking. It gives our linguists, designers, and project teams a shared space to collaborate, test ideas, and learn.

Over the next few months, two key discoveries reshaped how we think about translation, and ultimately, how we work.

Key discovery 1: Making AI a teammate

We began with a clear goal: make translation faster and more consistent. Using Phrase, AI handled the first drafts while our linguists refined them. Quickly, we realized there was potential for AI-value that went far beyond speed.  

With AI completing the first 80% of the work in a fraction of the time, our linguists could focus on what matters most: nuance, tone, and cultural resonance. The relationship evolved from oversight to collaboration, AI structured and scaled, humans shaped and elevated.

The result was more than efficiency. It was better work, created by people and technology learning to amplify each other.

Key discovery 2: Turning a roadblock into a redesign

Next came a design challenge. Phrase, like most translation tools, struggled with text embedded in graphics, a hallmark of many BTS learning experiences. Instead of forcing the tool to adapt, we changed how we created.

We began designing with translation in mind: simplifying visuals, reducing text, and using modular components that could flex across languages. The constraint sparked better design, easier to scale, more consistent, and more inclusive for every audience.

Key discovery 3: Integrating systems for scale

With people, AI, and design in sync, the last barrier was process. Managing translations between Phrase and Momenta still required manual effort.

To fix that, we built an API integration linking the two platforms. Now, files move automatically, progress is tracked in real time, and everything stays connected.

That integration turned our workflow into a unified ecosystem, fast, transparent, and ready to scale globally.

Business impact

Just 18 months ago, our translation reviews lived in double-column Word docs. Today, we work in a fully connected, AI-first ecosystem. Each project feeds the next, refining prompts, tone profiles, and design patterns, so our translation process keeps getting faster, smarter, and more aligned with BTS’s voice.

Speed and quality. Translation cycles that once took months now wrap up in weeks, cutting turnaround times by over 40%. Phrase’s tools and AI-powered workflows accelerate production while maintaining quality through expert-approved reuse, glossaries, and automated quality checks. Even complex formats like videos and animations are localized faster, with AI supporting linguists at every step.

Smarter workflows. The integration between Momenta and Phrase automates project transfers and tracking, saving an estimated 2.5 hours per project. Teams across language, digital, and project management now collaborate in one streamlined environment.

Human focus. Our linguists remain the engine of quality and innovation. With AI managing repetitive tasks, they focus on nuance and meaning, and go further by creating specialized GPTs, training databases, and testing translation engines to continually raise the bar.