World Economic Forum

• Behavioural Strategy Advisory

• Leadership Coaching

• Design and Implementation of Behavioural Experiments

Leadership is about more than bold ideas. It’s about making those ideas stick—turning ambition into action and action into culture. The World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders (YGL) program, an accelerator for innovative startups and scale-ups, wanted to do just that. These leaders didn’t just want to talk about responsible leadership; they wanted to live it and inspire their teams to do the same.

Together with YGL and Accenture, we designed behavioural experiments to embed real, measurable change into how leadership happens every day.

Overview

Big goals are easy to set. Living them out, every single day, is harder. For the YGLs, the challenge was clear: how to translate values like sustainability and responsibility into actions their teams could adopt and repeat.

Here’s what we uncovered:

1. Inconsistent behaviours:
   Teams struggled to connect daily actions with big-picture goals.

2. Overload:
   Change initiatives often felt overwhelming, leading to inertia instead of action.

3. No clear path:
   Without measurable steps, the journey to progress was undefined and unsustainable.

The question became:

How do you make meaningful change easy, actionable, and real?

The problem

At Alterkind, we believe the smallest changes often have the biggest impact. Behavioural experiments let us test bold ideas in low-risk ways, creating the foundation for sustainable transformation. Together with Accenture and other behaviour subject matter experts, we developed a framework to help YGLs lead change from the ground up.

Here’s how we did it:

1. Decode:

Used Accenture’s Sustainable Organisation Diagnostic to map current behaviours and uncover gaps.

2. Ideate:

Worked directly with YGLs to design practical experiments aimed at activating target behaviours.

3. Test:

Support the founders in running small pilots to validate ideas, measure effectiveness, and refine strategies in real-time.

This three-phase approach made change feel achievable, measurable, and rooted in the realities of each organisation.

Our approach

Pano AI’s Leadership Reset

Pano AI, a YGL-partnered start-up focused on wildfire prevention, was facing a cultural roadblock. Rapid growth and high stakes left team members hesitant to share challenges or ask for help. This lack of openness was limiting creativity and collaboration, two critical ingredients for their mission.

Here’s how we helped:

• Leadership modelling:
  Senior leaders set the tone by sharing their own challenges at the start of meetings, showing vulnerability as a strength.

• Structured sharing:
  Introduced a 20-minute segment in team meetings for employees to voice concerns and seek support, making openness part of their rhythm.

• Active listening:
  Trained the team in listening to understand rather than fix, fostering deeper connections and trust.

• Empathy in hiring:
  Shifted recruitment practices to prioritise empathy alongside technical skills, ensuring emotional intelligence became a core value.

Startup spotlight

Small, thoughtful interventions led to big shifts at Pano AI and beyond:

• Higher engagement:
  Team meetings became lively, with a clear increase in participation and contribution.

• Improved collaboration:
  Open communication led to smarter, faster problem-solving, strengthening wildfire detection strategies.

• A resilient culture:
  Employees felt supported, valued, and more connected to their mission.

“It really helped us cut through the noise and focus on what actually worked. It gave us something we could act on right away.”

Arvind Satyam, Chief Commercial Officer, Pano AI

Results

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