Our clients
Trusted by leading organisations worldwide.
Client work
The work that defines us.
Five engagements. Five different challenges. One consistent outcome: something that actually changed.
Financial Services
UBS - Cultural Integration at Scale
“How do you align 20,000 employees from two industry giants into one unified culture?”
The challenge
The UBS/Credit Suisse merger was one of the largest integration challenges in recent banking history. Beyond the financial and operational complexity, there was a human question: how do you take two corporate cultures, each with deep identity and pride, and build something coherent, shared, and genuinely owned by everyone?
UBS needed more than a values exercise. They needed a programme that could scale across 5 continents, land consistently in every market, and create real behavioural change, not just awareness.
What EP did
Explore Performance designed a bespoke cultural integration programme with UBS senior leadership, using the Define -> Introduce -> Embed framework. The process started with C-level interviews and stakeholder engagement to surface the culture that already existed, before defining the values and behaviours UBS wanted to carry forward.
The programme was piloted at the GLF summit with 200 senior leaders using EP's Charting Your Future simulation, mapped directly to UBS's purpose and behaviours. From there, 20 facilitators delivered 150 two-hour sessions across the global organisation. Digital follow-on modules and team coaching sustained the behavioural change beyond the live experience.
The result: swift behavioural change and individual ownership of values across a newly unified organisation, at a scale most L&D providers would not attempt
Brandon Hall Gold
Best L&D Programme 2025
Brandon Hall Silver
Best Leadership Development 2025
The numbers
20,000+
leaders aligned
150
workshop sessions
20
facilitators
5
continents
8
months
Programme used
Charting Your Future - Define, Introduce, Embed culture transformation methodology
“Their approach is fun, unique and engaging. My team left energised and inspired.”
Doris Honold
Global Group COO, Standard Chartered Bank
Financial Services / Philanthropy
UBS - Social Impact Forum, Zurich 2026
“What do you do when everyone in the room has already achieved success?”
The challenge
Following the cultural integration programme, UBS invited Explore Performance to their 2026 Social Impact Forum in Zurich, bringing together their top 200 global philanthropists. The challenge was unlike a typical corporate brief: these are people who have already achieved success at the highest level.
They don't need inspiration. They don't need information. What they need, and what almost no forum delivers, is to have their thinking genuinely challenged and to leave with better questions, not just better answers.
What EP did
Explore Performance designed an immersive experience built around three triggers of meaningful conversation: challenging assumptions, creating shared experience, and asking better questions. Rather than presenting to the room, EP put the room into an experience, creating the conditions for the kind of deep, purposeful conversation that philanthropy leadership demands but rarely achieves.
The goal wasn’t to give answers. It was to shift thinking.
The numbers
200
global philanthropists
1
Social Impact Forum, Zurich
2026
delivered
Programme used
Into The Unknown - integrated as the event red thread across both days, mapped to four transformation imperatives
Technology / Financial Services
AWS Global Financial Services - Growth Under Pressure
“Growth doesn’t fail because of strategy. It fails because of decision-making.”
The challenge
AWS’s Global Financial Services team in Europe had a clear ambition: move from €500m to €1bn in revenue. The strategy existed. The talent existed. What was needed was a shift in how the commercial team - spanning Account Management, Solution Architecture, and Customer Success - thought, decided, and aligned under pressure in one of the world’s most complex client environments.
The challenge wasn’t more activity. It was better decisions: when to explore versus execute, how to balance risk with frugality, how to align multiple functions around a bold shared ambition.
What EP did
EP designed and delivered a two-day Into The Unknown experience across Madrid and London for 80-100 participants. The Tasman crossing simulation was chosen deliberately: it mirrors the AWS GFS challenge precisely, navigating ambiguity in complex environments, making confident decisions with incomplete information, and keeping a diverse team aligned around an exponential goal.
The programme was co-designed with the AWS GFS leadership team, with the simulation integrated directly into six strategic priorities: Explorer's Mindset in Growth, Challenging the Status Quo, Bold Unique Goals, Risk and Frugality, Ways of Working for Scale, and Alignment Under Pressure.
This was not a leadership event. It was a growth intervention, built to change how the team thinks, not just how they feel after two days in a room.
The numbers
80–100
participants
2
locations: Madrid + London
6
strategic growth priorities embedded
€500m → 1bn
revenue ambition
Programme used
Into The Unknown - Tasman Crossing simulation, co-designed with AWS GFS leadership team
Energy & Commodities Trading
Trafigura - Culture Discovery & Transformation
“If you can’t explain your culture, you can’t scale it.”
The challenge
Trafigura had grown rapidly into a global powerhouse, and with that growth came a cultural challenge many fast-scaling organisations face: an extraordinary culture existed, built by the people who had grown the business, but it had never been clearly defined.
With a new CEO in place, the question wasn't whether the culture was strong. It was whether it could be articulated clearly enough to be owned, scaled, and sustained as the organisation continued to grow across markets. If people can't explain your culture, they can't live it. They can't scale it. And they definitely can't hire for it.
What EP did
EP began with a discovery phase, qualitative interviews across 8 countries to understand the culture as it actually existed, not as leadership assumed it did. That data was consolidated and used to facilitate a Steerco session where EP helped the senior team define a clear purpose statement of 17 words or fewer, with associated values.
The output went to the CEO and ExCom for refinement until it was owned at the top. EP then mapped the defined culture to an adventure experience for global rollout, bringing the new purpose and values to life in a way that would be felt, not just read.
The programme is now scaling across the full Trafigura organisation, with future phases covering customer-facing delivery, new leader onboarding, and talent recruitment.
The numbers
8
countries - qualitative interviews
17
words - purpose statement
CEO & ExCom
sign-off
Global
rollout in progress
Programme used
Charting Your Future - Define, Introduce, Embed culture transformation methodology
Future phases
- Delivering the culture experience to Trafigura customers
- New leader onboarding - culture felt from day one
- Talent recruitment - using the expedition content at career fairs
Pharmaceuticals
Sanofi - International Regional Summit Launch
“You only get one shot at the first moment. How do you make it count?”
The challenge
AWS's Global Financial Services team in Europe had a clear ambition: move from 500m to 1bn in revenue. The strategy existed. The talent existed. What was needed was a shift in how the commercial team, spanning Account Management, Solution Architecture, and Customer Success, thought, decided, and aligned under pressure in one of the world's most complex client environments.
The challenge wasn't more activity. It was better decisions: when to explore versus execute, how to balance risk with frugality, how to align multiple functions around a bold shared ambition.
What EP did
EP designed and facilitated the opening half-day, deploying the Into The Unknown simulation as the experiential canvas for Sanofi's 'Be The Flame' leadership theme. Rather than presenting the leadership imperatives through slides, EP put 200 leaders into the simulation, navigating uncertainty, pressure, and decisions without perfect information.
The debrief was mapped directly to the behaviours Sanofi needed to bring to life: anti-fragility, focus, teamwork, and collaboration in a VUCA environment. The new leadership imperatives were introduced through the simulation, not alongside it.
The result was an opening that aligned two worlds around a shared experience before a single strategic update had been delivered.
The numbers
200
leaders - Vaccines & Pharma
1
first-ever joint regional summit
0
slides - experience-first opening
Programme used
Into The Unknown - Tasman Crossing simulation, mapped to Sanofi's 'Be The Flame' leadership theme and new leadership imperatives
Technology
NetApp - Directors Summit
"The behaviours were defined. The gap was activation."
The challenge
NetApp was undergoing one of the most complex internal transformations in its recent history: five teams becoming one. The strategy was clear at the top. Execution would happen at the frontline. But transformation, as it always does, would succeed or fail at Director level.
The brief, in short: do not let this become another event they forget by Friday. It needed to be memorable, provoke real action, and be different to anything these 200+ Directors had experienced before. Explore Performance needed to be the thread that drew the entire two days together and turned strategy into behaviour.
What EP did
EP designed and facilitated a two-day Directors Summit in Las Vegas, deploying Into The Unknown as the experiential backbone of the event, not as a session within the agenda, but as the thread running through both days.
The simulation was integrated around four transformation imperatives: alignment to customer value, embracing change and leading transformation, AI as an enabler of growth, and clear accountability and ownership at Director level. Participants weren't told what transformation looks like. They were put into it, making real-time decisions under pressure, with consequences, in a setting where there was no hiding and no passive listening.
The numbers
200+
Directors across 5 teams
2
days - Las Vegas
4
transformation imperatives embedded
Programme used
Into The Unknown - integrated as the event red thread across both days, mapped to four transformation imperatives
Technology
Heineken
“5 teams. 1 direction. Most transformations fail in the middle.”
The challenge
Heineken's HR and Talent function came to us with a clear picture of what they wanted their leaders to do differently. The leadership behaviours existed. The ambition was there. What was missing was a delivery model that could reach enough people, often enough, to actually shift culture rather than demonstrate intent
Running an external provider-led programme 30 times in a year is logistically complex, commercially prohibitive, and creatively flat by the fifth iteration. They needed something built to scale from the inside.
What EP did
Thirty workshops in twelve months, delivered entirely by Heineken's own people. The Everest simulation gave their internal facilitators a vehicle that is experiential and memorable by design - leaders engage with it differently to a conventional workshop. And because the content is grounded in a real expedition, the emotional resonance holds across every cohort, not just the first.
Heineken now have a living capability inside their organisation. One that grows stronger with each delivery, rather than depending on external resource to keep it alive.
Programme used
Into The Unknown - integrated as the event red thread across both days, mapped to four transformation imperatives
Recognition
Gold standard design. Award-winning execution.
In 2025, Explore Performance won Gold and Silver at the Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards, the most recognised awards in learning and leadership development.
The wins recognised three things that separate EP from every other provider:
The awards were won for the UBS cultural integration programme, 20,000 employees, 5 continents, 150 sessions, 8 months. The most ambitious culture programme we have ever delivered.
Brandon Hall Gold
Brandon Hall Gold
Brandon Hall Silver
Best Leadership Development 2025
Design and customisation built on trust
We refine ideas in collaboration with clients and build programmes authentic to their culture. We are not an off-the-shelf solution.
Operations that deliver without burnout
We excel in delivering complex, large-scale programmes across different time zones, regions, and schedules.
Facilitators who create consistent impact across borders
Our facilitators blend local insight with content expertise, delivering energising, impactful experiences at every single event.
Who we work with
Trusted by leading organisations across every major industry.
From global financial institutions to the world’s fastest-growing technology companies.
Financial Services
Technology
Consumer & FMCG
Pharma & Life Sciences
Professional Services
Energy, Commodities & Industrial
Government, Education & Other
What Our Clients Say
In their words.
“This was the best run virtual event we’ve ever had and it created more positive energy than we thought was possible.”
Fredrik Nylander
SVP Services EMEA, Workday
“Their approach is fun, unique and engaging. My team left energised and inspired.”
Doris Honold
Global Group COO, Standard Chartered Bank
“EP does a great job of emotionally engaging participants behind a common goal. A valuable and impactful experience.”
Frank Luburic
Head of Global Sales Operations, HP Inc
“I would highly recommend Explore Performance to anyone seeking to bring their team together for a high-impact offsite.”
Serap Keskin
Head of Allianz Technology