Big Four Multinational Bank
The Quest:
This multinational bank had recognised that they had underestimated the scope, complexity and tight deadlines to complete a major regulatory driven organisational development programme. Their competitors were already underway and making good progress. In total 9000 people were to be involved in the programme. This would lead to the authorisation of a key population of the workforce. The 6 months programme costing circa £15m had a fixed completion date which, if it slipped, would cost £3m per day in lost income. My (Arthur Basley) role was to co-lead the overall strategy through to implementation including the on-going management of 40 external centre managers/coaches/consultants.
The Route:
A strategic plan was developed aimed at delivering this very ambitious programme. Assessment Centre Guidelines were designed for use by the 12 development centre managers and their teams of coaches and external consultants. The heavily resourced roll-out took place over a 4 month period and a control and comms centre was established in the midlands to help support and co-ordinate the UK wide process. Regular conference calls to centre managers enabled sharing of best practice and mitigate inevitable issues and challenges usually associated with large scale organisational development.
The Outcomes:
This was the largest development and assessment project of its type ever undertaken by this division and led to the successful FSA authorisation of its entire General Insurance distribution, a core part of this banks business then generating £400m per annum profit. It was completed within the specified timescale and afterwards showing a year on year income increase of 24%.
“you played a significant role in ensuring the overall success of the programme, in particular your contribution to the overall assessment strategy, development of assessment tools, management and provision of external coaches and assessors, (9000 staff and their managers is not an insignificant amount of people even in bank terms). I always felt I could rely on you – critical from a project manager’s point of view. I have been really impressed by your ability to remain calm during a crisis and ability to steer others to a resolution. What was achieved was truly outstanding”……….Steve Garvey – Senior Project Manager – Top 4 Multinational Bank
