Legacy Company Adapting to New Environment

Situation

Our client, a large regional US bank, was challenged on two fronts. After a long successful period of growth, an ageing executive team found operating in the new regulatory environment called for new approaches and skills sets they didn’t have. CLA was brought in to help build their successor bench and develop new business practices.

CLA Approach

CLA approached the work on several fronts: (1) CLA provided executive level coaching and intact team facilitation with the client’s top team to diagnose the challenges facing the organization, make tough trade offs between competing priorities and ensure strategic alignment. (2) CLA also worked closely with teams comprised of select senior leaders across the bank over 6-18 months. CLA offered hands-on support and guidance of project and intact teams tackling the Adaptive Challenges that were impeding their continued growth – challenges like repositioning the Finance Team from a reactive quality review function to a pro-active advisory role; pushing decision-making deeper in one of the commercial lines; helping the HR Team realign themselves to be more strategic and less transactional; and worked with the office of the Chairman to revamp the senior team trying to balance the operational and successor needs of the bank and the executives involved.

Results

The bank has continued on its growth trajectory, earning record profits last year. The transition of the new team is still underway as are the projects across the senior vice president group. CLA continues to serve in a trusted advisory role across the bank. Despite the recent loss of one of the three most senior executives, the bank continues to hold the market’s confidence and uninterrupted increase in shareholder value (as measured by ebita.)