Two Banks, One Competency Model, Six Months
You are the talent development lead at a newly merged regional bank with 5,000 employees: 3,100 from the larger legacy bank and 1,900 from the acquired bank. The integration office has asked you to 'build a competency model and train all managers' within six months. Engagement fell from 78 to 61 in the first combined survey, voluntary turnover among high performers rose from 7 to 14 percent, and 38 percent of managers are new to managing. The two legacy performance management systems remain separate, and calibration starts in 90 days. The L&D catalogs contain 210 courses with an estimated 40 percent overlap; two vendors are under contract with different content standards. Your budget is $250,000 plus two temporary staff. The CEO wants 'one culture,' the CHRO wants a leadership pipeline, and line leaders want fewer interruptions. You have four weeks to bring a plan to the integration steering committee.
1. The integration office wants a competency model and manager training in six months. What do you accept, decline, and sequence in the first 90 days?
Read the worked answer
Decline the framing, not the goal. 'Build a model and train all managers' is a content-first plan that will consume six months, arrive after calibration, and miss the reason high performers are leaving. The evidence points to unclear performance expectations, inconsistent management, and merger uncertainty.
Accept a narrower first mandate: align performance management and manager capability before building a comprehensive model. In the first 90 days: (1) diagnose with existing data - exit interviews, engagement drivers by legacy company and manager, calibration variance, internal mobility; (2) convene a design group with both legacy banks and line leaders; (3) define five or six leadership expectations tied to the combined strategy, reusing valid content rather than starting blank; (4) build a calibration toolkit and a 90-minute manager briefing before the calibration window; (5) freeze new course purchases and inventory the 210 courses for overlap.
Sequence deliberately: performance management alignment first, manager support second, a fuller competency model later if it earns its keep. Training alone will not fix a system that still runs on two performance processes.
Name the trade-off to the steering committee: a smaller scope with a visible calibration win builds credibility for the larger culture work. A big model delivered late does not.
2. How do you govern and resource this with $250,000 and two temporary staff?
Read the worked answer
Governance: a steering group with the integration office, CHRO, and two line leaders, meeting every two weeks, with decision rights for scope and vendor spend. A working group does the design; you chair it. This prevents both HR-only design and endless consultation.
Resourcing: use the two temps for data analysis, course inventory, and scheduling, not for design judgment. Allocate budget in three buckets: about 40 percent to manager capability and calibration, 30 percent to content consolidation and translation, 20 percent to measurement, and 10 percent contingency. Do not spend on a new LMS during integration.
Buy versus build: buy calibration tools and assessment content if they fit; build the leadership expectations and manager briefings with internal people so they reflect both cultures. Consolidate vendors: two contracts with different standards is a hidden cost and a message of separateness.
Quick wins: publish the calibration toolkit and run the first manager briefing within 60 days. Nothing builds a mandate like a tool line leaders actually use.
Risk register: works council consultation, data privacy in engagement analytics, and vendor exit costs. Review monthly with the steering group.
3. How will you know in 12 months whether organizational capability improved?
Read the worked answer
Set a small set of measures with baselines before you start. Organizational capability is not a training completion rate. Use: voluntary turnover of high performers (baseline 14 percent), engagement score and its drivers (61), calibration consistency across legacy groups, manager readiness assessed by their teams, internal mobility into critical roles, and adoption of the calibration toolkit and manager briefings.
Compare where possible. Track legacy-bank groups separately for the first year; convergence is the signal. Use pulse surveys at 90 and 180 days rather than only the annual survey. Add qualitative evidence from focus groups with high performers who stayed and with those who left.
Be careful with attribution. Many integration factors affect turnover. Report trends and plausible contribution, not proof. Where feasible, compare teams whose managers completed the briefings early with those scheduled later.
Create a review rhythm. A quarterly one-page scorecard to the steering committee with red/amber/green status and a decision requested, not a data dump. If high-performer turnover has not improved by two quarters, change the intervention rather than defending it. The point of measurement is to learn and reallocate, not to prove the plan was right.