At my Global Investment Bank Client I was managing two Anti Money Laundering Transaction Monitoring streams for the EMEA region:

• the lead for for Transaction Monitoring Investigations processes and procedures (Operations) and
• the lead for Transaction Monitoring Financial Crime Analytics & Intelligence (FCA&I = alert generation).

The main stakeholder for both was a German Managing Director (MD) who was also the MD for Germany for the same Business AS Usual streams.

1. He wanted to be Global Head for investigations Processes and Procedures and for FCA&I
2. He wanted as much as possible to take place in Germany by moving Transformation from the UK to Franfurt.
3. He was known to be a difficult character and expected to push back on the project to make it fail by the UK transformation team.

After the first couple of weeks I experienced pushbacks and difficult behaviour as was predicted.

My task from my Programme Director was to persuade the MD that the change function could be executed by my team pre-dominantly based in the UK.

I and proposed and agreed with my Project Director I would travel to Frankfurt on my own cost to work most of my time there instead of travelling to London.

In Frankfurt I:

• got very close to the MD’s team and
• familiarised myself with the business, team dynamics and existing processes
• Educated myself on the German & European AML legislation  and labour laws and Data Privacy regulation
• Spoke a little bit of German which broke down some barriers
• worked closely with a Business Analyst I had on-boarded in Germany & the German EY as the partner chosen by the MD.

I expected to interact little with the MD on a day to day basis but I interacted a lot with his team and other influencers.

Outcome:

1. Feedback on me from the MD’s ‘inner circle’ was positive and this got back to him.
2. I could pitch ideas and plans at the right level and include the German and EMEA concerns before they had to be raised by the MD’s team.
3. Programme started to deliver quality product on time with leadership and direction from the UK.
4. When the MD became Global Head of Operations, I became the Global Programme Manager for this stream as one of his trusted lieutenants. After three months I reduced my travel to one week in Frankfurt and three in London per month.

• stakeholder management
• creative problem-solving
• programme management
• leadership

• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness