Leading Through Integration at Scale

Brad Enneking has spent the better part of his career leading technology through mergers and acquisitions. As CIO of Mutual Bancorp, he is approaching a year of guiding a financial institution through active integration. Before that, he held a similar role at a $20 billion holding company with 11 distinct brands. He has seen what integration looks like from both sides of the table, including once being on the receiving end when an acquisition displaced his entire team.

The banking industry is in the middle of another acquisition cycle. Deposit acquisition has become increasingly difficult, and for many institutions, buying another bank is the most viable path to growth. That means CIOs in this space are managing not just routine change, but compounding, overlapping system conversions, contract negotiations, and cultural shifts.

Enneking's perspective is shaped by that volume of experience. The patterns he describes are not theoretical.

The Compounding Drag of Parallel Systems

The technical side of integration is well understood on paper. Systems need to be evaluated, contracts reviewed, platforms consolidated. What catches leaders off guard is the compounding effect of doing all of it simultaneously.

"Each one you add to the mix increases the drag on all of the others," Enneking said. "You're doing ten, and suddenly you're at a 50% drag because people are multitasking. Somebody's got to coordinate all that."

Then there are the contracts. In one integration, the acquired bank had four years remaining on its core banking contract and five on its online banking platform. Buying out those contracts would cost millions. Living with them means maintaining parallel support groups for completely different technology stacks, for years. Every system you add to that list, from CRM to general ledger to online banking, multiplies the coordination burden.

Building a New Tribe

The technology, Enneking has found, is usually the easier part. The harder work is change management, and specifically, the tribal dynamics that surface when two organizations become one.

He described a pattern he has seen repeatedly. When an acquisition is announced, roughly 10% of the acquired organization's people immediately engage. Another 10% check out. The remaining 80% are watching and waiting, close enough to be nudged in either direction.

The leadership move that matters most, in Enneking's experience, is framing the integration as a shared creation rather than an absorption. "We're building a new tribe," he said. "There's not 'you're joining our tribe.' It's, we're building a new tribe, and everybody is going to join a new tribe."

At his previous organization, 11 brands were pulling in the same direction as long as each retained some autonomy. When that autonomy began to erode through charter consolidation, resistance followed. People read the trajectory before it was communicated, and engagement dropped.

The CIO Role Has Shifted Underneath Everyone

Enneking sees a broader shift accelerating alongside M&A complexity. The CIO role, he believes, has moved from 90% technology and 10% business to roughly the inverse. He described a recent town hall where the heads of retail, marketing, commercial, and finance all spoke as much about technology as their own domains.

"Technology leadership, especially the CIO position, has to take a giant step into the business space," he said. The CIO used to be more fungible across industries. That is less true now. Success in the role is fundamentally tied to understanding the specific business you serve.

Developing Leaders Who Can See the Whole Picture

One of the first things Enneking does when joining an organization or integrating a new team is define every role from CIO down to individual contributors. From that clarity, he begins delegating responsibilities that stretch his direct reports, particularly around budget ownership and strategic thinking.

Most senior IT leaders he has worked with had limited exposure to budgeting. Giving them ownership of that process changes how they prioritize and how they lead. The same is true for strategic planning. He pushes his teams to think in five-year horizons, so that daily decisions accumulate toward something intentional.

"I stress curiosity. Always asking why. If you don't understand, ask. If you don't like it, challenge it. Just always be wondering why."