For one of the world’s largest international investment banks, designed (and prepared a team to implement) an alternative operating model for the management of all aspects of the bank’s infrastructure, back office, and software development operations, to protect the bank as it entered today’s more volatile, competitive, and less secure era. The bank had already concluded (and begun to implement) extensive outsourcing as a key element of their strategy. As they began implementation, they discovered that they had a ‘tower of babel’ problem. The historically tight culture of the bank, embodied in their language as they spoke, listened, and understood each other, was broken by the profusion of new cultures entering the operational heart of the business. The central nervous system of the enterprise was damaged. The new operating model we provided fixed the problem and showed the path to removing over half the costs of operational administration. A senior group of experienced, highly intelligent people were trained in a more powerful way to think about and design their future, including methods for keeping disparate parts of the business working together smoothly, and a method of developing an unusual set competences that were going to be needed for future competitiveness.