When HomeToGo finalized its acquisition of Interhome, the company didn't just double its headcount from 750 to 1,500 overnight — it inherited a workforce carved out of a large corporate parent, operating across multiple countries with fragmented HR systems, no unified performance framework, and deeply ingrained expectations around structure that HomeToGo itself was still building. Stephanie Frenzel stepped into the CPO role in the middle of this integration, and her challenge became one of the most complex people problems a scaling company faces: how do you build a cohesive group culture across brands that need to retain their own identity, while simultaneously establishing the shared infrastructure — leadership principles, performance processes, one HRIS — that makes a group actually function as one? Her approach, balancing standardization where it matters with deliberate restraint where it doesn't, offers a playbook for any people leader navigating post-acquisition complexity at scale.