JAMES H. BLANCHARD
When Jim Blanchard was chairman and CEO of Synovus Financial, it was honored by Fortune magazine as the #1 Best Company to Work For in 1999 and was later admitted into a newly created Hall of Fame. Why? Because, as I learned when I was asked to work with Synovus a number of years ago, Jimmy and his management team all were—and still are—humble servant leaders. As you read his essay, you’ll see why I thought it was important to include Jim’s story. He and I are not related, but I would be happy to adopt him because of his caring heart. May Jim’s dream be your dream and his hope your reality. —KB
It’s never too late for a leader to stand up in a bad culture and decide to build a great one. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that. The seeds of the servant leadership culture at Synovus go all the way back to 1888 when the founders of Columbus Bank and Trust Company were in the cotton mill business.
One day when a woman was working on a loom in the mill, her skirt got caught on the machine. The hem ripped and her life savings came spilling out onto the floor. To her, the hem of her skirt was the safest place to keep her money. That day, the founders decided they could do better for their employees—so they started a bank that would serve as a trusted place for their workers’ life savings.
The idea of serving people was not an add-on to the Synovus culture. On the contrary—it was the very DNA that spawned its existence. The culture began the moment that woman’s savings spilled onto the floor.
What began as a mission of service to employees expanded to a commercial bank with a mission of service to customers. By 1957, CB&T had become a major player in the community by doing what it did best: serving people with integrity. Into that environment my father, James W. Blanchard, entered as president. He embraced the service culture easily because that was who he was—someone who always pushed for excellence and strived for the next level of success, but never at the expense of others. Let me give you an example.
When my father was named president of the bank, we learned it would require a move to Columbus, Georgia, from our home in Valdosta—175 miles away. I was about to be a junior in high school and didn’t want to move. My father didn’t shut me down; in fact, he said, “Okay, in a few months when it gets to be that time, we can look at getting you an apartment here for your junior and senior years.” When the time came, I found myself saying, “So tell me more about Columbus!”
Being a great leader, my father accomplished his desired outcome: I was ready to do what he wanted and it felt like my idea. I think he even would have rented that apartment for me, but he didn’t have to. His openness to show me that my needs mattered gave me the freedom to see the move for what it was—a better opportunity. But don’t overlook the fact that at the same time my dad was caring for us, he was making the move to the next level. He was going to Columbus.
The blend of caring for people and driving for more was shown throughout the next era at CB&T. My father took the existing service culture being delivered to CB&T’s customers to the next level: outward, into the broader community CB&T served—the Chamber of Commerce, the United Way, the Association of the United States Army, and other organizations. Employees learned how to create new banking relationships and the entire community gradually became part of the customer family as well.
The people of Columbus took a liking to CB&T and its approach to doing business. My father had solidified the service culture with his successful drive to develop relationships in the community. Then, right in the middle of his incredible career, Dad’s life was cut short. He died of lung cancer in January 1969.
When the owners of the bank approached me about becoming the new president, I left my law practice and took my father’s place. When I accepted the position, I inherited the culture my father had so deliberately enhanced from the one that had existed since the bank’s founding. Throughout the 1970s my colleagues and I took that culture forward, emphasizing the great tradition of service and community involvement, and grew the bank substantially.
Focusing on business performance always went hand in hand with mindfully serving our people and the community. It drove our growth and made Synovus an inspiring place to work. As we acquired more banks, I realized something: it was hard to transport a culture and overlay it on other cultures. But it had to be done. We wanted this culture to be built into all of our banks. It required us to systematize culture building as a strategy. We got very intentional about it and saw it as a key differentiator for our business.
While our strategy was moving our growth forward, I always knew it was our culture that made it happen. At some point in the early 1980s, the patriarch of the bank, Bill Turner, came into my office with a book Robert K. Greenleaf had written on servant leadership. Bill tossed the book on my desk and said, “Jim, this is exactly what we have been doing. We just didn’t know what to call it!”
We knew we wanted to become the finest financial institution in the world and that the key would be a very focused strategy toward that end. Our culture was great, but we wanted more—so we needed to learn more. About that time, I met Ken Blanchard. He helped us understand what servant leadership looks like. He taught us that leaders must see themselves on the bottom of an upside-down pyramid—that’s where they serve the entire organization using their power, resources, influence, and everything else leadership affords. Ken and other leadership experts helped us learn how servant leadership concepts fit into running a successful business.
A few criticized us, saying the approach was too soft and permissive. So we had to prove it was the exact opposite—that people who were loved, respected, and prepared would perform better. Servant leadership led to higher performance and there was nothing permissive about it—we loved our people and we expected high performance. I believe that if you truly care about someone, you will not only love them but also expect the best from them and hold them to it.
There’s no doubt that servant leadership is by far the best way to see business results. But this is important: we did not implement a service culture for the purpose of getting people to perform better or for a better bottom line. We did it because it was the right thing to do—a worthy goal in and of itself. It is simply the way people should be treated.
We created a new position in the company and filled it with one of our top marketing officers, Nancy Buntin. Nancy had a genuine heart for our culture and a steadfast love for our team members. Part of her job was to come into my office on a regular basis, ball up her fists, and remind me about our culture and always taking care of our people first. You see, it’s natural for a CEO to get caught up in financial performance, owner demands, politics, etc.—to get spread thin on important matters and forget to tend to the most significant job of all. Nancy made sure I never drifted away from the people who gave their best to a company that loved and appreciated them.
Nancy was a big part of our continued progress. Over the years, others played huge roles in our journey: Lee Lee James, Rob Ward, Alison Dowe, Marty Stephens, Lisa White, Stephanie Alford, Susan Charron, and many more—and, of course, our senior executives who never wavered.
In 1996 we established a series of initiatives called the People Development Exponent (PDE), designed to raise each individual’s development to a higher level. We implemented it from top to bottom with a lot of structure. This was not merely a new program—it would be a way of life. PDE required major changes from our team members, whose loyalty and passion was our ultimate secret sauce. We oriented all new employees to the concepts and let them know they would be expected to conform to it as an element of the Synovus culture.
As part of PDE, we instituted best practices in human performance and spent a lot of time on leadership training and development. We knew this culture was something our leadership team was going to have to model and support, so we poured a lot into developing our leaders and future leaders. Our team knew we were serious because we put emphasis on training people in not only business and banking, but also in culture and leadership. In fact, the most serious move we made may have been the establishment of our Leadership Institute—an executive leadership training program of equal caliber to programs at Harvard, Stanford, and other top universities.
Another major effort was our Tuesday morning company-wide meeting, which included business updates and strategy information as well as a culture segment, which I hosted. I spent my time drumming in the importance of treating people well and building a servant leadership culture. I knew this repetitive message directly from the CEO was key. People need to know what matters most to their leaders—and when the message is supported by actions, programs, performance reviews, training, celebration, promotion, and reward, they get it.
Like any other business strategy, we knew for this culture initiative to have results we would have to measure it, hold people accountable to it, train to it, and deliver it. So we created an evaluation system that included financial components to the metrics on culture as well as feedback from employees, customers, and stakeholders. You have to treat culture like a business plan: everything you do for financial performance must be done for culture as well.
By 1998 we were doing well. People were thriving, growing, and fulfilled. We continued to acquire more banks and financial companies and bring them into our culture. Performance was thriving as well. We were setting records and were at the top of the industry in almost every metric.
Then we got a surprise—we learned that what we were doing had been noticed by people outside the company. We were named the #11 Best Company to Work For by Fortune magazine. What a thrill! We celebrated and were so happy—but the coolest thing was that our people were happier that we had that kind of culture than they were that we got an award for it. We all wanted to be this way. Some thought we should have made a bigger deal of it PR-wise, but we knew doing the right thing was its own reward—it’s not about trying to get attention and turning it into a marketing trophy. We had accomplished this for real reasons and we did not want that to change.
Then one year later, in 1999, it happened again—except this time we were at the top of the chart: Fortune’s #1 Best Company to Work For! What an incredible validation that was for our people—for everything we were doing for each other. It made me so proud of everyone and so fulfilled to be at Synovus. And we celebrated again. This time, a thousand people came together for the celebration and I was presented the award on behalf of all of us. True to our culture, I came in directly from a quail hunt, was late to the celebration, and walked on stage in hunting clothes! I think people loved it. It was a great example of how just being real was at the heart of who we wanted to be. Real people taking care of each other. And at the same time, we were one of the very best financial institutions in the world. It felt great!
Although we kept the celebration alive for a while, we didn’t forget our real purpose—to continue this kind of culture for our people. I told everyone I was proud of them and wanted them to know I would be doing everything possible every day to make Synovus even better and more humble. I told them every day we wanted to be more and more like Chick-fil-A. I love that company and I knew it could be done.
We continued to strive for and maintain a culture where everyone was treated with respect no matter their status or ability to help us. We treated people the way we would want to be treated and we told stories about how to treat others. One of my favorites came to be known as “the bedbug story.”
A Southern gentleman was traveling by train from Atlanta to Washington. When he got into his berth on the train, he realized the bed was loaded with bedbugs. After he returned from the trip, he wrote to the CEO of the railroad and told him of the experience. He was sure the CEO would take action. Sure enough, he received a nice letter from the CEO who assured him that the problem had been addressed and would never occur again. The customer noticed that the CEO’s letter was attached to the customer’s original letter. To his surprise, handwritten across the top of his original letter were the words “Send this [blankety-blank] the bedbug letter.”
Unfortunately, this is an example of the way people are still treated by too many businesses. Insincere. Uncaring. Too busy to take time to listen.
We wanted our people to care for others sincerely and without hypocrisy, so the bedbug story was used a lot. We even joked about it when debating with each other, saying, “I’m going to send you the bedbug letter.” It became part of the fabric of our culture to remind each other of the importance of sincerity.
Driving on, we created working groups around every element of the culture. Team leaders were responsible for holding their teams to cultural development. Our cultural trust committee met each month, with leaders rotating each year, to hold the company accountable for walking the talk. Our performance ratings were always at the top levels of the industry. I told our people if we didn’t make our numbers and stay at the top, I would be gone and they would have to get used to another CEO! Our culture was the starting point. It was sacred.
No garden grows to be beautiful without pruning weeds, infected and dead branches and plants, and the like. If things are not healthy, changes are necessary.
Our pruning process began with my telling everyone we would not tolerate behavior that was inconsistent with our cultural goals. I made it clear that if anyone’s manager was not treating them well, they should have a conversation and get it worked out—and if they couldn’t, they should come to me. I promised to deal with the situation and said, “If I don’t deliver on this promise, you have no reason to ever believe anything else I say.”
It became my mission to free our workplace of anyone who was holding our cultural goals back. Senior leadership, including myself, decided we would not keep any manager we would not be willing to work for ourselves. When someone treated us well but didn’t treat their people well, we called it “salute the flag and kick the dog.”
As part of the process, we always invited the manager to get better at leading. It was their choice. Often when a boss caused problems and one of their people talked to them or came to me, the problem would end. But if it came down to it, I would say to the manager, “I don’t care how good you are at your job, or numbers, or financial performance. If you mistreat people, you are not suited for this company. Period.”
Over about a year or so, we saw nearly two hundred people, mostly managers, depart. Some retired, some left because they didn’t like what we were building, and some tried to change but couldn’t. Many others remained important players on our team. Every time someone who had mistreated people left the company it was like a fresh wind blowing. It was an important time for our company and our people. Our people would often say, “How come it took you so long?”
Let me stress that this process was not just about behavior. Nice people who don’t perform aren’t good for your culture, either. We made it clear that everyone had to carry their share of the load. The goal is to have leaders who embrace the culture and are totally committed to the shared vision, mission, strategies, and aspirations of excellence and high performance.
Most people would like their workplaces to have the culture I am talking about. Many look for and find companies that are like this—but many don’t. Why does it happen sometimes and not others? One word: leadership. The leadership at the very top has to want this culture, see it as a key priority, live it, resource it, train to it, review to it, have accountability and metrics to drive it, and then enforce and reward it when it happens.
Top leadership has to do all of these things, consistently, and then celebrate the achievement just as if it were finance or performance related. Leaders have to confirm that the culture is important by highlighting it at every opportunity and by showing others what will be noticed and rewarded.
Also, leadership must be united. One of the most important drivers of success at Synovus was that the entire senior executive team embraced the strategy and cultural goals. When leaders are unified around a goal like this, others cannot divide or sabotage you.
When we got to be the #1 Best Company to Work For in America, you would think we had arrived or at least would be tempted to sit back on our laurels. Fortune magazine created a Hall of Fame and put us there. It was very rewarding. It was again a great validation of our aspirations and our actions.
What continues to be my belief is this: even if you win awards, you are never done. Someone asked me how they could hit the finish line like we did. I thought about it and said, “You don’t ever hit it.” When it comes to treating people the way you want to be treated, it is not for a contest—it is forever. So Synovus just keeps going. I loved the journey and still do, even though I have been retired from Synovus for years. Great people! Great results! Great memories! A great team effort! It was a golden era. Of all of the accomplishments I was involved in over my long career, the pursuit of a servant leadership culture at Synovus was my greatest and most favorite satisfaction.
James H. Blanchard (www.jordanblanchard.com/james-blanchard) began his service with Synovus Financial Corp. in June 1970. He served as CEO of Synovus from 1971 until being named executive chairman of the board in July 2005. He retired from Synovus in October 2006. In 2011, he partnered with the Jordan Company, a Columbus-based real estate and investment firm, to create Jordan-Blanchard Capital, where he currently serves as chairman, board of advisors.