SECU: The "New" Wachovia? The Undisciplined Pursuit Of More...

    

     ... a real industry standard.

"Once upon a time"... but not too long ago, most everyone in finance agreed that Wachovia Bank & Trust  - headquartered in Winston-Salem - was the premier bank in the U.S. of A. 

Wachovia's reputation was sterling, its financial practices impeccable, its ethical principles unquestioned.  Wachovia pledged high quality, local service from a dedicated "Personal Banker" to its customers - and delivered it!

Home-grown talent - thoroughly trained, hands-on leadership, community focused, an earned reputation for offering principled advice and intrinsic value in all services. The owners of many small, local banks across the Southeast sent their sons and daughters - their future leaders - to learn the banking trade as apprentices with Wachovia. 

There were several other very prominent banking "brands" in North Carolina - NCNB, First Union, BB&T, First Citizens - but Wachovia was foremost.

But then, Wachovia's board and leadership lost it's way - they forgot what they had,  they forgot who they were...

 

... next chance, drop by your local Wachovia branch and ask the employees what happened. 

 

"The best prophet of the future is often the past."

 

 

 

"We're SECU": Driving A Ferrari Into The Ground? The Bureaucracy "Mess" Index...

  ... "bureaucracy mass index"?

From: [link to WSJ] "When he took the wheel of the world’s most iconic luxury carmaker, Benedetto Vigna quickly decided that something was wrong with the organizational culture.

The problem, he discovered, was that Ferrari was being weighed down by its “bureaucratic mass index,” his name for the excess layers of an organization.

He finds it odd when executives believe more of what they hear outside than inside their own companies. “Some consulting company offered to help me,” he says. “But the best consultants of a company are the people themselves.” 

But talking with them opened his eyes to three problems that only people inside the company could see. 

There were too many silos. There was a bit too much distance between the CEO and the rest of the company. And the bureaucratic mass index was much, much too high. 

At one point, Vigna counted nine levels of employees in a cybersecurity meeting and noticed that only the lowest-ranking person had anything useful to say. The bloated hierarchy came as a shock.

“People can give the best of themselves if they feel important,” he says. “The more people you have in a team, the more duplication of role, the less important the person is feeling.”

But when I asked Vigna how he thinks about success, he cited another metric. 

“Simple,” he says. “We need to transform to make sure our clients are our fans. The more our clients are our fans, the higher the success.”"

 ... "Simple", yep! Members want high quality service; ask employees how to do that; let them do it!