Industry sign banking hawaii presentation now
earlier on in the summer I was talking to John Allison who had once said that success for him was if the company he left behind was doing even better than when he left it five years after and so I asked John do you think that you've been successful and the glow on his face the beam of his smile as he talked about you Kelly was very impressive and of course it shows because as danja said BB NT is in the finance industry we all know that the finance industry has is not necessarily the one that's considered to be the most moral the most you know we we think about the finance industry and we think that it is not doing as productive of work as say the technology industry but there is a lot of enterprising product productive work that goes in terms of providing the finance the what would you say Mike it is the lifeblood of any kind of an enterprise is the financial fungibility so here we are in a unique opportunity to talk to Kelly about leadership and ethics in finance itself let's start with a question that's personal especially as it relates to foundations and culture that are critical for success would you be willing to share a quirky habit that you might have that's part of your daily routine which you think has really been important to your success well first of all let me say thanks for letting us be here today thanks my associates for coming out and good to see John and and and all of our supporters I'm glad John said that five years ago because he was still on our board then he was my boss he's retired now but he said it just matters you just don't go that's good you know I don't like to think I have a lot of quirky things that I do I'd like to be more focus on being more objective and rational but I will tell you that in terms of kind of the way I do my day which is very helpful to me in terms of achieving what I want to talk what I try to accomplish I have a pretty strict routine and I get up every morning about five o'clock and I'm on the treadmill for 30 or 40 minutes and I like to do that because it's exercise early in the morning and you can watch CNBC in the news broadcast and get a early start on what's going on I personally like to do a little spiritual or Bible study because it helps me refresh my my spirit and my and my brain at the same time so I try to leave the house ready to go and one of the things that have really helped me and as you all move into life and and find yourself under sometimes fairly substantial pressures and stressful activities I was strongly encourage you to find something what do you call it quirky or not but something that is unique to you that really helps you get away from the daily pressures and reset yourself psychologically emotionally and spiritually one of the things I do for example even though I work very very long hours during the week we have a little lake house in Eastern North Carolina and I'll get there and I'll work six to eight hours outside doing projects just as hard as I can possibly work and sometimes friends come by you know and I'm dirty and you know got all my old jeans and it's over wine the world you've worked at a bank all this time and you come here and you work all day and I said well this is the way I'm able to go back and work at the back oh because when I'm out doing that it allows me to renew myself so I would encourage you all as you think about moving through your life you need to find your way to renew yourself and oftentimes that is something that's just your debt your your way some private time to allow you to renew yourself so that's kind of what I do so working with something that's tangible and with your hands I like to build things and I've even gotten to where but I never thought this I've gotten to I like to plant things and it's very tangible most of my work is very intangible so like do tangible things that make sense so when you took over Dan was talking about this in 2009 what kind of foundational culture did BB&T have well we had a very very good culture we John and I started with a bank in like 1971-72 and for the 35 years or so that we worked together before John retired and I became CEO we worked really hard with actually three other of our friends that worked for the bank for 35 or so years and so we had developed a very very good culture grounded in our vision which is to create the best financial institution possible this is very important for an organization for an individual to have a vision a view of why you are here what your what your purpose in life is and then and then we were very clear on our mission you know which is to help our clients achieve economic success and financial security create a place where associates can learn and grow and be fulfilled in their work make the communities we serve better places to be and thereby optimize the long term return to ourselves but I would say to you more important meaning of that is the value system we have a very well-developed very entrenched value system at BB&T we have ten core values and we not only hang them on the wall we live up and I think she would talk to any of our associates they would tell you that we live what we what we print and so I think for any organization particularly in difficult times it's very important to have a strong culture it is the culture that has created whatever successes we have had and it will be so in the future it is a culture that causes companies to get in trouble so when big companies have big messes which we are all accustomed to reading about these days you can rest assured if you find the facts it's because it's a really bad culture so you talked about how you and John along with two or three other friends had bill the BB&T culture what kinds of changes have you had to make if any to weather some of the changes that have occurred since 2009 so I haven't made any changes with regard to the culture the only thing with regard to the culture difficult period is just reinforce it Lord we remember what a culture does it's like a lighthouse it's like a guiding post it's it's your northern starts you know when the winds of blowing winds of change of blowing if you're not clear about your Y in life if you're not clear about you know what you're trying to accomplish and how are you trying to accomplish it what your principles or values are then you find yourself being drawn to the left at the right and losing your sense of direction that's what haven't individuals that's what happens to companies now of course the world was collapsing around us during that period of time so we did have to shift emphasis to place more emphasis relatively on execution day to day execution than strategies you know before the crisis we could focus relatively more attention on developing and fine-tuning strategies but during this because what happens when you go to a crisis is you know that the world is changing but not in a kind of a positive way you everything seizing up and it's very important to hunker down focus on your fundamental strategies that you have and execute with precision and so that's what we did but really we were fortunate because we didn't have to go if you go into a crisis and you got to change a lot you probably you're probably not gonna make it that's fair because it's a little too late at that time are there any lessons that you've learned by living through this very uncertain economic climate that you have now been able to take to your personal life yeah I think one of the things that that became clearer to me during this during this crisis is to be very clear about my priorities because again at the individual I just spoke to the corporate it but it's an individual level when you're going through a critical period of time you will find that you are tested and you will be challenged and there'll be temptations to take shortcuts because the pressures of you know performing the way everybody wants you to perform get to be fairly fairly substantial and so it tests where you are individually and so you know for me it was very important to reinforce my personal priorities and my personal priorities in life or God family and Bank in that order that's not said to try to influence anybody else's priorities you have your own the prize I'm just saying it's important to know what your priorities are and live your priorities because if you don't you end up losing your happiness and you end up losing your sense of direction your sense of your sense of purpose so being very clear about priorities is a really big deal the other thing to kind of overwhelms that that became clearer today during the during the recession is to focus on Hawaii so there's a great quote and a really good book called man's search for meaning written by Viktor Frankl who survived the Holocaust if you haven't read I would strongly encourage you to read it again could you repeat the name so the book is man's search for significance man search for significance and it's written by Viktor Frankl if RANKL gives you a great perspective on what it was to literally survive and it was if you haven't read about the Holocaust it was worse than anything you could imagine but in the book he quotes his philosophy which was if you know your why you can endure anyhow said another way if you know your purpose in life you can overcome obstacles you figure out how to get through this problem if you know what you're trying to do but if you're not clear about why you're here then all the obstacles come along and it can derail you very very quickly because you lose your sense of energy you don't have clarity of purpose and so like at BB&T you know our Y is very clear we want to make the world a better place to live the preamble to our mission I said about clients commuter in etc but the preamble is we want to make the world a better place to live I tell that shareholders I'll tell it bored and and I tell them further why I say help me I said you know I don't get up in the morning focused and excited about making loans to get into posits to make more money and even getting a stock price up sorry I just don't I get up in morning really excited about making you all a better place to be now fortunately for me I can be CEO because by doing that helping our clients community making their worlds better places to be and then collectively we're able to accomplish our you know our collective corporate why but I would just encourage everybody to really reflect on your why now beat it to be fair because to our students here I can't say when I was 21 22 23 years old that I was clear about that I was not I don't think many people are but as you go through life it's important to ask yourself that question as you go through different experiences why am I here when you can get clarity about that you'll figure out the hell in fact at the Schneider centre we often talk about the why of enterprise for precisely this reason and when I talk about leadership and my students several of whom I hear I see it's all about you know are you the CEO of me incorporated and are you behaving like a CEO of me incorporated and of course the first question that every CEO has to ask is what's my purpose or mission statement and that defines precisely the why but I want to probe a little bit into what you just said about making the world a better place to live that can be pretty daunting I mean making the world a better place to live I don't know how to make this entire big world a better place to live how might you respond to saying well I have to go to India and freed hungry children I was just in India by the way there are still hungry children there there's a lot of progress but there is that so you know what can one person do in order to make the world a better place to live well I'm at a really good question and that's you know the typical response is this is so overwhelming I kept all the ocean so I can't do anything and of course no one person can do everything but it's kind of like you know the story about the man who was up on the hill at the beach looking at a little boy going along picking up starfish and throwing them into the into the ocean and the man walked up and said son you're wasting your time you can't save them all even though but I saved that one and so my philosophy is we do what we can do but there are some big things we can do individually and corporately you know we've spent a lot of time with John's leadership over the years talking about how capitalism is really important to to underpin business success as a part of that I've taken not a different view but a perspective of the calendar I cannot recall the underpinnings of capitalism so for example leadership in my view is the most important underpinning without good leadership nothing good happens capitalism fails communism fails everything sells without good leadership so so it is very important to try to find ways to improve leadership so for example at BB&T we started a long time ago a very small operation in leadership development through a company we acquired but over the last few years we've morphed it into the BB&T Leadership Institute which is doing a lot of really good things making the world a better place for example mmm we provide executive leadership training as good or better than anybody Harvard anywhere else it's fantastic technically and practically we provide therefore executives we provide it for executives of other banks for executives of other country our companies all around the country even around the world but more recently we've taken or even a broader view so for example one of the things I'm gravely concerned about for our country today is that our case through 12 public school system is failing and and the most important way to try to help improve it is to have the principles which if you think about it principles are like CEOs of businesses they run a school but they've never had one out of leadership training so we are providing free executive leadership training same kind of training I've got enough so like a seven or eight thousand dollar value program free for principals because we believe if we can have the principles be better leaders they will in turn help the teachers be more effective they will help them become better leaders and the students will learn more so we do that through the Leadership Institute it's a way of changing the world in a broad sense we actually have created some other ways to on a broader sense impact change so several years ago we went into partnership with a small company that had created a game that teaches financial literacy another underpinning of capitalism's without financially literate population and that's it works so we found this company that had built a game that actually teaches financial literacy and we now are putting we've put that in high schools in all fifteen states we do business it and it really works by the way they play this games just fun game different modules we give them a literacy test before they played a game three scoring average 50 after they score 85 it really works now this is this is when you take it even further so when I saw that someone was smart enough to build a game that could teach financial literacy I said I bet somebody can build a game to teach leadership well we couldn't find that council game so we commissioned a game company and spent a fair amount of money over a year and they built a game you can pull it down now free download from Google Apple it's called legacy a BB&T leadership challenge you play the game it's a fun little game you learn two principles of leadership it game is being pulled down all around the world India China different places so yeah we're planning a little seeds out there and and I think we're changing the world yeah so personal leadership financial literacy independence these are all values that you believe are fundamental to the BB&T culture and the way that the world can be a better place you talked a little bit about how particularly during these times it's much much more important so you know it seems like it's a scary world out their innovation is both scary but it's also rewarding and of course it's everywhere within the finance industry speaking about uncertainty what's changing what is it that you think is going to be different in the next 25 years well the
ood news and the bad news depending on your mindset is the whole world is changing I mean you all coming out of getting ready to come out of school or coming out into the most exciting time in the history of the world yet it's also the most challenging and so we are going through you know dramatic more change than industrial revolution or other revolutionary changes evolutionary changes you know the hopes that you all are studying and learning more about AI artificial intelligence and robotics and it is incredible as there's a book I just got one a few more pages to read it's a great book called rise and the robots and it's talking about the dramatic change that is happening in the world because because we've seen over the period of you know decades and decades of automation replacing manual labor it's just moving at a much faster exponentially fast pace and so through robotics through artificial intelligence things like agile devops is changing how you run companies how you develop programs how you develop products and processes now the the the real aggressive proponents of this will say that it is going to create a dramatic problem for you and that it's going to eliminate massive millions of jobs because all those jobs that are being done out there today in middle management and middle layers that are processing and making relatively simple conceptual decisions will all be done by computer and so nobody's got any jobs I don't agree that what I think is going to happen is what has happened for hundreds of years and that is more advanced automation is going to allow computers to do things that humans are doing today which will free up humans to move to higher order a conceptual thinking innovative thinking create new products processes systems that will improve the standard of living and yet again we'll have another dramatic leap in standard of living like you know when we got automobiles and like you know our whole world changed we got a I phone right so it should be viewed and a very positive exciting sense if you have a growth mindset so another book if you are not read it is called growth mindset and it's written by dr. Carol Dwight from Stanford it's one of the best books you'll ever read it's the only book by the way John I said to every officer and every board member it's a must read and it helps you understand the difference between having a fixed mindset which means basically I don't believe I can change some novel chains I'm a victim or a growth mindset which says I can't change I will change I'm capable overcoming and moving forward big changes coming very exciting really important individual level to have a growth mindset and that's important I really liked what you said about the fact that over time technology has actually freed human time and human mind and indeed one of the things that I'm realizing myself is that and I say this again and again that the highest and the most important valuable resource that you have is your own time how many of you feel like you don't have enough time to do all of the things that you'd like to do right and so wouldn't you rather be able to rely on machines to be able to free your time for you yes right I mean I remember when my PhD advisor would actually send me handwritten papers and edits which I have to then type in and I'm really glad that my co-authors now know how to type directly as opposed to having an assistant type for them right and it's much more productive that's just one simple example of how productivity can be enhanced by technology and by machines what is it that you're doing to help BB&T make sure that we so what are some of the changes that you see will be coming from technology that's going to be impacting BB&T and the finance industry and then how is BB&T give me an example of a growth mindset within BB&T as it relates to technology and the financial world and some other industries on us somewhat similar basis is going through a revolutionary change and it's all about digitization and so just a bit of context you need if you go back to like this late 50s and 60s there's really been only one paradigm shift in our industry although it looks like there's been multiple it's been only one paradigm shift and that was in the fifties and sixties I think coming out of the challenges of World War two and the Korean War people that started demanding more time convenience and retail America responded with rural America suburban shopping centers banks responded with suburban branches before that all the banks are right downtown right beside the post on Friday hardware store no parking no nothing we moved out as a shopping center we said not only would you give you easy parking we'll give you a drive-in window you won't have to come in with the rains and people said well we'd like to get some money at eight o'clock on Friday night to go to the movies so five will give you an ATM then they said well we want to change things in our account on Sunday afternoon we said fine we'll give you hom banking then they said we want to we don't want to go to the bank to give a deposit or chair we said take a picture with your phone all of that which is moving really fast is what just changing the way people transact business that's the paradigm shift what has not changed is the trusting relationship between clients and the banks even today when you talk to Millennials Xers wires and yes from how do you pick a bank always was in the top two or three factors of consideration or where's the bank where's the branch even though they'll say I'll probably never go in there I want to know where it is why there's some kind of a cycle since they think that's where the money is even though sorry just really all just ones and zeros but that's another story but but but no see they want to know that's where I go for help that's so so so that world's changing with it so the banking industry's challenge has been we've got this traditional brick-and-mortar distribution system which we haven't until recent been able to downsize very much then we've had to build this duplicative digital system which is really expensive and and so how do you afford both so now the opportunity to change with a growth mindset is how do we really get more aggressive about rationalizing the physical distribution system and how do we get more aggressive about changing the cost structure of the organization so that we can afford to vet invest in digital so simultaneously we are reducing branches we are investing heavily in digital marketing digital product development and we're using agile devops technology to go in and reshape the back room along with robotics so you know it's kind of confusing sometimes to our associates cuz I said well wait you said you have got to cut calls but now you won't spend more money on marketing yes we're going to vote because we are we are disrupting ourselves this is a really important point organizations like minuted big-box retailers and organizations are being disrupted made everybody feel sorry for them you shouldn't feel sorry for them they allowed it to happen there's nobody that's being disrupted you couldn't have disrupted themselves you have to have the growth mindset so we have chosen as a growth mindset to disrupt ourselves it's very uncomfortable some people won't make it I'm sorry but our duty is to achieve our why and execute on our mission and in order to do that we have to have this growth mindset and change very much every part of the organization so it's about being responsive and not just being responsive but also predicting and thinking about where is it that you need to be in order to address the needs of your customers what does it mean so you've already talked about the fact that the growth mindset perhaps the leading thing that you look for in an employee but what does it mean to exercise enterprise in an established corporation and why haven't you personally left BB&T for another firm I mean we think about enterprise we think about entrepreneurs we think about startups we think about CEOs that are starting you know not CEOs but founders but you pretty on enterprising what does it mean well that is what typically has happened is in most industries enterprising individuals end up getting us kind of a Foundation and big companies didn't they leave because they are locked in with all the bureaucracy one of the things John and I did number years ago 30-some years ago was we saw that happening to us we were becoming a bureaucratic typical top-down decision-making organization and we saw that was a death structure because we were up against organizations dramatically bigger than us back then we were only about four billion dollars we were about two three hundredths largest company in the country now we're 225 billion with the eight largest so but if we had not changed we we wouldn't know if we wouldn't have been here so what we decided to do was to figure out what I call internalizing free enterprise so why can't you have the same spirit of entrepreneurship of enterprise inside a corporate structure answer you can if you will so we chose to and we did and so we have kept that through all these years and so it's really about empowerment what what entrepreneurs what enterprising individuals want is they want to make a substantial contribution they don't want to be tied up in bureaucratic structure they want to improvise innovate and they want to be empowered but there's nothing that stops any organization even with all the regulation today we can substantially still empower our people to innovate and so why I never left was because I never wanted to leave you know now there was a time early in our career to be honest where there were some people above us that weren't moving through fast and if they haven't moved on we've got a probably moved on but as it turned out through a circumstance and set of circumstances we had the opportunity to begin to lead the company and and we had a great team and we just all stayed together and none of the five left and we all stayed together the whole time so that's interesting can i probe a little bit into this because we often think about leaders and CEOs as charismatic giants who are you know singly leading the entire form but you've consistently talked about the five of you could you elaborate a little bit about how the five of you even decided you know I'm sure it's John and you got along very well but there were times that you must have disagreed how do you resolve these disagreements if they did come through or how did the five of you how did you decide that the five of you were the ones that were essential and how were you gonna work together well in fairness we had a mentor above us who unfortunately died at a very early age at 53 years old and he picked the five of us to give him credit and and then John was selected to be his successor and give John a lot of credit but the five get a lot of credit for bonding together to accomplish the purposes and let me quickly say unless you think the followers think we really did all this all we did was help craft division and and admission and and establish that clearly around the values but everybody in the organization and BB&T he deserves at least as much credit as I do there is there is no view of the top people did all this stuff so I want to be very clear about that but what we did while we I would say do we have differences of course that we wouldn't have been successful to every not had differences but we had a strong conceptual commitment to consensus decision-making which you read about but it really is powerful if you do it because consensus decision-making through a process of what I call iterative thinking allows a group of individuals in any circumstance to move to a higher order of thinking you could start on any subject and five people may be at this level of thinking if somebody says this it makes this person think that or that's this person that asked that question and I were later you've moved to an entirely higher order thinking that neither one of the files could have been at the stories and as long as nobody who's determinate they have to get all the credit so one of the things that I learned and I think we all learned early on in our partnership is that it was not about me it was not about me now I'll be honest with you and I suspect many of you will face this dilemma but and if you don't remember anything else I say today please try to remember this early on in my career I thought it was about me I thought that life was about being successful and I thought success was about me working hard and getting promoted and doing what the world says you're supposed to do go get a good degree graduate number one of the School of Business get a job get promoted get married have cars do all this stuff and I woke up one day about 30 years old and I said this is just not working this is just not working this doesn't make me happy it might make me successful but it is not gonna make me happy I had to come to terms with the reality that it was not about me that if I kept focusing on me I was doomed to failure and everybody around me to talk to us would not be able to optimize their lives and when I when I got that clarity then I was able to focus on really the success of the team I mean I espoused it before you know please you read that in MBA school right you know that's what's but I didn't I didn't have it in here I had to go through some trials and challenges to knock it out of here and get it in here and and I'll tell you that when you get that it's a very very good place to be I think the five of us out a wonderful it's like a like a family business or something I think it's fantastic that swai I didn't leave because loves having fun still am but then it was about you because you were having fun well yeah look life is always life always you Circulo yes so there so the way I think about it is if you are focusing on helping others be successful then you will in turn be more successful and everybody wins it's about win-win there can't be any uni lose that that would not have worked there was there was not a it was not a philosophy of you know you know I'm gonna lose so everybody else can win it was about a philosophy of everybody win no and the reason I asked that only tongue-in-cheek was again just to I knew that that would be your response and in particular I want to underscore what Kelly just said and that is the trader principle that if it is about me for me and then Alex it's all about Alex then how did the two of us even create value together but on the other hand what I hear you say is that among the five of you and in fact for the entire BB&T corporation in particular oh this is how you make the world a better place to live you think through not just what are your needs and your wants but also who are the other people that you can leverage to be successful with you and they will not work with you if you don't think about them am i yeah exactly but it is important the order okay so it doesn't work if you say alright I'm gonna get up in the morning think about how I can be successful and then I'll figure out anything I can do to help you to help me be successful now one of the books I want to write when I retire is life it's not about you because if you get up in the morning and you're thinking about me what can I do to get promoted today what can I do to make more money what that just never works if you get up in the morning thinking about others that you're in partnerships with your spouse your kids you know the people that you're associated with in work and so if you get up thinking about them think about like client-focused if you're focused on those people that you are affiliated with in all aspects of life helping them be more successful two wonderful things happen you make hundreds of thousands of people very successful and you get to be dramatically more successful and happy yourself it's nighter often said money's the reward not the reason and this comes back to this issue that you just discussed in that figure out what is your why and the why better not be just status and money because those are going to be fleeting so that this actually brings us to the third theme - you already started to talk abou
self leadership and how the self leadership and thinking about the organization comes hand-in-hand could you share a fundamental belief or premise that you had to evaluate and then what was the outcome as a result of that well one of the principles that I had to evaluate along the way I mentioned is about this focus on me versus butBut another very very important concept that I had to focus on was you know how do you really get things done in our organization that is both efficient and effective and creates growth opportunity for us so one of my pet philosophies is that every function in the organization should be performed by the person who is the least qualified who can perform it effectively if you think about that what that is is a constancy of pushing and Powermat down letting the least qualified people take their assignments grow up then I go on to do something they can't do but if I'm holding on to doing things that that Jody could do then he's not growing nor am i growing I should push down to him stretch him as far as I can stretching then I go stretch myself but now here's the real issue in order for me to volitionally go stretch myself I have to have a fundamental sense of security a sense of self esteem a sense of pride I have to be clear about my why in life because I'm getting ready to go into an uncomfortable uncomfortable place because when you are growing and you're stretching you will be uncomfortable and that's why people do not optimize the Peter Principle is really about not optimizing not having a growth mindset not stretching not growing why because you don't want to be uncomfortable if you find yourself trying to stay comfortable you are just before stepping into the place of life that will not end up in a happy and successful place so I really encourage people to really think consciously about delegating empowering pushing down every day if it's something you can do with your eyes shut you shouldn't be doing it somebody else should be doing it did you repeat that I really like that could you do you like what he does say could you repeat that yes so if I mean if you if you if you if you find yourself in during the day doing things that you could do with your eyes shut that in other words you've done it so many times it's just rote you don't have to think about it you don't have to focus on it you can just do it because you've done it a million times and you're really comfortable that's when you're getting in trouble you are just walking into the zone of low success and lows happiness in life so many feel like definition what's the problem I'm comfortable and I think I'm happy but you really not cuz you're not challenge you know success and Happiness comes out of in figuration that comes out of inspiration it comes out of the challenging situations to college you to grow and along with that comes some discomfort a little stress is good too much stresses is bad so really I think it's very important for and if you find yourself in a situation where you know your boss is real real happy with you just doing what you're doing the same thing all day every day because you know he's happy you do X because he wants to just keep doing Y and he's never pulling she's never pulling you you got the wrong you had the wrong boss and the right company or you in the wrong company which brings me to the next question how do you judge character because that's something that leadership requires the ability to objectively judge character and that's hard so can you share how you've learned either from successes or failures so character is the bedrock set of values and we talked about character in terms of honesty and integrity and really honesty is the most important value i believe we believe and the reason is this without honesty there can be no trust without trust there could be no meaningful relationships and without meaningful relationships how can you have mutually supportive achievement of goals it just doesn't work and honesty should be absolute that is to say you should be absolutely one of us and honest now that a lot of people in academia disagree with that who will say there are no absolutes there's nothing that's really objective it's all relative which is bull it's just not true there are absolutes and honesty is an absolute if you don't think just by the way if you have a significant other or some of you married go home to your significant other and say you know I heard this fellow talking about honesty he said it should be absolute and that person looks at you and says well honey are you absolutely honest with me and you look back and say well you know sugar I sure am I'm honest with you you know 98 99 percent at the time that leaves an important question doesn't it if you're not honest with me 1 percent of the time how can I completely trust you if I can't completely trust you how can I depend on you if I can't depend on you how can we have a mutual and supported relationship it doesn't work honesty and then integrity is about living honesty and all of your values consistently so for example you can't say ok I'll be 100 cent honest Monday through Friday I'll take off on the weekends that doesn't work you have to be consistent to be a person of integrity so if you have good character that is the benchmark the basis for being able to live your own life successfully and happily and being able to relate to others now applying the judgment of character Raval involves some other values so for us in terms of judgment it's about reality reason and independent thinking so if you're going to be a person that exercises good judgment you have to deal with the facts you can't make it up you have to use your brain to think independently rather than listening to what everybody it says by the way this is one of the biggest losses in the world most people the vast majority of people never think for themselves if you go right out here on the street you find a hundred people and ask them some question about some some publicly discussed item or issue ninety five percent will give you an answer that they saw on TV or read on in the paper or somebody total only about five percent will have thought about themselves not what the parents did and not what somebody on TV said thought about themselves use their brain to arrive at a rational conclusion and have that and have the courage to stick with it people that do that or the people that have good character so we want people that have good character and who exercise their judgment and as a leader and called upon to evaluate those that have good character and that is about good judgment could you give us an example of how you've learned to do that you know and maybe it could be a concrete example or principles that you've used to know and figure out you know yours a red flag that I need to worry about them so when you're when you're working with people what I do is watch what people do know what they say and so I'm constantly watching people in different settings to try to evaluate how I see them act what they do and if what they do is consistent with what they say and if what they say is consistent with what we're trying to do in the company then that's a good fit but if they're saying something and I see them doing something else that's a really really big red flag because that's that's a form of dishonesty so so mostly it's about observing people in the real world how they how they actually live and so that's what we try to teach our leaders is to be a good coach you have to be clothed you have to have a really close relationship you can't really evaluate others and draw judgment about character if you don't have a really good coach upfront relationship and so coaching is about understanding where that person is coming from what is their why making sure their wives consistent with our corporate why and making sure that this is a fit so that they can ultimately achieve success and happiness in the confines of this organization it's a really important job but here's one of the problems most leaders do not like to be really honest most leaders don't really honestly evaluate and share with their associate they're working with their teammate the truth so over the years you know I've had many many thousands of people report to me and we have a you know a very strict process of evaluating people so we get these written reports you know so I would get this written report so Joe would be a direct report of mine and he's managing Harry so Joe would be telling me you know Harry he's got some real problems you know I mean he's just here may not make it so I get to read the personal development plan at the end of the year see what Joe says about Harry it's not in des anywhere it's not I mean you look what a microscope is not in there why is that why would he tell me that and not tell the guy that could that could improve so if you are a coach if you're a leader and you're not telling people the truth about their strengths but I'm on the back that's fine but it actually doesn't help them grow what's helpful is to tell them what their weaknesses are so they can grow in life that's true with your friends by the way it's true with your spouse is it's true but any relationship you have the best thing you can do to help people grow and be successful and happy is to tell them the truth about where they can improve the reason people don't do that is pro their own insecurities so I don't tell Joe doesn't tell Harry the truth because Joe is insecure joe says if I tilt Harry's the truth Harry won't love me he won't like me and so it'll make me feel bad so I don't tell it it's the worst thing in the world you can do it's classical leadership malpractice you know this this comes to this distinction have you heard about this distinction about being nice versus being kind you know when I first thought about this I thought nice and kind they were wanting the same thing but what you're talking about here is this distinct that nice being nice is really about do others like me being kind is what you're talking about which is thinking about what the other person's needs are and I bet that Joe in this particular case didn't not only get a chance to develop and grow but at the end of the day was worse off right as as a result so he probably left the companies back what worse off - so being nice and the in the long run really doesn't hurt help anyone and by the way one of the one of the things that you can remember this will really help you if you know most people will say you know I went in for my review my annual review of my boss and it was a great review he said I was wonderful so what did you tell you that your weekend that you could prove nothing he said I was great that's the worst review you have ever had it's like if you let's say you want to be a better golfer and say you have a drive that's a slice right so you go to the golf professional you give them a hundred bucks for a 30-minute lesson the professional says let me say you hit one you hit it you're slicing well and you said looks great to me moves on to the next wait a minute wait a minute you a hundred dollars to help me tell me what I am doing wrong your attitude as a teammate working with your coach thanks for the accolades I appreciate it now let's move to how I can grow and improve please tell me what I'm doing wrong and please tell me how I can improve but I want to come back to something that you said the ability to have that growth mindset or also tell me that I'm doing wrong fundamentally actually comes from feeling that you're right feeling confident in yourself that you know if someone tells me about something that I need to improve that is not so damning to my own sense of self I wouldn't use the word right I would say that you're okay okay you you you are perfect in the sense that you are who you are you have all the strengths and Wiggins you are you you are who you are and that's okay and if you're clear about your wildlife you really okay so now we just talk about the house right why is BB&T is gonna make a better place to be how we do it we're gonna make mistakes and and if somebody can tell us what mistakes or we'll get better so if you're clear about your why your cleavage purpose in life you clear about your values then you should feel very secure in yourself to say now I'm just trying to figure out how to the house then what might enable me to accomplish two why more efficiently more effectively very well said so the why defines your sense of self-esteem which allows you then to focus on the house which could change and that's okay okay okay so I'm getting a sense of how the leadership within your company is it's creating this culture and tell us a little bit more you already talked about the fact that you encourage and empower your employees to be uncomfortable how do you keep them motivated - well I don't keep them motivated that's one of the one of the biggest myths is that a leader can motivate someone else I cannot motivate you you cannot vote anybody else motivation is inherently an intrinsic concept we all are motivated and I'm a big believer in Maslow and the fundamental hierarchy of needs we are motivated by physical needs security needs self-esteem self-actualization those are the things that motivate us the only question is where do we use our motivational energy and so when you get in sync when you when you are let's just take the simplest example you're motivated each so if you haven't had anything to eat for seven days you're pretty hungry you're motivated nobody needs to motivate you right but you you may either go and go to a merchant and steal some apples to solve that need or you may go as two merchants you sweep the floor to buy some apples what's the difference it's what you believe so our leadership model is very simple but powerful and that is that if you're going to change results you have to change behaviors if you change behaviors you have to change police because people behave in amounts consistent with their beliefs it's a really important truism people perhaps behave in a manner consistent with their beliefs so what leaders are always doing is teaching beliefs and so if if one of your associates has their beliefs aligned with what we're trying to accomplish that they are motivated everything works out fine but if their beliefs are not aligned if their Y is not aligned and they're still motivated we're in we're in it creates the cognitive dissonance for individuals and it doesn't work very well so what you want to do for yourself and then what you want to do as a leader is trying to get everyone aligned so that their Y in life is clear it seems that with the Y of the organization and then you can extract that motivated energy from them to accomplish these shared purposes thank you so we we have time for one or two questions and then Kelly would like to have some closing remarks to all of us do so yes could could we have the mic go up yes okay so we do get great feedback from Greenwich and merits and all kinds of organization of seed back systems and the reason we do is because of what I said earlier we are focused on the client incidentally we've just rolled out last few days a new tagline at BB&T and it is PV NT all we see is you Genesis that was several years ago I was giving a speech to a group Rotarians in Atlanta and when I got through one gentleman pretty crusty kind of guy said well I've been banking with XYZ company for years and I know the CEO personally can you give me one reason why all to think about banking with you and I said yes sir because we get up every morning trying to figure out how to help you be more successful we're focused on you all we see is you so that permeates our organization that is the training program that is the whole genesis of how we get up every morning focusing back to this why why make the world a better place to be help our clients be successful it's all about them it's not about us and when you have that cultural imperative then it just bleeds through the organization and so when the client interfaces with us what they feel and what they see is us genuinely caring about them and then when that people ask them how you feel about BB&T they give you the positive feedback yes that culture and
hat strategy are actually alive because it takes on different meanings once it goes out to your company right that is a very good question and it is very hard why most people most companies don't do it but the way you do it yeah it's the record my primary job is to be a teacher or preacher I teach beliefs that's what I do I teach it to my direct reports they teach you their very reports so we funnel it down but that's not enough you know we have brochures booklets to describe it I do and just started a long time ago way before even John I do a quarterly video that goes to all associates and I've talked about a lot about what's going on the company and always end with a segment on culture I go out every one of our 26 regions for a full day every year at least one time of year Orchestra where I meet in the morning with a group of lowest level tellers etc then in mid morning I'll meet with the senior management then at lunch I'll meet with all the officers I give them a two-hour presentation about what's going on the company in about 30 minutes 45 minutes on culture and then when I travel around or other places where I associates are like here they some of these days and say I've heard him say 2,000 times and that's exactly right and they're here 2,000 more times why because you change beliefs with the repetitious conveyance of credible information over a long period of time so but here's the beauty once you saw it's hard work but once you get people to believe what you believe then you can be assured they will behave the same way you would want them to behave whether you're there watching or not this is by the way an MBA schools haven't entirely picked up on this but when I was in the ABA school we still talked to five classical steps of management plan organized staff directed control it was really really bad it creates a hierarchical organization it says you've got to have a control mechanism let's make sure everybody's doing what we told them today we will run around here with controls and make sure that's what government does does right so if you but if you focus on plan organizers and staff and you teach beliefs you don't have to go have these control mechanisms to see if people are do it I know right now the people in Houston are doing what I wanted to do why because I know they believe what I and I was just down there two weeks ago right after a flood and I talked about our people in distress I talked to him in a good time I talked to him in all kinds of ways and I know what they believe a few people and not being changeable and a few people don't end up believing and and we encouraged him to go work for the competition what the government one last question so it depends on the nature of belief change is it depends on what existing beliefs they have so first of all it's about selection you want to select people that you believe are already pretty well aligned so we actually in our interview process we ask questions and have discussion about our values and if they aren't lined up pretty closely to start with we don't hire them and then we immediately omit the first thing they get us a video for me talking about values and and the culture so now when we have that your question more pronounced is when we go by a bank like we just bought a twenty billion dollar bank in Pennsylvania you get a few thousand people day one to be fair it takes a couple of years to get it kind of really entranced you can't do it in 30 days if I said that it would not be true it takes about two years and some people don't make it not because they can't but because they won't and that's okay doesn't make them a bad person it just means they're they shouldn't work for us yes okay so when I'm meeting with students I always like to share with you something if you didn't hear in the rest of it I'd like to give you something to take away that I believe will help you be more successful and happy in life what I've observed over my 45 years is that there are five distinct characteristics of outstanding achievers if you want to be an outstanding achiever and whatever you choose to do in a lot write these down and just think about them you don't have to accept them all just think about the first characteristic Val sending achievers is they believe absolutely and completely to their toes and what it is they are trying to accomplish you take Olympians for example who will practice 8 to 10 hours a day seven days a week 52 weeks a year for years and years and years you won't have those people running around saying well maybe I can be number 14th in the world they believe to their toes that they can and will be the best they're passionate they're driven it's their why they believe in what they're trying to do the second characteristic is that they commit the time energy and resources to make that belief become a reality because if you believe deeply in something you will commit your resources to it now you know like I sometimes you've seen people say I believe in this or I believe in that and then you watch what they're doing they don't commit themselves what that tells you is they didn't really believe it because if you believe deeply in something you will commit yourself the third characteristic of outstanding achievement is that they train themselves so that they indeed have the best skills to do what it is they said that we're going to try this so Michael Jordan would never have been in my view the greatest basketball player of all times had he not gotten out there and practice free throws two hours a day it's it's ultimately about the skills that you have and what you're trying to do but you never will have the best skills unless you train relentlessly you never will train relentlessly invest that time unless you believe deeply and what you're trying to accomplish the fourth characteristic of outstanding achievers is very very important and that is that they enjoy the journey and yes I'm talking about fun and laughter but more importantly I'm talking about a deep sense of self-esteem a sense of pride a sense of joy that you feel from what you are doing in this life it's the sense of happiness that allows you to get up early and work late go home dead tired fall in bed and say I can't wait to get back tomorrow morning that's what entrepreneurs do that's what enterprising people do that's what growth mindset people do they get excited because they're living the dream and doing what they do that's making a difference they're living their life but here's the sad thing most people don't do that most people either live in the past or in the future the people that live in the past or the people that are hanging on to something that happened five 10 15 20 years ago and still ruining their life you know so Joe did something 20 years ago and I'm still mad with him and you asked him what about Joe and he'll pound the table get red in the face just as mad as there were 20 years ago what Joe hadn't thought about in 20 years he's moved on with his life you're sitting there ruining your life about something happened you know yesterday or five years ago another thing you can do about running your life then people live in the future these are the people who say well I'll be happy when when I get out of school when I get my first job when I get my student loans paid off when I get married what I have children boy I'll be happy then here's the problem not a one of us in this room can change yesterday and not a one of us in this room as tomorrow promised all there is is today and the genius of life is to recognize that life exists right here right now and even in the face of obstacles go ahead and enjoy life so people when they hear this sometimes they'll say wait a minute you don't understand mister if you do all the problems that I had in life you wouldn't be at challenging me to be happy and joyful and peaceful I do get that everybody has problems everybody in this room has problems if we took the time right now and asked you to stand up and tell the truth about schooling on your life and you would do it you'd be shocked and what the personal is right and personally left is going through we all have problems somebody got a bad medical report somebody's struggling financial resources somebody's parents just got divorced life happens it happens to everybody race creed color it doesn't matter problems happen here's the challenge how do you overcome two obstacles in life and keep moving towards your goal your purpose your wife that requires the fierce characteristic which is to have an enthusiastic positive attitude about life because without that clarity of why without that energy that positive optimistic view that yes this is bad but it will get better yes this is bad but it's not all bad the optimistic view keeps you focused on moving forward and overcoming the obstacles and it's very very important with regard to that too recognized look we still should be extremely enthusiastic and positive about the United States of America you know I sometimes criticize what's going on in our country and I suspect you all do too but we still live in the greatest land in the world we still live in some of the best parts of these great United States of America I'm blessed I work for the organizations out there trying to change the world make it well a better place to be you have enormous opportunities your students in one abyss universities in the world you're sitting on the platform the foundation of being able to go out and change the world and accomplish everything you won't do well sin the world can you go find that nowhere like you can here so yeah we've got problems but the huge opportunities and hope in America and finally don't miss this your life matters sadly too many people go through life believing that I just don't count you know I'm just a student I'm just a bottom line first line worker my life doesn't really matter I'm not a CEO I don't much count everybody everybody matters true story about two years ago a young man out of San Francisco left his apartment walked several miles to the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge must have passed thousands of people walked straight to the bridge climbed to the top jumped off to his immediate death that afternoon they went to his apartment they found a note and the note said I'm going to walk through the bridge if one person smiles at me I want job one person one smile one life there are people walking by you every day like that young man people walk in front of you around you beside you every day your life matters make it count thank you very much god bless you
