by Luke Lively
“You can’t leave . . . I mean, you’ve got contract provisions. We could sue you.”
“I’m not breaking any provisions of the contract,” I said.
“You can’t work for a competitor here,” he nearly shouted.
“Don’t worry. I’m leaving Philly,” I said without any emotion. My mind was clear.
“You’re going to tell me that you’re leaving behind a quarter of a million dollars that’s less than a year away?” he asked. “For what?”
“I simply decided to make a change.”
“Jack, if it’s the written warning you got I can get that cleared up. We need you here for at least another eight months.” Merchants needed me—but then I would be history. I felt even better about my decision hearing him say what I knew was true. Realizing his verbal faux pas, Rex tried to change the focus of his comments. “Read your contract, it’s not just Philadelphia. You’re contractually bound. You can’t work in Pennsylvania or any contiguous state,” Rex said in his best legal tone. He sneered. “You’re stuck, Jack, unless you won the lottery.”
“You’re right,” I said. “If I was going to stay around here, I would be stuck. But I’m not.”
“I knew I shouldn’t trust you,” he said. The sneer had turned into a scowl on the young exec’s face.
“Then you should feel good about yourself,” I said. “I don’t trust you either, but I did something about it. Now, we’re both free to do what we want to do. It sounds like a win-win solution to me.”
“This is upsetting,” Rex said with his jaws clinched tightly. “You can’t leave me here to deal with this mess. What am I going to do? How am I going to explain this?”
“Rex,” I said, “that’s easy. Just do your job.” As I stood and turned to leave the office, I saw the photo of Ben Hogan with the handwritten reminder from the great golfer written on the photo. “Now it’s time for you to take this advice—never give up.” I paused. “It helped me.”
“Clean your desk out and be out of here today,” Rex said as I turned to exit.
“Don’t worry—I will.”
Instead of making calls to tell people I was leaving, I had already sketched out a brief e-mail thanking everyone for their efforts. It may not have seemed like the best way to leave, but it was the best option. I was expected to leave promptly, and I was determined to do so. There was only one person other than Rex I wanted to talk to directly about my departure from Merchants.
I called Carol into my office. I sat down beside her. She had been my most trusted ally over the years. I noticed she had a folded letter in her hand. I knew what it was before she could say a word.
“So you’re going to leave, too?” I asked.
“Yes,” Carol said with tears forming in her eyes. “Too?” she asked.
“I just gave Rex my resignation,” I said. “You’re not the only one leaving.”
“Jack, where are you going? I didn’t want to leave you, but this place is driving me crazy.”
“Me too,” I said. “We may be a little crazy, but we’re much better for it.”
“I knew something was going on,” Carol said, wiping away her tears with a tissue. “I never thought you would leave here. I thought we would have to carry you out. I didn’t want to see that.”
“That’s why I’m leaving,” I said. “I wasn’t ready to give my life away—for this,” I said pointing around the office.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m going to Virginia,” I said. “I’m going to change—for the better.”
“Jack, I’ve so worried about you,” she said with new tears of happiness and relief. “I’m happy for you.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Home,” Carol said—a smile forming as she responded. “My husband and I decided we want to spend time with our grandchildren before we get too old. We’ve both spent too much time on our careers. It was time for a change. The entire Merchants situation woke me up.” So it wasn’t just me. Carol looked as though a ton of dread had fallen from her shoulders. I was happy for her.
“Carol, I want you to know how much I appreciated everything you’ve done for me over the years,” I said. “I let you down plenty of times, but you never gave up on me. I’ll never forget it.”
“Do you remember the only advice I ever gave to you?”
“You told me to never forget where I came from. That was my problem—I did. But I’m going to change that.”
With more tears filling her eyes Carol said, “You’ve changed. I can hear it in your voice. You sound like the Jack Oliver I knew who was a part-time teller. I’m proud of you.” The very words I had worked so hard to hear from my father were now being said by a person I never expected to tell me. “Being a good person is much better than being a good boss. You’ve tried so hard to be something you’re not. You’re a natural-born leader. Just be yourself, Jack.”
“I promise you I will,” I said. “Thank you, Carol.” We stood and hugged.
“You’re almost like a son to me,” Carol said, now able to laugh. “The only problem was I could never discipline you and take away your toys when you were doing something wrong.”
I laughed. If Carol only knew how exactly right she was.
It was time to put away the old Jack Oliver.
Life is measured in years but lived in seconds.
—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PRICE
39. How Long Has It Been?
“HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN?” Benny asked. He already knew the answer. It was an anniversary. I had been in Virginia for one year. Benny remembered and had commemorated the date by bringing me one of Ann’s freshly baked cinnamon rolls.
“One year, Jack.” He sat down at the small conference table in my office for our regular morning chat, as he referred to it. “You made it. You’re now officially a Virginian!”
“You’ve thinned me down in one year, so now you’re going to fatten me up?” I asked, looking at the monstrous roll.
“You’ve got to eat it or Ann will get upset,” he said laughing, part of our ongoing reasoning to never say no to Ann’s culinary efforts.
“How come you’re not eating?” I asked. “You look like you’ve lost weight. You’re not trying to look like those models, are you?” While getting a chuckle, my question highlighted a very real concern. Benny, already fit and thin by most standards, had lost quite a bit of weight the past couple of months, making him look almost frail.
“I’ve had my fill,” he said. “I’m lucky enough to live with the chef!” As he laughed, his newly persistent cough surfaced again.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m just changing—getting older. Nothing to worry about, Jack,” he said. He turned and looked at some of the daily operating reports.
My life had changed in every way possible. I moved to Virginia within a month of resigning from Merchants. Tina still seemed to blame herself for my departure, though I assured her that no one was to blame—it was simply meant to be. We had agreed amicably to a divorce. The kids were struggling. They thought that I had run away to Virginia. Jessica blamed Tina, and Joshua blamed me for the divorce and my leaving. I had tried my best to get closer to them, but they were not ready, and had refused to visit me in Virginia.
The year had been three hundred sixty-five days of self-discovery. The year had been devoted to trimming my excesses. Sitting across from the man who had helped guide me through my transformation, I knew where the most significant change had occurred. I was much more honest. The challenge had been to be truthful first with myself and then with others. I talked to Benny about it as he continued to look at the reports. “I’ve changed a lot,” I said. “I’ve got a long way to go but I think the biggest change is that I’m a more honest person. It was tough to admit how dishonest I’d been.”
“Being honest with yourself can be difficult, especially when the truth hurts. But I’ve always trusted you,” he said without looking up. “Except when it comes to saying you�
��re ready to leave work in the evening. You still need a helping hand to drag you out of this place.” While I had spent considerable time at work acclimating myself to my new role in a totally different environment, I was spending much less time than ever on the job. Benny pushed me out of the office in the evening.
I wasn’t ready to give up on asking about his health. “I believe you,” I said, pausing, “but are you really all right?”
“How so? I’m not showing any signs of senility, am I?” he asked, looking up with his trademark partial smile. He had aged considerably in the year I had worked with him, his skin now loose on his cheekbones, making him look twenty years older than the first time I saw him at the airport. “Are you afraid I’m going to imitate Ms. Fitzgerald and walk into the bank in my underwear?” he asked, referring to one of our more elderly large depositors who visited the bank half-clothed. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you, Jack?”
“Seriously, Benny, I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t ask,” I said. “I’m concerned.”
“I’m changing. I’m getting older. But I’m fine with it,” he said. That wasn’t a full answer. I wanted to probe more but stopped. He added almost as an afterthought, “Change is part of life.”
Change, something that I had fought against most of my life, had been a positive aspect of my life since moving to Virginia. Benny and I, while different in almost every way imaginable, had forged a strong partnership that blended seamlessly from my first day in Roanoke. I had spent a lot of my time away from work with him, hiking, riding mountain bikes, and fishing. With Ann’s prompting I had also joined the gym, hired a trainer, and started a program to regain a better level of fitness. I had lost forty-five pounds in my first six months and was keeping the weight off.
After pouring out my supply of alcohol in Philly, I had refused to take another drink. It had been incredibly difficult, especially with the move and struggling to gain my footing in the new world, as Benny was fond of calling it. I was making progress. There was only one thing missing. I realized I loved Tina and wanted to be with her and the kids.
“Change has been good,” I said, “but I would like for things to even out now. I miss the kids.”
“Fate works in strange ways, Jack,” Benny said putting down the reports. “What you want rarely just happens. It’s part of a process. You may never realize everything you want. But that doesn’t mean you quit hoping and trying. Ann and I pray you’ll find peace and happiness. That is something in your reach now. It’s all inside of you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m doing my best.”
“I know,” he said. “Never give up hope—that’s not all we have, but without it nothing else matters.”
Work remained important. Especially after I saw what type of organization Benny had constructed. Citizens Bank was like nothing I had seen before. People were actually happy to come to work. The turnover rate was the lowest of any bank for which I could find comparative information. It was not perfect, because people are not perfect. But the effort to serve employees and clients was a reality.
The way I interacted with people in a leadership role at work had evolved over my twelve months. Heeding Benny’s advice, I had viewed my job as a serving position. I could serve from behind, in the middle, or in front. It depended on what the situation called for. I was aware of my oversized ego and refused to allow it to control me. I could see why Benny was fighting to keep the bank independent. I felt part of a family almost immediately. Because of Merchants, I knew what would happen if someone bought Citizens Bank. They would ruin it.
There would be a layoff, a large one. The number of employees at the bank was much higher than banks of a similar size. An acquiring bank would view it as over-staffed and immediately target layoffs to add efficiency and more bottom-line profits. But they didn’t understand that the reason Citizens made one of the highest profits of any bank in the country relative to size was the fact that the bank had more people. It was Benny’s commitment to service. He paid people a higher rate of pay, gave them much better benefits, promoted from within, and spread the wealth-effect of the profits among employees and shareholders. I would have never believed it possible: The bank’s success was found in giving instead of taking.
“It’s all cause and effect,” he reminded me on many occasions. “A layoff would do what? Save money? And what else would it do? The effect has more harm connected to it than good. There are more important things in a business than saving a buck—it’s creating the right effects. Cutting jobs and laying off staff will trigger a response—and I have rarely seen it be a positive one. You can never slash, burn, and cut your way to prosperity.”
I understood now—he was right—but it took a constant effort for me to learn how to lead a business instead of trying to manage one. As part of this process, Benny and I met every morning to discuss what was occurring at the bank. Benny started each of these brief meetings with the same question.
Today was no different, at least I thought so.
“Are we making progress?” he asked, ready to begin our brief review of where we were going.
“Absolutely,” I said. “We’re growing despite the new credit union opening in three of the towns we have large branches in. We’re making progress despite competition.”
Progress? It was a word that was left out of conversations at Merchants. “I was just thinking,” I continued, “that I had never really used the word progress until I came here.”
“Progress allows us to measure every step,” Benny said. “Knowing your progress allows you to celebrate the right steps now instead of waiting for some distant goal. Waiting kills a business.”
But I could tell Benny had something on his mind other than progress. I waited for him to broach the subject.
“When I asked you to join us, we knew there were challenges ahead for Citizens Bank,” Benny said taking off his reading glasses and placing the reports neatly down on the table. “The challenge was competing with our own success. We’ve been competing against ourselves as much as our competition. That’s the way it should be, but our success has brought the attention of larger banks who want to buy us.”
From the monthly board meetings I attended, I knew what he was talking about. Ron Landreau, a local attorney and member of the bank’s board, wanted to find a way to market and sell Citizens Bank at a significant premium. In every meeting, Ron would challenge Benny to make the return better for shareholders. It was difficult to imagine how much better the shareholders could benefit, unless they decided to sell out for an above-average price. Public trading of the stock was something new—it had remained privately held until five years earlier. Because the original shareholders were aging, the stock was taken public and listed on NASDAQ to allow shareholders an option to liquidate their holdings. The original shareholders had realized over a thousand percent increase on their initial investment. In addition, the corporation’s profitability allowed a quarterly dividend to be paid to shareholders, adding to their wealth. Almost all employees were shareholders, including people in nonmanagement positions. Shareholders should have been very happy, but Ron wasn’t.
Unlike PT&G and especially Merchants Bank, the attention to shareholders was the culmination of the bank’s purpose of helping clients and employees. Focusing on service instead of profits was something special to Citizens, but it appeared that several members of the board didn’t understand how unique the business was compared to others. I had shared my thoughts with these members in one-on-one discussions. But this small group of directors still viewed me as an outsider, unlike the bank’s staff who had welcomed me with open arms. Ron Landreau and his followers wanted more. I had seen this before.
“Jack, staying independent is a real challenge,” Benny continued. “And that challenge is coming from someone you know.”
I could feel the presence of Merchants Bank.
“Merchants Bank, again?” I asked with a brief smile. “I know them well.”
“Never disc
ount fate,” Benny said.
“We can beat them. This is something we won’t lose.”
“I appreciate your belief and commitment. But the first thing we need to consider is the worst-case situation. What happens if Merchants buys the bank?”
It was unusual for Benny to start with the worst situation. I asked him why.
“Starting with the worst removes the fear. It’s like death; removing the fear of what could happen allows us to be more rational.”
“Okay.”
“The worst thing that can happen is what, Jack?”
“If they buy us, they will gut the bank, in every way,” I said. “Nothing will be left the same.”
“Nothing?” Benny asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Then we have some work to do. They’ve offered me a lot of money,” he said.
This was part of the Merchants’ strategy. I reminded him that John Helms and I had seen this happen up close and personal. “Where the board goes, the business follows,” I said. “The battle ground is in the boardroom.”
“Well, we have one advantage,” he said. “I’m not interested in having more money.”
“That could be enough to stop them,” I said.
“But probably not, Jack,” Benny said. “As you know, we have a small number of shareholders who own a significant amount of stock. They are interested in selling. Unlike at bigger banks in this situation, all Merchants has to do is convince about two dozen individuals or families to sell. That is the challenge for us—showing them the effects of the choice.”
“We can educate the shareholders on what they’ve received over the years,” I said. “Maybe they don’t understand what they have.”
“People seldom do until they lose it,” he said with the concern. “But we could do a better job of that. I failed in impressing on the shareholders the real value of their investment. I assumed they understood; I was wrong. And greed is not rational and loves assumptions. It may be too late.”