Hero’s Journey: James Blanchard, Former CEO and Chmn Synovus
In the state of Georgia, there are few business people as powerful as James Blanchard. As CEO of Synovus, a major banking player in the Southeast, Blanchard’s enlightened approach to business has influenced the lives of millions. Blanchard’s education was homegrown, with a bachelor’s in Business Administration and a law degree from the University of Georgia in the late 1960s. His approach to banking, credit, and customer service moves beyond the boundaries of Georgia, the South, or the United States. Synovus has become more influential on the global scene over the last two decades in part because of James Blanchard’s efforts.
Synovus as we know it today is a creation of Blanchard’s efforts in the mid-1970s to expand local banking into the national and international scene. Blanchard’s father was the CEO of the Columbus Bank and Trust Company, which was established in 1888 and was an influential banking in the city of Columbus. However, Blanchard assumed the reigns of a stagnating company from his father nearly thirty five years ago. The Columbus Bank and Trust Company was strong but could not expand much further due to Georgia’s restrictive banking laws. Young James Blanchard, only 28 at the time he became CEO, helped eliminate a major roadblock to his company’s success by lobbying vigorously for the passage of a multi-bank holding bill. The passage of this bill eliminated the main barriers to expansion for Blanchard’s company and it rapidly became CB&T Bancshares. In a few years, the name would change again to Synovus.
James Blanchard’s direction of Synovus has made the company more successful through a variety of bold initiatives. Blanchard made it his goal as CEO to change the corporate culture in his company by instituting the ideas of servant leadership. Servant leadership essentially marries the ideas of collaboration and teamwork with the strongest ethical standards possible for a banking company. The young CEO brought these ideas to the fore early in his career, seeing that the growth of Synovus would not be sustainable without a broad leadership base throughout the company.
Blanchard has used a variety of tools to create business leaders within his ranks over the last two decades. His PDE, or personally developing everyone, initiative has been used to provide advanced education for employees and training leadership for young banking professionals. Through PDE, Blanchard and his staff have been able to bring up young managers and professionals while emboldening every employee to find daily opportunities for leadership.
In addition to PDE, Blanchard’s leadership has been demonstrated most clearly through his attempt at educating young leaders in the community and within Synovus. The company’s Synovus Leadership Institute, for example, has used retreats and classroom learning to help banking professionals combine their knowledge of the industry with important leadership skills. The Foundations of Leadership approach, which sets goals for Synovus personnel over the short and long term, has also been able to keep the company strong through educational efforts. In all, James Blanchard has sought to increase the responsibilities that each of his employees undertakes on a daily basis. The successful execution of these responsibilities then leads to pride in work and the much sought after collaboration among workers.
Blanchard’s vision for Synovus has not been strictly confined to inspiring leadership within the company. Indeed, Blanchard has sought to it that Synovus expands in a responsible and profitable manner for all parties involved. The best example of this expansion comes from the TSYS system that Blanchard has overseen since taken the role of CEO. TSYS started out as a department within Synovus the dealt with electronic payment processing, including credit cards and virtual transactions. However, Blanchard and his staff saw an opportunity to take their proprietary system and expand it for use by banks throughout the nation. The TSYS has since expanded into a subsidiary company of Synovus, which owns 80 percent of the company, and is responsible for processing the electronic payments of millions of Americans. James Blanchard understood that the technology they utilized at Synovus could be marketed effectively beyond Georgia, creating a global approach for a formerly local bank.
Blanchard’s leadership has yielded great results for anyone involved with Synovus. The company now holds nearly $20 billion in assets and is one of the biggest financial services companies in the Southeast. Synovus has expanded from a series of banks in Columbus into forty banks throughout five Southern states. Most importantly, though, Blanchard’s role as CEO has yielded a more harmonious and prosperous environment for his employees. Synovus employees and writers at Fortune Magazine have been instrumental in naming the banking and financial services firm one of the top 100 companies to work at in America. Indeed, Synovus was named the best company to work for in America in 1999 and has maintained a presence in the top ten several times since. James Blanchard’s focus on expanding his business through empowering his employees has meant a steady and sustainable growth for Synovus.
Friday, June 1, 2007
