Catawba College News Service
SALISBURY ó Bryan Jordan, president and chief executive officer of First Horizon National Corp. in Memphis, Tenn., said he thought a lot about the remarks he would make as the seventh keynote speaker in the Ralph W. Ketner School of Businessí Distinguished CEO Lecture Series at Catawba College on April 12.
He toyed with the idea of speaking about the economic recovery or change in the banking system, but in the end he said those topics ěfelt worn out to me.î
Jordan chose instead to speak about the importance of being fast and being nimble in todayís business world. He said he became CEO of First Horizon National Corp. on Aug. 31, 2008, ěseven days before the real teeth of the financial crisis sank in.î
Since that time, he has been busy as CEO doing four key things for his organization: 1) defining the meaningful outside; 2) defining what businesses we are in; 3) balancing the need for current yield and profitability with the need to save for the future; 4) and defining the culture of the company.
ěWhere you think the world is today is going to be somewhere different tomorrow and you canít tailor your activities today with the idea that theyíll be effective tomorrow,î he said.
The Class of í84 graduate cited three familiar companies that have changed drastically, two that kept step with the changing times include Kodak and Intel, one that lost step, Blockbuster Video, now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Part of the difficulty of his position, Jordan noted, was ěgetting everybody focused on the same issue at the same time,î especially since there are some key generational differences in the workplace that ěinfluence how we see the world.î He provided broad generational descriptors: veterans ó those born prior to 1946; baby boomers ó including himself, born to the veterans; Generation X; and Generation Y, otherwise known as the Millennials, born between 1980 and 2000.
Millennials, he said, use more technology gadgets, and 95 percent of them have a cell phone. ěItís not cool for them to bank in a branch,î Jordan added, ěand in our business, weíre thinking of how to move us forward with all of this technology.î
In the workplace, he continued, ěweíve migrated to participation awards and away from overall winners. Itís the most generational difference weíve ever had.î He said employees work in teams and have shifted away from a vertical hierarchy of employer over employees.
Jordan spoke of risk-taking in the workplace and said he was an advocate of taking ěthoughtful, calculated, educated risks in a way that allows an organization to move forward.î
He paraphrased a quote from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky who said, ěI donít skate to where the puck is, I skate to where itís going to be,î to describe how a business needs to act and react in todayís economic environment.
ěOur organization in 2006 was focused on growth,î Jordan said. ěThat growth as we know now was due to risks. Now at the bank, our focus is on profitability first and on growth as a result of that.î
Jordan touched on the importance of communications in the workplace and said First Horizon National Corporation, which was founded when Abe Lincoln was president, 147 years ago, has ěa culture of candor.î ěWe wanted to have an environment where people would stop us and raise an issue in such a way that we could step back and think about it and adjust course.î
While noting that one of the innate human behaviors is to resist change, Jordan said, ětechnology and change are the way of the world. The cycles are going to get faster and weíre going to have to adapt. Focus your energy on the change, on where the puckís going to be.î
Jordan took questions from the audience at the conclusion of his remarks. He was asked what he thought about the passage of TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). He responded, ěI firmly believe that if TARP had not been passed we could have been looking at a world without electricity. The financial system was collapsing and TARP was instrumental in breaking the momentum ó like calling a time out. It gave the economy an opportunity to get its feet back under it.î
Jordan was asked what lessons he had learned from his father, retired banker David Jordan of Salisbury. He recalled his father asking him if he knew the difference between hedgers and speculators. ěHe told me the difference was that hedgers sleep at night and speculators donít,î he said, ěand he taught me to always do the right thing.î
One member of the audience asked about credit default swaps and if the country is in trouble for these. ěWe got overly complex with these,î Jordan answered. ěI think that is largely behind us now. We broke the paradigm and the paradigm was that housing prices never go down nationally. Now we have the realized and unrealized loss and there are a lot of losses left to be recognized. I think that will result in limited access to capital and a slow growth market.î
Jordan was the seventh such speaker in the Distinguished CEO Lecture Series.