Drive and Competitive Spirit: The Jimmy Blanchard Story
Introduction
In 2005, Jimmy Blanchard announced his retirement as the Chairman and CEO of Synovus Financial Corporation in Columbus, Georgia. He joined the bank in 1970 as president when he was only 28 years old and grew it from 200 employees and $100M in assets into one of the nation’s most successful and respected financial institution with over $33B in assets and 15,000 employees. The opportunity to become a banker and follow in his father’s footsteps came rather suddenly when his father passed away at a young age. Embracing this opportunity and challenge changed the course of his life.
Synovus is a multi-state regional bank holding company with operations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. By the time Blanchard retired, Fortune magazine consistently ranked the bank as one of the best places in America to work. It was also listed in the S& P 500 and was traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
During his tenure as Chairman and CEO, Blanchard also played an instrumental role in the founding of TSYS (formerly Total System Services), which was partially spun off (approximately 19%) from Synovus as a publicly traded company in 1983. In 2005, TSYS reported revenues of $1.5B. The company is listed on the NYSE and is a recognized global leader in electronic payments processing. TSYS holds the largest market share in the credit card processing segment of the market. At the end of 2007, Synovus completed the spin-off of its remaining 81% ownership position in TSYS and the firm was immediately added to the S & P 500. Blanchard serves as Chairman of the Executive Committee of TSYS and is a member of the Board of AT&T. Blanchard has also been a recognized figure in the local Columbus community, active at the state level in a variety of positions, including his service as Chairman of the Board of the Georgia Research Alliance and at the national level as Chairman of the Financial Services Roundtable.
The Beginning
Jimmy is the only child of James W. Blanchard and Paloma W. Blanchard. Both of his parents were Georgia natives. His father earned an Associate Degree from Augusta State College and his mother graduated from Shorter College.
Jimmy’s father, James W. began his career in banking as a part-time employee with the C & S Bank in Augusta, Georgia. Once he graduated from Augusta State he accepted a position as a full-time employee and eventually worked his way up to vice president. He was transferred to the C & S Bank in Valdosta, Georgia where he was promoted to be president. At the time of the move to Valdosta, Jimmy was eight years old.
James W. was a very large man physically with a reserved, serious, and in-control type of leadership demeanor. In 1957, he was asked to move again when he accepted the position of president of Columbus Bank and Trust (CB&T) in Columbus, Georgia. At the time, CB&T was just a small community bank in one of Georgia’s up and coming cities.
While Columbus is only a little over three hours by car from Valdosta, the move brought with it many adjustments for the Blanchard family. In addition to his responsibilities on the business side, James W. became active in the Columbus community especially with the Chamber of Commerce and the United Way. He was also active in his church and he felt that community service was an important part of citizenship. Jimmy’s mother focused on the needs of the family. She was very outgoing and personable and the kind of person who didn’t forget people’s names.
For Jimmy the move to Columbus came just as he was finishing the tenth grade. It meant leaving the home that he grew up in and a community that he knew and enjoyed. It was a challenging transition and for a brief period of time he felt the loss of the friends that he had grown up around in Valdosta. He also had to get out of his comfort zone to adjust to the new community and school in Columbus.
With the benefit of hindsight, it was very beneficial to me as a person. [I had] to start over…and make friends. [I had to be] a little bit forward to make friends rather than just passively waiting for somebody to embrace me.
Jimmy was upset about the move to Columbus and protested to his father that he didn’t plan to move. His father was unflustered with his son’s proclamation and in a very calm manner replied “ok, I will get you an apartment and you can stay here.” In many respects this was an unusual exchange for that era as children were expected to show a lot of respect and deference to their parents. However, James W. had a reputation for being unflappable and he wasn’t the kind of person that would lose his composure easily.
Valdosta was a small close-knit community where people valued the time they spent with their family, football on Friday nights, and church on Sundays. It was also a community that valued and enjoyed athletic competition. It was very proud of its best athletes and it offered them lots of support and encouragement for their efforts.
Growing up in Valdosta, Jimmy enjoyed a close network of friends that he played with through his involvement in the local YMCA, Boy Scouts, church and the schools that he attended. There were lots of opportunities to participate in organized sports and he was pretty active in all of them especially golf, football, basketball, and baseball. By the eighth grade, it was fairly clear he wasn’t going to fulfill his dream of being a standout in football. But in a community like Valdosta only a few would lay claim to that distinction. The community expected the high school football team to compete for the sate championship every year and it often did. Through football, however, he met someone that helped him to elevate his thinking about his options.
The principal of the junior high school was coach of the football team [and] he was the first guy that ever gave me some insight into the fact that I might have some leadership skills and capabilities to do more than just go along with everybody else. We had conversations on the football field and throughout the school year where he sort of let me know that he was counting on me to do good and rise above the average. He might have been the first person to plant a seed in my mind that I might be special. I think that is a pretty important thing.
With Jimmy’s disappointment in his future potential as a football player his father encouraged him to focus his energies on golf. He thought golf would be useful to his son in whatever career he chose to pursue. In the summers preceding high school, Jimmy spent a lot of time on the golf course practicing and refining his game. Eventually he developed a passion for the game and his drive and determination helped him to excel. By the time he was a freshman he played well enough to start on the varsity golf team. His high school golf team won the state championship during his two years on the team. Academically he was also a strong student though he didn’t have to push himself to receive good grades. He focused most of his energies on his athletic endeavors, which gave him a fair amount of recognition in school and the community.
Jimmy learned a lot about discipline self-control and what it takes to be successful from his athletic endeavors. He is known by those who have worked with him as someone who is passionate about his work with a strong will to win. He is also known for being well prepared for his commitments.
“He is about as fierce a competitor that I have ever seen...he figures out what it takes to win. As a result of that it causes him to be as thorough as anybody as I have ever seen. He is looking around curves, he is anticipating what may or may not go wrong. I have never seen him settle for less than the best.”~ Jimmy Yancey, former Chairman (ret.), Synovus
When his family moved to Columbus, Jimmy joined the golf team at Columbus High. In his first year on the team they won the state championship. His success at golf eased his transition to the new school and community and gave him a real sense of accomplishment. By his senior year he was acclimated and he offered to run and was elected class secretary.
When not playing with his friends he spent his time at home often dreaming about the next game or the next opportunity to compete. He enjoyed sports and he had a strong desire to compete
The Blanchard family attended church on Wednesday nights and Sundays.
We went to a Baptist church at the time… and I remember when I got very active and competitive in golf and on Sunday afternoons I would race to the golf course. I played after church because I knew that I had to finish up in time to get home take a shower and get back to church.
Jimmy didn’t resist or resent going to church. It was very much a part of the fabric of his family and the community in which he grew up. He took church seriously and adopted it as a part of his approach to life as his parents had modeled for him. Even in college he would get up on Sundays and go to church. The church is now an important part of the lives of his children and their families.
After high school, Jimmy attended the University of Georgia where he enrolled in a special six year joint BBA in business and J.D. in law program. He concentrated on his business school requirements in the first three years of college and then enrolled in the law school.
Let me say this about college… I didn’t ever totally optimize my academic side, [but] I more than optimized my extracurricular leadership opportunities. I ran for the presidency of my freshman class [ of the University of Georgia]. Although I lost that election, I went on the Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC) from my fraternity as a freshman. As a sophomore, I was picked to get in the rotation to be President [of the IFC]. By that time, I was starting to emerge as somebody who wanted to do that kind of stuff and I guess was somewhat able to do it. I was in every club and every honor society and everything else there was at the time. When I became the president of the IFC, things just seemed to steam roll….I really majored in leadership and extracurricular stuff more than I did studies.
Jimmy was also a ROTC cadet at Georgia and he opted to defer his commission until he graduated from law school. He passed the bar exam in the spring of his third year and entered the Army as a commissioned officer in the Finance Corp. After basic training, he was transferred to Fort McArthur in San Pedro, California for most of his termon active duty.
I went into the Army and was there three months when the guy who ran the Finance Office…was transferred. And they said to me you have to run it. So here I am, I am three months in the Army and I have got 150 people working for me. I guess all of my training, all my experiences, all my activities and positions, plus my law degree gave me the confidence that you don’t have to know everything to run things.
He returned to Columbus after his two-year tour of duty in the Army and joined one of the leading corporate law firms in the city. As a young associate he learned very quickly that he should have gotten more out of his time in law school. The first couple of years in the firm were very demanding. He spent extra hours during the week and on the weekend studying to keep up with the other associates and lawyers in the firm. Even as a new lawyer he was active as a volunteer in the community and served in several leadership roles. At the end of his third year at the firm his life changed dramatically, when his father died and he was recruited into the top job at CB&T.
Bill Turner, the former Chairman of the Board of CB&T commented on the decision to appoint Blanchard as president.
He had the enthusiasm and leadership ability and salesmanship and communications skills that made it possible for him to step in there and do the job. ~Former Chairman of the Board, CB&T (ret.)
The leadership team at the bank at the time was very young and one of the people that he would develop a life-long relationship with was Jimmy Yancey.
He was well-known as a young man as a real leader. He was known on-campus as a leader…I knew him as a guy who was very well respected and well thought of from a leadership standpoint. One of the things that I was impressed with was his down-to-earth style. ~Jimmy Yancey, former Chairman, Synovus (ret.)
When he was first offered the position of president by the board, he turned it down. The board had wanted him to come in as an assistant to the President with the understanding that the board would make him the President when they felt he was ready to assume the top job.
“I didn’t like the feel of that. And I think having a lot of people my own age and maybe a bunch of people older, my gut said when you are ready is a little indefinite. There are a lot of people that can probably put a lot of land mines in your path, and it just may not ever happen. I declined, I turned it down.”
Eventually Blanchard accepted the second overture made by the board. They announced that he would serve for six months as an assistant to the president and become president of the bank at the end of that time. Rather quickly he developed a reputation as someone that embraced growth and change with a strong will to win.
The first major decision that I faced was recognizing who were the real leaders in the company. Also simultaneous with that I recognized that we had some people just hanging on that were not positive for the company. They were kind of objects of ridicule and not looked on as constructive team members. I kind of inquired of about them and why they were still here and there wasn’t a very good answer and so we moved out a number of people. I think I established pretty early on that we weren’t going to just have people hanging on, we were going to run the race. I think historically that is what we’ve had, pretty good thoroughbreds that could tote their own load.”
This was a change from the past and some people saw this as a real positive change while others did not.
The naysayers say that he can get carried away on something. Other people say that he can get carried away and hit a grand slam. The way he looks at it is you’ve got to be trying things you’ve got to be moving, you can’t just do the status quo, you can’t stand still, you got to go to the next level. When you take [his] faith, hope, and charisma and you bring all of that [together], you have a powerful person that is willing to try things. ~Lee Lee James, Vice-Chairman, Chief People Officer, Synovus
Blanchard is an optimist and he looks at a situation through the lens of what is possible. The people who easily embraced change quickly threw their support behind him and what he wanted to do. On the other hand, the people who preferred the status quo felt very uncomfortable with his approach and many of them eventually left the bank.
He had that sense and feel and just knew that if you could energize and fire people up and show them what the finish line was and create that hope; people were good, they wanted to work, they wanted to be successful, they would make it happen. He was so much about creating that very special spirit of winning and energy and excitement, it allowed the Synovus team to do some very powerful stuff. ~Lee Lee James, Vice-Chairman, Synovus
Blanchard is known as an inspirational leader: someone that is willing to put a bold statement out there and put every ounce of energy that he has into achieving it. He also connected well with the people around him.
“He was a leader that was able to lead but yet identify with his team and meld with his team and become, not necessarily [be] one of them, but yes almost one of them. Especially, in terms of being around them and being engaged with them. He was very serious about his job...[And yet] he didn’t have any of that stuff that a lot of CEOs have that basically say I have to stay separated from this team. I can’t let them see who I really am. He was transparent, you knew he was. I think that made it a place where you were not afraid of slipping up. You were not afraid of making a small error. You knew that we had real people up at the top. And they understood what people were going through. You can talk to the youngest management trainee or to the most seasoned veteran and [they] all felt like they had a friend in Jimmy Blanchard as opposed to having a boss in Jimmy Blanchard.” ~ Jimmy Yancey
When Blanchard and his management team started out in 1970 there were three local banks in the Columbus, Georgia market. The largest of which was the First National Bank of Columbus. The Bank was locally owned and perceived as having a stronger board, a strong base of investors, and a few more of the town’s most notable clientele.