So right at the bottom of the JD Power’s survey of customer service and satisfaction!! Great legacy Kelly - it really says it all! Let’s see if your Seeds of Hope can fix all of the lives you have destroyed.
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King did not care how many small town employees were destroyed by his actions which he hid behind his southern charm schtick. I utterly despised him. Left in 2019 after 9 years right after the merger announcement. His ELT were ruthless to employees. It was hard to watch folks smitten by him while he had Boston Consulting digging for layoff candidates.
@pjw+1mf6xL6G - I don’t think the purpose of the “butterfly, happiness and values” stories were necessarily for the employees. Sure, some lifers bought them, but I saw a LOT of rolled-eyes in private.
I believe the whole “values” schtick was really for the BOD. Convince a stacked board you stand for some higher purpose, and it deflects questions about actual operational/financial performance. Think about the actual financial performance of Kelly’s CEO tenure - pretty bleak.
The ironic thing is the “values” snow job is actually Kelly’s legacy. Truist has adopted the same philosophy - don’t judge us on pure performance because “Truist stands for better”, and “If you start with care, you build a different bank”. As hilariously fake as handing out lifesavers candy and butterflies creating hurricanes, but serving the same ends.
So the blueberry story was some sort of folksy veiled threat, akin to Grandpa threatening a child with a spanking?
What was the blueberry story?
Really the blueberry story was bs. I’ve got to totally rethink my purpose…I always thot those pa deals were designed to hit a growth target so that a bonus got paid.
It’s not just KK. It was a mediocre bank at best that had the idea that it had to grow. STI was not the only the bad partner. You forget Susquehanna and those Pennsylvania deals. It’s that entire group of Exec managers who adopted stupid stories like butterflies and blueberries to dupe a group of lifer people that had never had a job other than there. Now, many of them have been cut.
What you talking about buddy? Don't fret; it'll all get better soon.
@bqn+1mf6xL6G - I think you are right, HPU is just sitting back waiting for THEIR turn to fleece BB&T shareholders into making one more huge payout in the name of KK’s ego. I also agree about the footprint - it takes a special breed of incompetence to mess up the region of the country they were gifted. You really have to wonder what the BOD is waiting for?
The crazy part is Kelly could have retired and had a legacy of inheriting the bank and leading through the Great Financial Crisis and a period of solid growth. Instead it’ll be creating a Frankenstein company and preaching about butterfly wings - I guess for some people it’s never enough
Make no mistake about the leadership institute in the next 5 years it will be gifted to HPU for KK’s legacy to live on. His sycophant former BBT worshippers will then be happy. He ended up selling out two banks to make one marginal bigger bank. Biggest footprint in the fastest growing part of the country and current executive management and BOD are in process of letting competitors slowly take away the territory.
Here is what’s humorously ironic. Truist was 100% driven by Kelly King’s ego, and his single-minded desire to cement his personal “legacy”. But now, within a mere two years of his departure (and aside from the lingering resentment from BB&T alums), he is ALREADY all but forgotten.
With Truist’s poor financial performance, large funding losses, and ongoing operational challenges, it is tough to imagine the corporate boondoggle known as the Kelly King Leadership center will be funded much longer. When that is shuttered, the irony will be complete.