Departments
Slow and steady
Financial institutions can learn a lesson from a children's story--and a local firm.
By Dustin S. Klein
Smart Business Cleveland | November 2008
One of my 5-year-old son’s
favorite bedtime stories is
“The Tortoise and the Hare.” He loves how the dirt-slow tortoise beats the lightning-quick hare because Mr. Fast
Pants gets caught napping
instead of hopping along to the
finish line.
The tortoise’s explanation for
his victory is the story’s moral:
“Slow and steady wins the race.”
When Sam and I discuss what
that means, it becomes, “It does-n’t matter whether you’re the
fastest; it only matters whether
you’re the most consistent.”
Few things have been less
consistent over the past six
weeks than the U.S. financial
markets. Much of the trouble
can be attributed to an insatiable race to make as much money as possible as
quickly as possible
and damn the long-term consequences.
But as banks, savings and loans, and
insurance companies
took a beating for
their actions, something positive happened to a local
financial institution, and it
almost escaped notice.
An analyst covering TFS
Financial Corp., the holding
company for Third Federal
Savings & Loan Association of
Cleveland, in late September quietly upgraded his rating from
“hold” to “strong buy.” This was
while other analysts turned their
dials to “lose ’em now if you
can!” for TFS’ financial brethren.
When you look
closely at TFS, this
issue’s cover story
subject, the financial stability CEO
Marc Stefanski has
maintained merits
recognition. On a
day when a local
bank stock lost
more than half its
value and traded at less than
5 percent of its October 2007
price, TFS stood near the top
end of its 52-week high.
In days of yore, this type of
rock-solid investor confidence
could have been chalked up to
longevity — TFS celebrated its
70th anniversary this year. But
the financial meltdown changed
the rules enough to reveal that
just because you’ve been around for a long time doesn’t mean
your survival is guaranteed.
So how does TFS remain a
safe island surrounded by a
bloody sea?
“We’re building a company to
last,” says Stefanski, who claims
there’s no magic to his methodology. It’s just a simple matter of
sound values and developing a
culture that’s “almost cultlike in
that it’s radically different than
most organizations.”
TFS’ ability to be different —
slow and steady, so to speak —
confounds Wall Street, Stefanski
says. And that’s pretty similar to
how the tortoise confounded
the hare.
Contact Editor Dustin Klein at
dsklein@sbnonline.com
