Banking & Finance
Close connections
How Greg Achten transformed a corporate vision into something everyone could relate to at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management
By Meredyth McKenzie
Smart Business Cincinnati | January 2009
Page 1 of 4
Greg Achten thought he knew everything
about Cincinnati. He grew up there, went
to college there and even started his career
there with Merrill Lynch Wealth
Management.
But when Achten returned to the city in
February as director of the company’s
Greater Cincinnati complex after spending
18 years away, he realized the market was
quite different than what he thought it was.
“Even though I thought I knew the market, I did spend a lot of time relearning the
market with a different lens just so I didn’t
miss anything,” he says.
Spending that time relearning helped
Achten step into the director’s role with no
preconceptions and ready to tackle any
challenges that lay ahead of him.
One of the first challenges Achten had to
face was creating a vision. Merrill Lynch,
which was recently bought by Bank of
America, has an overall company vision to
“be the essential partner and to go beyond
financial solutions for our clients.” But the
company is large, with 60,000 employees
and offices in 40 countries, and Achten
wanted a vision specific to Cincinnati that
would rally his 180 employees to work
together toward a common goal.
“It’s important to have a vision locally just
so everybody has something they can buy in
to and build toward,” Achten says. “It’s
important for employees to buy in to something and be part of something that’s bigger
than just their day-to-day role, and that’s
what the vision enabled us to do. That drives
the receptionist’s behavior, it drives the
financial behavior, anything interacting with
clients, what we do behind the scenes.”
Achten dove into creating the local vision
to “be the premier solution for financial
services in Cincinnati” by focusing on getting to know the $107 million organization
better, getting feedback from employees
and holding employees accountable for
achieving the vision.
