Leadership
First things first
How Terry Jenkins keeps his employees at Harris Private Bank focused on the long term
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Chicago | October 2009
Page 1 of 4
Terry Jenkins is tired of hearing about the economy, too.
Maybe the worst is behind us, maybe it isn’t, but Jenkins is in the banking business, so you better believe it’s something he gets asked about regularly.
But the fact of the matter is, Jenkins, the president and CEO of Harris Private Bank, has more than survived the downturn now synonymous with his industry. In fact, things are pretty good at HPB, which is a member of BMO Financial Group, the behemoth diversified financial services provider with more than $348 billion in assets. As the unit that delivers wealth services to high-net-worth families, HPB has taken advantage through diverse business functions like Harris myCFO Inc., a one-stop resource for multiple financial needs. But keeping things up in a down market means keeping employees on task and away from the front page of the few newspapers left in Chicagoland.
“The challenge right now that is always there but far more prevalent today is managing competing priorities,” Jenkins says. “But managing fewer priorities falls back to keeping our people engaged and working with their clients on a day-to-day basis and just keeping them away from the short-term market noise.”
So Jenkins’ goal has been to keep his roughly 600 people on task so they don’t worry about the short-term bumps in a long-term plan.
“You have to try to get people to look above the dashboard and to the longer-term horizon, both with their clients and with themselves, so that they’re not wrapped up in the daily, hourly gyrations of the markets and the headlines,” he says.
At HPB, Jenkins has prioritized, and on the top of his list are aligning his people around stronger team-based planning, focusing on talent for the long term and celebrating wins that would go otherwise unnoticed in the onslaught of negative stories.
