Riding shotgun


Most CEOs talk about bringing their employees on board or getting them on the bus. But if you listen to Lisa J. Stevens, her lingo is more suited to the company she’s called home for 20 years.
Her goal is getting everyone on the stagecoach — which is appropriate, considering she’s talking about Wells Fargo & Co. and its acquisition of Wachovia Corp. The merger, which was finalized Dec. 31, 2008, makes the country’s most extensive financial services distribution, with 10,400 stores and 12,000 ATMs.
As executive vice president and president of the California community bank, Stevens is in charge of the state’s more than 1,000 banking stores, 3,200 ATMs and 21,000 team members — the company’s largest retail banking market and the state’s largest retail banking network.
On that scale, getting each piece pointed in the same direction wasn’t easy. But Wells Fargo’s vision — helping customers succeed financially by providing great service — guided her.
“When you wake up in the morning and you know exactly what your vision is and what you need to accomplish, it makes it a lot easier to communicate with team members how we’re going to get there and what we need to do,” she says.
She also had the benefit of melding two culturally similar companies.
“We’re very focused on helping our communities to be successful,” says Stevens, who chaired Wells Fargo’s Bay Area Community Support Campaign in 2008, which raised a record-setting $6.6 million to benefit local nonprofits. “And all of a sudden, Wachovia came into the picture and into some of the markets. We were starting to see their bankers showing up at events, their bankers interacting with community leaders and their people out volunteering. It was a mutual respect — yes, a competitor, but a competitor that you respect.”
With that common ground, she could focus on optimizing horsepower to propel her region smoothly through the merger — which will include consolidating about 122 stores in California. She relied on constant communication and employee engagement to drive through the change and come out stronger on the other side.
“Diversity of opinion, of perspective is so powerful,” Stevens says. “It’s an injection, for the Wells Fargo team members, of new ideas, and it’s a platform for the Wachovia team members to know that they can succeed because the cultures are so similar.
“One of the strengths we have is that we know that the diversity of opinion is a huge advantage for us. The fact that we’ve got a bunch of people that may have been doing something differently just creates opportunities for us to continue to get better.”