Clashing business models at Wachovia in the 1960s
Medlin entered Wachovia when the banking industry was at a crossroads, he recalls, torn between progressiveness and caution. His generation was, in his words, a transitional generation that made way for reformist baby boomers.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with John Medlin, May 24, 1999. Interview I-0076. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
-
Do you have a quick sketch of the business culture in North Carolina
that you encountered in these early years at the bank? The sorts of
types of business owners and leaders you are encountering in those years
and what their worlds to look like to them as you could measure it, the
business world?
- JOHN MEDLIN:
-
I was so far down in the hierarchy of the bank and of the profession
that I didn't encounter outside leaders in any direct interpersonal
sense. It was more through someone else's eyes or through reading of the
press. But my impression was it was a fairly progressive community in
lots of ways. At the same time, very traditional and still influenced a
lot by the experiences of the Great Depression. That there was a, on one
hand a progressiveness and on the other an underlying caution. That was
true of Wachovia; that was true of banking; that was true of many other
businesses. You occasionally found a visionary who was willing to step
out and do something bold and imaginative and new, but that was not
particularly widespread I'd say in the '50s or even the '60s. In a sense
my generation, the generation I guess that was born in the '30s, grew up
in the '40s, educated in the '50s, went to work in the late '50s, early
'60s. We were a little bit of a bridge between the people who were
either hired or were working in the Great Depression and through World
War Two and in the fifties really hadn't changed that much when I
arrived at Wachovia. A lot of the things that were done during the '50s,
I mean, '60s and particularly in the '70s were challenging those old
premises that you couldn't do that because we got in trouble doing it in
the '30s. I think we were that transitional generation that eventually
gave way to the even more aggressive change of the baby-boomers and
those who've come into leadership positions since.