Banking Old School and New School

Editor's note: This post previously appeared in the May issue of American Banker Magazine.

In May, I will celebrate 25 years in banking. I am, almost officially, one of the "older guys." And I love it!

Recently I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to reflect on my time in the industry. One coffee quickly turned into three and, as the hours passed, the pages in my notebook filled up.

As I reviewed my notes something unexpected happened. I began to question my generational identity. I started in banking in the late 1980s, so I am still too young to truly be considered an old-school banker, but I am also too old to be considered a new-school banker. So, I asked myself, "What generation do I belong to?"

From day one at the bank I was mentored by a handful of veterans—a mix of men and women who taught me how to walk, talk and dress like an old-school banker. They stressed the importance of relationship banking and lectured on topics like community presence, handwritten notes, having coffee with customers and touring businesses. They showed me how to engage in effective face-to-face conversations, to write credits with pencil and paper and make presentations using nothing more than a flip chart. One of them even took the time to teach me the art of the handshake.

Not long after getting my banking legs under me, the technology revolution hit like a tidal wave. I had a Commodore 64 home computer, so I guess I was a little ahead of the curve. I can still remember hammering away on that thing while listening to a bootlegged Van Halen cassette. I used the opposite side of that same cassette to store my computer data. I also remember the first time I heard a fax machine wailing as a colleague forwarded loan docs to a lawyer.

After that came Palm Pilots, beepers, briefcase phones, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, the Internet and email. I have vivid memories of the day we launched our first small-business credit scoring system. Later we adapted to the first websites, and then Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. And just recently, I watched as a business owner bypassed her bank by turning her iPhone into a merchant terminal with nothing more than a small piece of plastic she picked up for free at a Starbucks.

So I asked myself the question again. What generation do I belong to? Am I old school or new school? I am both, it turns out.

You see, my generation is the hybrid generation! We are a once-in-the-history-of-the-industry mutation between old school and new school.

As hybrids, we are the only generation of bankers to operate on both sides of the technology revolution. We are connected to the old-school bankers of yore, but we are still here, we are in our prime, and we know how to bank old school and new school. We can write a handwritten thank-you note and we can send a text or a tweet. We can carry a business conversation for 18 holes and we know how to create a following on Facebook. We can get together for a Skype meeting or talk face-to-face over a simple cup of coffee. (And for the record, we will never count a Skype session as an actual, face-to-face meeting.)

We built our banks' first websites, but we also ran the brick-and-mortar branches and offices they supported. We are the people who actually experienced the business problems that all this new technology came along to solve.