Career Tracks: A Contender's Strategy: Take the Tough Jobs

On summer vacations from high school, David M. Carroll of First Union Corp. made extra cash hanging tobacco in the drying barns of North Carolina.

When he went to college at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Mr. Carroll spent his time off loading freight onto trucks for $12 an hour.

Those experiences were lessons in the value of hard work, said Mr. Carroll, chairman of First Union's Georgia bank.

Now the executive has his eyes on another job: the one that belongs to his boss, Edward E. Crutchfield, the chairman of $137 billion-asset First Union.

Mr. Carroll, 40, is the second-youngest person to lead a First Union subsidiary. Only Mr. Crutchfield was younger: he became president of the company's North Carolina bank in 1973 at the age of 32.

Mr. Carroll was named president of the Georgia bank in 1994, at age 37. He was named chief executive officer in 1995 and chairman in 1996.

It is no coincidence that Mr. Carroll appears to be following in Mr. Crutchfield's footsteps. His rapid rise through the First Union organization-and his status as one of a handful of executives considered contenders for the holding company's top job-underscore the careful engineering of an entire career.

"Somebody told me: There are only two ways to make money-get in early and make a sustained drive to the top, or change jobs frequently," Mr. Carroll said in a recent interview. "I didn't really want to change jobs."

Mr. Carroll started his career at Wachovia Corp., but he said he decided right away that the pace there was too slow for him.

The move to First Union in 1981-two years after graduating from college- gave Mr. Carroll a wide open path to prove himself quickly.

"I was attracted to First Union because it moved faster, and I am by nature impatient," he said. "Wachovia was a good experience but a bad fit. Companies are like schools, neighborhoods, and churches-they have personalities. You need to find one that matches your personality."

Such self-analysis distinguishes Mr. Carroll in the banking community, industry observers said. Other rising executives can learn from the way he has approached the profession.

"A lot of time people join an organization and try to mold to it," said J. Rucker McCarty, a partner at the executive search firm of Heidrick & Struggles Inc. "David really did an analytical self-evaluation in his early 20s to match his strengths to an organization."

Mr. Carroll attributed his rapid rise through First Union to his personality and the strategies he employed to work his way up.

Chief among the personal characteristics was "impatience with the status quo," Mr. Carroll said. "In addition to giving you ulcers, it's a good in- born, natural kind of drive."

One of his most important strategic decisions, he said, was to forgo pursuit of popular assignments in favor of "tough assignments, or the ones that no one else wants to do."

That attitude landed him in the small city of Burlington, N.C., as a 24- year-old commercial banking officer for First Union. While most of his peers pushed for assignments at headquarters in Charlotte-where, as Mr. Carroll explained, the "night life was good"-he worked with small-town shopkeepers and business owners.

That provided hands-on experience as a "real, live, functioning banker," Mr. Carroll recalled.

"I see a lot of young people wanting to manage their careers by wanting to go where the spotlight is, but I advise against that," he said. "Building a track record of being able to get things done is the key."

Mr. Carroll said he also advanced because he was constantly asking for new responsibilities outside the scope of whatever job title he held.

That tactic earned him valuable experience in merger activity when he asked for and received First Union vice chairman John R. Georgius' approval to run the due diligence on a series of acquisitions in 1992.

At the time, Mr. Carroll was the head of general banking for the company's South Carolina unit, but the merger work pushed him well outside those boundaries.

More recently, asking for new experiences landed him the job of overseeing the corporationwide "future bank implementation," a radical upgrading of First Union branches.

"I've seen a lot of very capable people who were left behind," Mr. Carroll said. "One of my insecurities is being left behind. So I try to always look for opportunities."

Choosing a successor to the 55-year-old Mr. Crutchfield is not an immediate concern at First Union. But given that the top management team largely consists of executives also in their 50s, Mr. Crutchfield's successor will likely come from outside their ranks.

Mr. Carroll "is certainly one of three or four top individuals among a group of possible candidates," said John W. Coffey, an analyst with Robinson-Humphrey Co. "He has really progressed pretty quickly through the ranks."

Mr. Carroll makes no bones about his pursuit of the job. "I want to run a financial institution," he says. "And I would very much like to run our company. How long it will take me to get there I don't know."

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