BROOKFIELD, Wis. — In opening the “Fiserv Leadership Center,” Fiserv Inc. has taken a page from Jack Welch’s playbook at General Electric Co. — but not the whole chapter.
The center, a dedicated building where Fiserv managers from around the world will come to learn about the “Fiserv way,” is modeled after the John F. Welch Leadership Center at Crotonville, a large campus in Ossining, N.Y., that Fiserv’s top executives toured when formulating their plans for a corporate training program.
But Fiserv will not be teaching any lessons in Six Sigma, the quality assurance program that Mr. Welch espoused at GE but Fiserv has declined to embrace.
Leslie M. Muma, Fiserv’s president and chief executive officer, says the center, a “mini-Crotonville,” represents an ideal that he and Norm Balthasar, the chief operating officer, hold dear.
“That’s kind of a passion of both of ours — employee education, how to lead the Fiserv way,” Mr. Muma said in an interview here in July.
Transaction processing, the most prominent service Fiserv provides to its 15,000 customers, is not just a management matter but an “art form” that takes time to refine, Mr. Muma said. Under the new program, all senior managers and rising stars will come to the center for inculcation.
To open the center, Fiserv bought the building next to its headquarters, gutted it, and built classrooms. The building has been open for meetings and preliminary training sessions, and it will be in full-time use starting this fall.
Many of the programs will be six-day seminars that use a curriculum developed by Fiserv managers in conjunction with professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. Fiserv executives will do the teaching, and Mr. Muma and Mr. Balthasar will participate in open discussions that will take place as part of the training.
“The leadership got excited about learning at the executive level,” said Tom Dybro, a senior consultant in management training, who was giving a class on cost-cutting during a recent tour of the facility.
The curriculum uses “action learning,” in which students come up with concrete plans for improving their businesses. For instance, in the class Mr. Dybro was teaching, the students came up with ways to save $10,000 from their budgets; the suggestions will later be implemented.
The coursework is “tied very closely to our operations,” he said.
Mr. Balthasar said the standard curriculum will include four courses: business growth, client relationships, financial management, and “people and team-building.”
“We believe in an entrepreneurial decentralized approach to things,” he said. “Clients come first, and there’s an emphasis on people. The business unit is seen as a building block” that stands on its own within Fiserv’s structure.
Mr. Muma said the approach offers a good opportunity for people within the company to meet one another and share ideas, but it is “not at all” about Six Sigma. Fiserv uses lots of quality control methods, but not that one, he said.
The need for such a training center is itself a testament to Fiserv’s growth. It marked its 20th anniversary Saturday; it traces its origins to a deal, which closed July 31, 1984, in which Sunshine State Systems of Tampa merged with First Data Processing of Milwaukee.
Back then Fiserv had $21 million of annual revenue, 200 customers, and 300 employees; 127 acquisitions later, it now has $2.7 billion of annual revenue, 21,000 employees, 15,000 clients, and 245 locations.
Mr. Muma said he wants that revenue figure to grow to around $10 billion within three to five years.
“We’re going to continue to grow and diversify,” he said. “Twenty years ago we were only a bank and thrift processor, primarily thrifts. Now we do a lot of different things,” such as processing for insurance firms, securities companies, and credit unions.
On July 21, Fiserv reported a 21% increase in second-quarter net income from a year earlier, to $95 million. Revenue increased 33%, to $855.9 million.
