Make your Strategic Plan a Hero’s Story

When doing a strategic plan, most organizations really are good at thinking with aspiration, hope, and promise. Where the “failure” happens is on the execution of the plan. If you think about engaging movies, they all seem to be stories that include a variation of the hero’s journey. “Lord of the Rings”, “Star Wars”, and…

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Five Strategic Questions for the Board and Senior Management

It’s a strange time for credit unions. Credit unions face unprecedented pressures from regulators and examiners and capital pressures for net interest margins and fee income. Often they don’t benefit from “economies of scale” or the resources, people, and capital, to invest in the infrastructure demands of vendor due diligence, regulatory compliance, or technology demands…

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5 Steps to Making your Culture Real

We’ve all heard the nightmare stories of a business’s reputation being damaged by significant cultural attributes failures. Maybe the failure is with their values. Significant companies have faced huge fines, and executives have gone to jail for not living up to their published values. These companies include Wells Fargo, Volkswagen, General Motors, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, and…

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Data-Driven Marketing – A Primer

For marketers today, it was essential to bring to light how the Marketing team will provide offers to members as it’s a significant change to our traditional methodology. The new approach is designed to provide improved, more consistent and more relevant product offers using the wealth of data from our core and your ancillary systems…

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Behavior is your Brand

man in blue denim jacket doing hand sign

Branding is often seen through the wrong lens. It is often seen as a combination of your logo, promise, voice, font, and color palette. But to leave it there is an injustice to what brand really is. The brand is behavior. The behaviors your members/customers experience when they engage your employees, products, and services. Think…

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Pay for Performance and Reputation Risk

An increasing trend in the financial services sector is “pay for performance.” This practice shows up in several formats: Commission – rep is paid a percentage of balances acquired Incentive – rep is paid per closed referral Bonus – rep is paid based on goal performance over a set period (per month, quarter, bi-annually, annually)…

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Great Endings yield Great Beginnings

Change is in my DNA. We don’t need to face change; we also need to embrace change. If you feel your credit union or CUSO needs to look at change differently and would like the steps to implement change,  my core competencies include the following:Digital transformation – building a digital strategy, the tactics, the organizational…

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Leaders Don’t Listen? Really?

Condoleezza Rice once said, “When you’re in a position of authority, you need truth-tellers around you.” Did she hit the mark? You bet.First, let us agree that one element of leadership is the authority. To be a leader, you must have some authority. This authority isn’t determined by power but by your ability to motivate,…

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