Posts Tagged ‘managing’
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…
Read MoreThree Steps to Team Alignment
How often have you worked with a team that isn’t on the same page? This common work situation of being misaligned is not the team’s fault but the responsibility of the leader/manager. What Elements Make up Team Alignment? 1. Purpose 2. Culture 3. Values When any of these three elements are out of alignment, the…
Read MoreThree Things Every Leader Must Know
Leadership is not for sissies. Leadership is not about you. Leadership has a price. Let’s diagnose each of these requirements. Leadership is not for sissies – To be an authentic leader takes courage. This courage is realized in many ways. Sometimes it is the courage to do what you don’t want to do, to do…
Read MoreFive 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…
Read MoreStrategic Planning is the Easy Part
Working with organizations across the country, I see a familiar process when doing their strategic planning. A typical process I’ve observed is loosely following these steps: Once a year a strategic planning event is scheduled with the Board and a few key executives The event starts with a “state of the industry today” presentation, typically…
Read MorePay 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)…
Read MoreLeadership: Don’t leave it to Amateurs
If you were to describe your leadership style, what would you say? If you were to define the leadership style of your credit union, what adjectives would you use? Like it or not, we all have a leadership style, and if your credit union has not defined their preferred leadership style, you have many varieties,…
Read MoreThe Basics of a Successful Career
We enter the business world with the expectation that we are starting up a trajectory that will always climb to the next promotion, a continual progression of responsibility and authority. This belief is a myth. Rarely is a career path a constant climb up the ladder? A career path is a “hero’s journey,” one beset…
Read MoreLeadership Stories we Tell Ourselves and Teach Others
Often we’ve written a script in our heads that may or may not be accurate. But this script can be limiting us from attaining our full potential. In this linked post (Is Your “Story” Holding You Back? Six Ways to Rewrite It—and Supercharge Your Power by Nancy D. O’Reilly, PsyD), we discover ways our stories are limiting…
Read More