Leadership – “Its Lonely at the Top”

This saying strikes a chord and gets especially real when we are fond of the people you lead. It is difficult to keep business and friendship separated, and when we fail, the consequences are painful for all parties involved. So, how do you create a work environment that leverages the power of people who enjoy…

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Preparing Your Culture Ready for Data Analytics

When most of us think about data, we think about numbers, charts, graphs, and reports. However, we need to talk about CULTURE. Collecting, aggregating, normalizing, manipulating, and presenting data seems to consume the conversation. However, here is the question we need to ask ourselves, “Is our culture ready to become truly data-driven?” Too often organizations…

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Culture = Rules of Engagement

It seems companies either overcomplicate or ignore their Culture. The reality is, your company’s Culture can, and should be, a way you can differentiate yourself from your competition, especially in the financial services world. Think of Culture as a pathway to creating a “competition of one.” A “competition of one” means you have no other…

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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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Strategic 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…

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Strategic Planning for Maximum Impact

Often Strategic Planning is a big deal that is conducted for a day or more. Usually, it includes a “state of the balance sheet” presentation, an update on all the improvements from the prior year, an overview of the state of the industry, a review of the Mission, Vision, and Values, and then a facilitated…

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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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3X3 Essentials for Business Development

Business Development success is essential regardless of your credit union’s field of membership. BD success requires focusing on three critical measures: growing members, assets, and balances; the first 3 of the 3X3. Generating sustainable growth of members and assets is the key to a credit union’s survival. Even if one of your credit union’s key…

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The 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…

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