Five Steps to Creating a Digital Culture

When asked “In the past year, which method did you use most often to manage your bank account(s)?” consumers responded as follows: Mobile (apps on smartphone or tablet) – 45% Internet/Online (Laptop or PC) – 27% Branches – 14% (Oct 31, 2022 – American Bankers Association) This statistic says a lot! Mobile utilization is the preferred method…

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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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Report Inconsistencies are Frustrating

One of the biggest frustrations found in most credit unions is the numbers between two or more departments don’t jive. The conversation almost always leans toward trying to figure out which data set is correct, which one to believe. The ultimate goal for these organizations is to find that elusive “one source of truth.” So,…

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Three Things That Go Wrong with Data Reports

A consistent issue most credit unions have is the lack of consistency from one report to the next. To diagnose why this inconsistency exists we should look first at these three elements of the report: Timing – two reports run at two different end times or interval times will tell different stories. But it’s not…

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Strategic Planning is Like Running a Half-Marathon

Strategic planning for a lot of companies is an annual exercise in thinking big, dreaming of possibilities. Unfortunately, for a lot of these organizations, strategic planning stops there and this annual ritual that when the ritual is done, everyone returns back to business as usual. Let’s stop for a minute to really understand what strategic…

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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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Leading from the Back is an Art

We often see a leader as the point person, but the reality is leaders very seldom take the point, and when all goes well, maybe they shouldn’t. Leadership doesn’t take courage; it takes owning the responsibilities of their decisions but then must also inspire the courage of others to act on those decisions. Taking responsibility…

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