Building a Creative Team

When your credit union serves a field of membership that epitomizes creativity—the employees of companies like Disney and Pixar—your staff had better stand ready to respond in kind. Like its members, Partners Federal Credit Union aims “to have an appetite and expectation for the incredible,” says President/CEO John Janclaes, a CUES member. “We think of ourselves as cast members serving cast members.”

Executives and managers of the $1.4 billion, 110,000-member Burbank, Calif., credit union receive blank journals and training as part of in-house leadership development on the practice of recording and developing new business ideas. Learning to journal involves “being able to think about and act on your ideas—to use both sides of your brain,” he says.

Janclaes began providing pointers on the practice of journaling as the result of questions from colleagues and staff. “Folks would ask, ‘I notice you carry a journal with you everywhere. What’s that about?’” he says. He describes his journal as a medium to hold on to ideas for future exploration. “My peers would leave meetings having only captured what their short-term memory provided—far too random a process for my comfort.”

Journals are not the only canvas for business creativity provided to Partners FCU managers and staff:

• One wall in each executive’s office is painted with a whiteboard finish so they can write notes and diagram and sketch ideas while working out solutions with colleagues. “Problems depicted on walls allow for dialogue with peers and iterative changes to new processes under construction,” Janclaes explains.
• The common areas at I Drive, Partners FCU’s operations center in Florida, include hanging boards, glass walls, and areas used to facilitate stand-up meetings.
• The credit union’s Office of Innovation and project management groups make project documents, in draft and final versions, available to all employees, and projects are discussed en masse at quarterly town hall meetings to keep all staff informed and invite questions and suggestions.

These forms of shared documentation are designed “to improve clarity and collaboration, thereby generating better outcomes,” Janclaes says.

When he celebrated his 10th anniversary at Partners FCU recently, he perused all the journals he filled over those years, which inspired him to write a book about creativity that will be published in 2016. “I am enjoying the process of distilling my learning into a few nuggets about how to get from point A to point B, from your current to desired future state, from your current potential to your full potential,” he says.

Karen Bankston is a long-time contributor to Credit Union Management and writes about credit unions, membership growth, marketing, operations and technology. She is the proprietor of Precision Prose, Middleton, Wis.