By Henry Wirz
This post was originally a letter to the editor in response to the April Credit Union Management magazine article, "A Matter of Culture" by Michael Daigneault, CCD, CEO of Quantum Governance, a CUES strategic provider. Wirz's chairman sent him the article and told him how important he thought the culture is at SAFE Credit Union. Wirz agreed.
The credit union’s culture is the genetic code that assures that each generation of the credit union carries on the traits that define the credit union. Like the genetic code, culture also gives the credit union the traits needed to adapt and to change when the environment changes.
I was a bit amazed to learn that some credit union leaders can’t describe their culture. I feel that the culture is consciously created, molded and expressed by the CEO and the board. It is a key to how the credit union treats its employees, members, community and other stakeholders. If you don’t know your culture, then perhaps you are doing nothing to create, mold or express it. That would be a dereliction of a key duty.
I loved the point the author makes about being a "learning organization." This is a key to any good culture. It provides the adaptability that every organization must have in an ever-changing marketplace.
I believe you should be able to define your culture in a sound bite. Our sound bite is “Do the right thing, for the right reason." As a learning organization, we learn from our mistakes and our successes. We ask that everyone have purpose.
Our main purpose is defined in our mission statement, “To help members improve their financial well-being, provide excellent service, and maintain a financially sound credit union.” How we achieve our mission is defined in our brand promise: “Exceptional service, best solutions and professional experts to help members improve their financial well-being so that they can enjoy life.”
As the article says, a good culture depends on team work. But that team work has to be inspired by a worthy purpose, by a defined way to achieve that purpose and, most importantly, by leadership that models the culture.
A weak culture means a weak credit union. A weak culture comes from weak management. I so often wonder how NCUA assigns its rating to the M in CAMEL. Surely not by any assessment of the credit union’s culture. Yet that should be where any rating of management begins.
I live by the premise that if you allow broken windows, you get more broken windows. Our culture of inquiry means we find out why there are broken windows and we eliminate the cause. The culture of inquiry means you always get to causes. Nothing is considered resolved until you get to the cause. A culture where that is the norm is a culture of high quality service. When you fix a member's problem, you fix it for everyone who might be exposed to the same problem.
Another hallmark of good culture is continuous improvement. Improvement is a process of making small changes that make incremental improvements. That applies to how we grow and develop our staff. Everyone on staff is given the chance to grow and develop to the fullest of their ability. We spend considerable time in training and development of the staff and management team. Our staff and the work process at SAFE are the two keys to member service. If they both are part of continuous process improvement, then so is the credit union. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to see our staff fully achieve their potential. Over my 35 years at SAFE, I have seen many employees grow and develop.
As the CEO I see creating, molding and expressing our culture as one of the most important parts of my job. When we do a merger with another credit union, part of my merger checklist is to rate their culture and compare it to ours. That tells me how much work we will have to do to meld the new employees into our culture. Sometimes I integrate parts of their culture into ours. As in the genetic analogy above, I see this as similar to what good plant and animal breeders do to take the best traits and carry them on when crossing two individuals.
I worry a lot about another aspect of culture, our credit union movement culture. We are a culture that is based on the principles of mutuality. One aspect of our culture at SAFE that we need to consider is our declining mutuality. Mutuality in credit unions is decreasing as credit unions get larger and the distance between members and the credit union increases both in terms of actual distance and in terms of communication and understanding. Mutuality depends on a culture of shared responsibility and shared benefit. Mutuality means members have to act like owners.
That is especially important in terms of governance where they must elect the board and hold them accountable for the performance of the credit union, both financially and in terms of member service quality.
As you know, this isn’t happening. The culture of mutuality is a risk not only in credit unions, but in all mutuals. Members don’t vote, they don’t attend annual meetings and they don’t pay attention to the financial performance of the credit union. They act like members who vote with their feet when service quality doesn’t meet their needs. The result of this loss of mutuality is that we have thousands of credit unions that are no longer relevant to their members.
Culture is important. Thanks for raising the topic to everyone’s attention.
Henry Wirz is CEO of $2 billion SAFE Credit Union, N. Highlands, Calif.
CUES strategic provider Quantum Governance helps credit unions develop strong leadership cultures.
