Take a pause to assess where you are.
By Scott McClymonds
The more I work with financial institutions, the more I find that the greatest catalyst to profitability, growth, and member loyalty is leadership’s ability to align strategy, people, and systems. This also happens to be extraordinarily difficult for most organizations, and it isn’t because leaders aren't smart, passionate, energetic, and full of ideas. Most leaders I observe are flying around from meeting to meeting, working on numerous initiatives simultaneously, and putting out daily fires. That frequently squeezes out any time they may have to focus on strategic issues like corporate identity, customer needs, employee engagement, and communication. But pause, you must. Here's an exercise to do in that quiet moment. It will help you gauge where you are. Answer each of the questions below yourself, then ask your board, management team, and a sampling of front line people to do the same exercise. Next, compare answers with your board and management team. If the answers are similar, your alignment is probably strong. If the answers vary widely, you have some work to do.
- Who are we? What are our strengths? What is our brand?
- What is our strategy?
- Who are our members, what are their needs, and how do they rate their experience with us?
- What job positions need to be in place to execute our strategy? How is the performance of each role measured against strategy?
- What new ideas, investments, or acquisitions are we considering? How strongly do they correspond to our identity and strategy?
Scott McClymonds is CEO of CEO Velocity. If you liked this post, you may be interested in attending the summer session of CEO Institute I: Strategic Planning, slated for Aug. 16-21 at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
