By Tina K. Hall
Editor's note: Tina won last year's Next Top Credit Union Exec challenge, with its prize of professional development credits. Tina shared her prize with runner-up Ronaldo Hardy. And the idea grew. Ultimately, CU leaders and organizations donated so much support that all four finalists attended CEO Institute I in Philadelphia this spring. We're pleased to bring you a post from each of them about their experience at this acclaimed learning program.
There were so many awesome takeaways from the CUES' CEO Institute I, held at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Here are 10 concepts (in no particular order) that impacted me:
- “If you think like your competitors, you’re not thinking at all.” So often we, as credit union strategic planners, ask ourselves two questions: Who are we? Where do we want to go? Planning then becomes the process of filling in the gaps between the answers. By shifting the question away from, “what do we want to be when we grow up?” to include the market dynamics of competition, we can better prepare for any future scenario.
- “Maybe you’re successful because of inertia.” One of the instructors had us list the top 10 activities we engage in on a daily basis. We then put those activities into three categories: What should be outsourced, what could be outsourced, what should never be outsourced because it would damage the persona of our credit union? It was a fascinating exercise. I re-examined the strategic focus of my day-to-day activities as a result.
- Focus entirely on talent management to find the best people and leverage their capacity for our industry. In the exercise described in No. 2, most of my classmates at CEO Institute would outsource the human resources function. Interestingly, most credit unions listed people or service as a differentiator for their organizational success. That suggests to me that successful HR departments must shift away from administrative elements that take time away from people.
- Teams are better predictors of a company’s performance than the CEO alone. Leadership makes the greatest difference when it can inspire people to have a strong belief in what they are doing. Leadership in an individual and team sport.
- “We face challenges, not barriers.” Strong leaders push people to tolerate mistakes. Mistakes should even be encouraged as long as they point to stronger performance next time. In other words, if you want to succeed faster, make more mistakes.
- Most strong visions are tied to an unconventional and noble cause.
- “Would you kill one person to save 20?” That one ethical question sparked hours of discussion. Excellence in ethics means striving beyond the status quo, even if the choice you must make is not in your own self-interest. A good place to start is to be clear on your definitions of the following concepts: integrity, respect, trust.
- “You have to be willing to put an imperfect solution in place and modify it as you get feedback from your customer. For many people, this is a very difficult concept to swallow.” At the time, this was a presenter referring to IT scenarios. However, I think this quote has impact on internal and external processes as well.
- The real “juice” in planning comes from identifying the key success factors needed to thrive in any scenario. The strongest strategic choices flow from clearly identifying and working toward those key elements.
- To build innovation into your culture, consistently bring in outside perspectives. Members, other credit unions, associations, vendors and consultants are all possible resources. Practice tapping into them, possibility on a monthly, weekly or daily basis.
For those of you who have attended a past CEO Institute, I invite you to dialog about your biggest takeaways as well. There was so much rich information to draw upon. After attending this program, I am excited by the possibilities that are out there. We have tremendous opportunity to thrive.
Next Top Credit Union Exec Tina K. Hall was VP/organizational development at $380 million Verity Credit Union, Seattle.
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