A Chart to Help Implement Change

The marketplace. Technology. Members. As everything else changes, your credit union will need to change, too.

by Charles E. Fagan, III, CUES

The marketplace. Technology. Members. As everything else changes, your credit union will need to change, too. If you respond with skills, incentives, resources and an action plan—but no vision—you’ll get confusion. If you respond with vision, incentives, resources and an action plan—but no skills—you’ll get anxiety.

Think about it. And look at the chart below to help make things clearer. The two situations I just described are the second and third lines of the chart.

Originally developed by educators Richard A. Villa and Jacqueline S. Townsend for their 1995 book, Creating an Inclusive School, the chart is simple on one hand, but very complex on the other. It shows that only when you have vision, skills, incentives, resources and an action plan can you lead change successfully. If you’re missing any one of the five key pieces, your change initiative is likely to fail.

I learned about this great way of thinking about change while at PSCU, and now I’m applying it here in my leadership at CUES. At CUES, our upcoming strategic planning session with innovation guru Scott Isaksen will help us set the right vision. In this vein, we are also talking about what we’re not going to do, as Michael Hudson, Ph.D., suggested during his presentation at the 2012 CUES Symposium: A CEO/Chairman Exchange.

We are investing more in professional development and will continue looking at other ways to ensure the skills of our team members adapt to where we are going. Our shared goals and payout incentives plan, Stakeholders, will play a role in our change.

For us as a small company with limited ability to add staff, the resources piece will be a particular challenge. We will need to figure out ways to continue working smarter and free up staff to embrace change items, just like credit unions carefully consider outsourcing routine operations so staff can spend more time on revenue-generating initiatives that invest in the future. A solid action plan will also result from our strategic planning session to round out our ability to manage change.

There’s no question that change is going to be a way of life for credit unions that want to stay relevant in the marketplace and serve tomorrow’s members. The articles we’ve all read say it over and over: If you stay the same, the industry is going to pass you by. Changes in the regulatory environment are coming fast and furious. And the payments world I’ve been in for a lot of my career is just exploding with new companies and products.

I hope the chart above is but one of the CUES offerings that helps you successfully manage change this year and well into the future. Please email me and let me know.