Are you getting in your own way?

I’m rounding out my fifth year as President and CEO of Skyline Financial Federal Credit Union. When I joined in 2021, we were faced with all the typical small credit union hurdles: declining membership, lack of technology, no community presence, and my least favorited item of all time: no meaningful budget. I’m not even going to touch on the part where the credit union had shrinking capital and net losses that were so unfavorable that it almost seemed impossible to get out of it.

For context by the way, I left an organization that at the time was just about three times the size and operating at basically near financial perfection. So why did I make the leap? Aside from it being my first CEO gig, I really wanted to take on the new challenge, rebuild and reimage this tiny but mighty credit union that’s not only worth saving, but worth elevating.

So I’ll ask the same question I asked myself: Are you getting in your own way?

I almost didn’t know where to start five years ago. I had to figure out a technology issue where we were running computers well past their prime, a core system that was top notch technology, if it were 1985, and an entire community of over 100,000 individuals that had no idea we existed. Also, I was trying to figure out how the heck we were going to get out of a regular operational lost of about $200,000 for the year. I refused to let budget be my excuse and created a plan. I went to my board and told them; we have two objectives:

I also let me board know that while we are losing money, it’s going to get a little worse before it gets better, but we’ll have a full plan in order and we’ll submit the plan to the NCUA in advance so they know what we’re doing and how we’re going to overcome our numerous objections as a small, $33M credit union.

Start with the easy to upgrade things: computers, printers, phones. Create a plan on how we can work remotely for disaster recovery and snow days, because yes, it snows in Connecticut too!

Focus on low hanging fruit: we didn’t have a mobile app and our members were asking for remote deposit, so I immediately engaged with our core system provider and was able to line up getting one to launch in quarter one of the following year. 

I assessed the team at large, I requested to the board that we hire a chief operating officer and immediately have that individual focus on the new projects and new technology while I continued to clean up the old stuff. That way the COO owns the set up and everything is up to the standard it needs to be.

Next, a training plan for the team members. We’re going to take “universal banker” and put it on steroids. I want every person in the credit union, except our accounting manager for obvious separation of duty requirements, to handle teller transactions, loans, mortgages, you name it. No more departments, no more silos, no more single focused jobs. We’re all working for the same team, and this team is now being dubbed: THE BEST TEAM EVER.

To support this paradigm shift of the new culture, I implemented and ran 90-day reviews with every team member, that’s right: every 90 days. I also got rid of the numbering system, because let’s be real, is there a difference between a 3.9 and 4 on a score that is material? I created the reviews to be symbolic and adopted a simple, meaningful rating system:

I broke down the categories to include two major categories: Core values and On the job:

This system transformed our culture. Instead of chasing a 3.9 vs. a 4.0, employees focused on behavioral excellence, teamwork, and growth. What started as an unfamiliar process eventually became part of our DNA. Today, nearly every team member is rated at the highest levels, and our nine‑person team performs at a level that I would argue exceeds many much larger institutions. So, the first round of 90-day reviews was new and a bit uncomfortable, but now five years later, everyone is so used to it and almost the entire team is top rated. Morale has been high and consistent, teamwork is beautiful and most of all, every employee supports each other because when you have a total head count of nine people and doing all the things that our big banking counter parts do, you need to have a super solid team.

After strengthening our internal operations, we expanded our field of membership to more than our small employee groups and our original founding group of the Southern New England Telephone Company employees from over 91 years ago. I recognized that the credit union needed to be able to be open to all those that knocked on our door, so we applied and got approved for a community charter, originally serving two counties in the state of Connecticut now serving three counties of Connecticut today. 

We then boarded our product suite to add products like business banking, business lending, merchant services, and more technology to enhance our offerings and create super easy applications and data capturing and eliminate paper.

Now you might be asking, this all seems great in theory, and in all honestly, it’s not something credit unions haven’t done a 1,000 times before, but what are the results?

As you can see, and feel free to look up for yourselves from our call report, we’re charter number 452, the year over year performances has increased where they needed to. We’ve expanded services, added a ton of technology, programs, products, offers, and expanded our reach to an almost nationwide presence to where members want to join the credit union and the best part of it all, 13% of our demographics are Generation Z and it’s growing with each new member. The next generation is always the focus at Skyline Financial Federal Credit Union and we’ll continue to work on ensuring that we’re meeting their financial needs.

So again, I’ll ask—are you getting in your own way? I wouldn’t be able to move forward if could not get out of my own way. I could have easily sat and collected my paycheck while the organization continued to lose money year over year, or I could ensure that I didn’t live behind the excuse and I stepped in front of the hurdles before me and made sure I was out of my own way.

If you want to collaborate or talk more, feel free to email me at james@skylineffcu.com and I’ll be happy to help you out. I don’t charge money for advice (although it could be the next non-interest income line item on our call report now that I think about it). I'm kidding of course!